The Dual Perception of US Military Legacy in Today's Seoul

Seoul’s Yongsan district is known for its bustling shopping and metropolitan scene, nightlife, and large international population, making it a hub for those looking for international cuisines and Western goods in central Seoul. This cluster is the result of the presence of the United States Army Garrison Yongsan military base, a sprawling installation housing 13,500 troops and their dependents, boasting a K-12 Department of Defense-run school system, a hospital, and other necessities that make up the small community. The Yongsan base once stood for the need for American military during a tumultuous political time on the Korean peninsula, but simultaneous decline of the base and development of the city around it has led to a shift in perception. The move away from wartime mindsets among the Korean populace has changed what the base represents. American military presence in central Seoul has long outlived its relevance, and reasons as to why general attitudes towards the installation have soured are highly present in the day-to-day lives of the people living around it. 

To understand the early history of the base and why it exists in its current form at all, we should take a look into its particularly transformative cultural significance. Firstly, and most prominently, U.S. military presence is rooted deeply in contemporary Korean culture, particularly in regards to music and cinema. For example, many cultural historians credit the African-American influenced hip-hop trends in today’s Korean pop music to early influences of American G.I.s who brought along demands for American music. The same goes for the introduction of other forms of entertainment, such as rock-and-roll and dance-pop music. In an earlier, more culturally homogeneous Seoul, the base was also the only point of access to Western food, fashion, media, and even grocery products. Itaewon, a notably international sector of Seoul, is today’s home base for many non-military related expatriates, both American and international. However, it got its start as a collection of tailors, haircutters and other service-related businesses that made their money catering to the needs of the American military community. The benefits of the early days of the base to a blossoming local economy greatly outweighed the potential for discontent regarding foreign presence, and this resulted in acceptance for, and even contentment with the American presence.

But the Yongsan garrison has presented a new challenge to modern-day Seoul. The city’s metropolitan nature has made cultural accessibility and mainstream visibility of the West so palpable that the base’s reputation as a hub of American culture has fallen flat, and a new one has taken its place. Today, it echoes the unpleasant associations of Korea’s tumultuous history with colonialism and foreign invasiveness. Several factors contribute to this, the first of which is the most obvious: its appearance. Tall, concrete walls topped with barbed wire and threatening signage perpetuate what many Koreans see the base as a “black hole inside the city.” Even though the appearance hasn’t changed since the Korean War, the rapid development of Seoul hints as to why perceptions shifted so drastically entering the 21st century. The base takes up 620 acres of land in the heart of the city, surrounded on all sides by skyscrapers, malls, shopping districts, and other hallmarks of modern life. Located within a mile of the Han River, the base is located awkwardly in a position of prime real estate for urban development, but it’s unlikely that the land will be returned to the city for public use in whole until the distant future. To a city with the 17th highest predicted GDP for 2020, its obsolescence to the growing Seoul displays the general consensus that it’s well past time for the base to vacate Seoul, and return the land to the city. 

Environmental concerns about the legacy of the Yongsan garrison have also been a prominent topic in recent political discourse. In June 2018, local elections were held in Seoul, where each of the city’s 25 gu, or districts, held mayoral elections. However, a noticeable trend among Yongsan campaign platforms were posters and slogans in both Korean and English, demanding that reparations be made for damages to land that the base had incurred. Some were more outlandish than others, but all held some basis in fact. In 2000, the United States Forces Korea (USFK) admitted to accusations that they had breached Korean, as well as American, environmental regulations when they illegally disposed of embalming fluid in the Han River. More recently, surveys of the land around Yongsan revealed high levels of ground pollutants, giving rise to citizen protest focused on the lack of response and transparency from the USFK. Under the expectation that the land would eventually be given back to the city for public use, many were angered that no efforts to protect the property of the city were made. It’s clear that the base exists in Seoul on borrowed time, and if the same standards of environmental caution as the city’s own government aren’t held by the USFK, discontent from the populace is to be expected, and if said standards can’t be respected, the base should be dissolved. 

An examination of the past and the future of the land itself similarly reveals contention with the space. Before American forces used the facility, it served as the Imperial Army of Japan’s military center in Korea during the occupation of 1910-1945, further making the case that destroying the base would remove a symbol of colonialism. After the Korean War ended, the hardships and need for reparations of war gradually left the forefront of public perception, making the base’s relevance in central Seoul moot. It was announced in 2003 that the base in Seoul would be destroyed and the land given back to the city, with the forces stationed in Yongsan now moved about 40 miles south to Pyeongtaek’s Camp Humphreys. The move to Camp Humphreys has been turbulent, further delaying the process of vacating the Seoul base. Issues with the construction of the hospital in Pyeongtaek, crucial to the function of the army community, delayed the move for an additional three years, with an even longer buffer period for the hospital to actually be ready for patient use. The long-awaited land in Yongsan has plans to be used for a public park, which would bring much-needed greenery to the area. It would seem that the case for citizens to hold negative views on the garrison has reasonable legitimacy. 

Today, the slow decline of the base continues as scores of troops are moved south to Camp Humphreys. As the standstill between North and South Korea continues, the need for state-of-the-art military preparedness has declined. This, paired with the knowledge that the base will be completely torn down in the near future, contributes to the lack of upkeep. It’s understandable  that the deteriorating base is seen as less of a historical curio and more as an aggressive response to a problem that’s not palpable to the Korean mainstream anymore. This argument, however, mainly considers the perspective of a general populace on the base in order to explore the perception of Americans to the Korean public, rather than the significant geopolitical situation regarding Seoul’s relatively northern position and proximity to North Korea. However, on a cultural front, the significance of the Yongsan garrison has subsided, and its departure from Seoul is long past overdue.