Designed city

If Mongolia is a county with a wild environment where people have adapted in order to survive, South Korea seems to be the opposite – a country where the environment has been adapted to suit people. Especially Sejong, the city where my friend lives.

It’s a newly built city. It hasn’t grown gradually over decades as so many cities have, it was built after the government took a decision to move a lot of functions of government, and all the civil servants working on those functions, out of Seoul. The area was mainly rural until about 10 years ago when construction of the city began. People began moving to the city about 4 years ago. My friend C and his family have been here a little over a year.

Everything about the city seems uniform and controlled. The new government buildings look the same, the apartment blocks are identical, the park is perfectly manicured, not a leaf out of place, with the largest artificial lake in the country.

C and I and his kids walked from their apartment block to the park where there was a festival going on celebrating the anniversary of the introduction of the Korean writing script. I could be wrong but I got the impression that people were only walking and sitting on the grass because there was a special event going on.