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영어

The city of Seoul was reconstructed hastily in terms of “the priority to any other thing”in a short time after Korean War without any process of collecting various opinions or concrete and detailed long term project for that. I am sorry that Seoul missed the proper opportunity to be reborn as historical city at that period. I remember Commitment of Unesco had a round exhibition in 1981 in Korea in celebrating of the registration of Angkorwat in World Heritage with the education and information of Unesco World heritage. The development of the southern area of Han River(漢江) in Seoul came to be the zenith at that time but the inner area of Four Gates in Seoul was left out of any concern of historical site. While traditional Korean style house area was displaced for multiplex house and the surrounding area of Four Gates was destroyed carelessly for the development of the super-high apartment complex, large-scale office areas and commercial buildings encroached on the other sites of the historical city. After all, old structure of the city has been broken rashly by the development of grand-scale apartment complex and multiplex houses with high-developed underground area. For the period of the first and second Mayors of Seoul elected by the people, we should have remove and clean away various adverse effects of development project accomplished by the former government to recover the historical sites in priority. But the city projects of restoration of Cheong-Gye Cheon(淸溪川), Economy Herb, Seoul Renaissance and Design City has been planed to be fulfilled in discord with the recovery and preservation of historical sites in Seoul or with indifference to it. I am not sure that these projects have certain meanings in the long-term prospect of the city. Seoul has the best condition of location to provide citizen with the circumstances for the high-level quality of life. We should think over what urbanity should be given to the city and what we do to search for the unique and special property of Seoul.