Four Years After Approval, No Construction in Sight: What Is This Eyesore Infested With Bugs?

[Anchor]

Some 60 housing development sites in Daegu have been left idle without even breaking ground, turning into urban eyesores. Residents are flooding local offices with complaints over foul odors and swarming bugs, but local authorities remain helpless.

TBC reporter Park Ga-young has the story.

[Reporter]

A school commuting path lined with rusted iron fences.

Children walk dangerously past the structure.

Banners announcing the exercise of a right of retention hang here and there, and the long-abandoned land is overgrown with weeds.

The project to build new apartment complexes here was approved in 2022, but it has been left abandoned as an urban eyesore without even a spadeful of dirt turned to this day.

As rainwater has pooled for years, a large puddle has even formed.

The water is filled with all sorts of bugs, and a severe stench is being emitted.

[Parent: My child is a third grader now, and it's been like this since the first grade. Water seems to be pooling, and it looks quite dangerous.]

Beomeo-dong, known as prime land in Daegu, features 8,200 square meters of idle land sitting right in the middle of a forest of high-rise apartments.

This is because construction on the mixed-use residential and commercial apartments has been delayed indefinitely.

[Nearby merchant: Actually, I think it needs to be developed somehow, so leaving it neglected is naturally wrong.]

There are 66 uncommenced housing construction project sites within the Daegu region.

Of these, 57 have been left untouched for over two years, and 12 have remained stagnant for more than five years.

In most cases, economic stagnation has caused issues with construction companies securing funding.

The problem is that, unlike construction sites that have already broken ground, sites where not a finger has been lifted lack even legal grounds, limiting intervention by local governments.

[District office official: Legally, since it is still before construction starts, we are reviewing relevant statutes, but there seems to be nothing we can mandate.]

This is why voices are rising calling for the establishment of grounds that would allow local governments to take direct action—even if it is private property—when elements undermining public interest arise.

[KYUNGMIN / Daegu Suseong District Council member: Because it is essentially a dispute within private property, there isn't much room for public authorities to step in. So we are reviewing whether we can resolve these issues through ordinances and are actually preparing to enact one.]

Dozens of uncommenced sites left neglected for years amid poor management are triggering not only safety issues but also urban hollowing out.

(Video by Jungwoo | Design: Kim Se-yoon)

TBC Park Ga-young
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.