[Anchor]

Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Kim Yoon-deok and Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon met to discuss the housing supply issue in Yongsan Park, but failed to narrow their differences. They agreed to hold further discussions next week, though reaching an agreement is expected to be challenging.

Reporter Jeon Hyeong-u has more.

[Reporter]

Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Kim Yoon-deok and Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon have met.

[Oh Se-hoon / Mayor of Seoul: Welcome. There is a lot of interest.]

This comes as significant discrepancies persist between the central government and the Seoul metropolitan government regarding the development of the Yongsan area, which has emerged as a key focus zone for real estate supply measures.

Minister Kim emphasized that youth housing would not utilize the entire Yongsan Park, but rather only be applied selectively to areas that have already been altered or damaged.

[Kim Yoon-deok / Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport: Preserving Yongsan Park well and supplying housing to young adults and newlyweds are not mutually exclusive.]

Mayor Oh dismissed the idea, stating that because Yongsan Park is a vital component of Seoul's green axis, he cannot agree to develop even a portion of it for residential purposes.

[Oh Se-hoon / Mayor of Seoul: Agreeing to that would result in remaining as a sinner before history as the Mayor of Seoul...]

With both sides failing to bridge their gaps, let us take a closer look at Yongsan Park.

The government's position is that land with existing structures—such as the Children's Garden inside Yongsan Park, the former Defense Acquisition Program Administration site, military apartments, and officers' quarters—can be developed.

However, the Seoul metropolitan government maintains that these areas are also part of the main park site and should be developed into a national garden like Seoul Forest.

Instead, Seoul proposed a compromise utilizing state-owned land surrounding the park.

This includes Camp Kim, a 45,000-square-meter site announced to supply 2,500 households under the government's January 29 measures, as well as an 18,000-square-meter Gyeongree-gil site, the Bank of Korea employee dormitory, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs parking lot.

Differences also remained narrow regarding the Yongsan International Business District.

While the government aims to supply 10,000 households, Seoul and Yongsan-gu maintain that they can only accommodate up to 8,000 households.

Minister Kim and Mayor Oh plan to reconvene next week to continue discussions.

Although both sides share a broad consensus on the fundamental principle of preserving Yongsan Park, they remain on parallel paths regarding the core issue of developing the main park grounds, making a breakthrough unlikely to be easy.

(Video Reported by Joo Beom, Kim Heung-ki, Shin Jin-soo, Choi Ho-jun | Video Edited by Seunghee | Graphics by Lee So-jung, Kang Yoon-jung)