Why apartment prices are soaring in Sejong, South Korea's administrative capital

According to South Korean media, the price of apartments in Se Jeong, an administrative city in Chungcheongnam-do, central South Korea, is soaring.
According to the weekly apartment price trend (as of the 21st) announced on the 4th, the sale and purchase prices of apartments in Sejong City rose 0.23% from the previous week, more than five times the increase from the previous week (0.04%).
Meanwhile, Seoul's price rose by just 0.08%, remaining flat. The Korean media Herald Business reported this, saying, "The background to this is the idea of relocating the presidential office in the run-up to the presidential election in June.
South Korea will hold a presidential election on June 3, and Lee Jong-un of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, who is leading the way in opinion polls as the person most suitable to become the next president, has been
On the 17th of this month, former Chairman Lee Jae-myung announced his pledge to move the presidential office to Sejong City. The presidential office is located in the same building where former President Yoon Seok-yeol used to have the presidential office and other facilities.
The government's functions were moved from the Blue House (former presidential office) to the former Ministry of National Defense building in Yongsan-gu, Seoul.
In the past, the Blue House was under strict security, and even the chief secretary was not allowed to enter the presidential office.
For national defense reasons, the Blue House is not shown on maps, except for some tourist maps, and aerial photographs for domestic use are often edited.
The issue of the Blue House had been obscured by such statements as, "I will return the Blue House to the people," as former President Yoon wanted to close the gap with the people.
) administration as a "closed-door politics" and attempted to bring about a change. The Blue House was opened to the public in May 2022 to coincide with Yoon's inauguration as president. Accordingly, the presidential office at the Blue House was renovated and remodeled into the former
The move to the Ministry of National Defense building was seen as a turning point in modern Korean history, marking the end of the long-running authoritarian “Cheong Wa Dae era.”
However, Yoon was impeached on the 4th of this month, and the presidential election will be held on June 3rd. As mentioned above, the results of various opinion polls show that the next president will be the Democratic Party of Korea.
Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party of Korea is the front-runner. Lee has pledged to move the presidential office and the National Assembly to Sejong and turn it into an "administrative city in both name and reality."
The executive meeting also ordered the consideration of relocating the president's office to the city, a move that drew attention in anticipation of the presidential election.
The city was established in 2012 through the merger of local governments.
Hyun) Former President promoted the idea of establishing Sejong City as an administrative city, and many administrative agencies have already been relocated to the city. The population of the city has increased from 100,000 before development to nearly 400,000 today.
The plan is to have 800,000 residents. The plan was launched with the main goal of eliminating the extreme concentration of South Korea's population, with half of the population living in the Seoul metropolitan area.
The government is aiming to move the administrative capital to Jongno City, but this would require a constitutional amendment, which is a high hurdle, and the plan is currently on hold.
The government has called the special measures law that established the new administrative capital unconstitutional, citing the fact that the Constitution stipulates that the new administrative capital be Seoul.
The fact that Sejong's relocation was pledged has raised expectations, and as mentioned above, the sales prices of apartments in the city announced by the Korea Real Estate Agency on the 24th of this month have risen sharply compared to the previous week.
This is in stark contrast to the national average apartment prices, which fell 0.01% from last week, and the average apartment prices in other regions, which fell 0.04%. Among the Seoul districts, Seocho-gu and Songpa-gu showed the largest increases.
The ward-level increase in housing prices was also at 0.18%. Sejong City's housing price increase was the second highest in the nation after Gwacheon City (in Gyeonggi Province near Seoul) (0.28%).
According to the Korea Real Estate Agency, in an interview, "The prices are rising mainly in Goeung-dong (in Sejong City), where the conditions for settling down are good, and the rate of increase is accelerating in Sejong City as a whole."
According to the newspaper, there were 741 condominium transactions between the 1st and 24th of this month, "almost double the 375 transactions in February, and if this trend continues, it will be 781 more than in March."
Meanwhile, as no concrete plans have been presented for the relocation of the presidential office and other facilities to Sejong, experts have warned that it will become a realistic task once the presidential election is over.
Some are predicting that prices will stabilize as the market faces new challenges.