Site of Japanese Colonial 'Chosen Army Headquarters' Beneath Yongsan Park; Experts Call for Excavation and Preservation

Although the 81st anniversary of Liberation has arrived, the site of the 'Chosen Army Headquarters,' which forced Korean youths into battlefields during the Japanese colonial era, remains buried underground beneath the parking lot of Yongsan Children's Garden in Seoul. On the 16th, Jo Geon, a professor at Dongguk University’s Department of History Education who has researched the history of the Japanese colonial military in Korea, emphasized that the site of Building 1 remaining under this parking lot must be excavated and turned into a 'place of memory' that reveals the reality of war damages. He described the headquarters as the "key institution for the forced mobilization policy during the late Japanese colonial period that drove over 200,000 Korean youths into the jaws of death."

While the 'South Post' area of Yongsan Base, occupied by the Japanese and U.S. militaries, has been opened to the public as the temporary national park Yongsan Children's Garden, the remnants of colonial plunder within the grounds—such as the site of Building 1, the Building 2 bunker, and the site of the Governor-General's Residence—have not been designated as cultural heritage, and no explanatory markers have been installed. The 2018 final report on the basic design for the Yongsan Park creation plan included full-scale excavation, restoration, and maintenance of the ruins, as well as the utilization of Building 2 as a visitor center, but none of this has been realized.

The interior of Building 2, a concrete structure built between 1940 and 1941, is barely known to the academic community. Furthermore, because it was used as a practice ground for the ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command's operations intelligence room, the ownership transfer process for the building located on Ministry of National Defense land has not been completed.

20 Years of Changing Designs Only; Concerns Over Project Stagnation

As recent status surveys on the Chosen Army Headquarters and Governor-General's Residence sites have been postponed or neglected over the past 5 to 6 years, criticism from the academic community has grown. On June 20, the 1st Yongsan Park History Forum was held at the Seoul Yongsan Urban Memory Museum, attended by Seoul City University Professor Emeritus Je Jae-jeong and Dongguk University Professor Jo Geon, among others, who pointed out issues with heritage surveys. Kim Hong-ryul, Ph.D., an urban planning expert who served as the official in charge of Yongsan Park creation at Seoul City from 2016 to 2022, diagnosed that ahead of the 20th anniversary of the special law's enactment, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT), which oversees the project, has failed to consistently realize a vision for the site's historical and locational identity. "Whenever the administration changes, the renovation design plans are frequently altered according to interests, exhausting trust and driving force," he pointed out.

The creation of Yongsan Park was first publicized as a presidential campaign pledge by former President Roh Tae-woo in 1987. As the relocation of the U.S. Yongsan Base became visible in 2006, it went into full swing with former President Roh Moo-hyun's park declaration ceremony, the enactment of the special law the following year, and the formation of MOLIT's Park Promotion Planning Team. However, due to political upheavals and delays in negotiations with the U.S. military, the comprehensive master plan was revised and notified four times, and feasibility studies for facilities and spaces alone were conducted six times.

Out of approximately 2.43 million square meters of Yongsan Base, 765,000 square meters have been returned. Of this, the southern 300,000 square meters were opened to the public as a resting space in May 2023, during the former Yoon Suk-yeol administration. However, the excavation and restoration of core heritage sites, such as the Chosen Army Headquarters site, remain adrift.