South Korea Built a Mediocre New Capital in the Middle of Nowhere

[@FG-418]

Failing to build a robust transport system for your new capital from scratch is the biggest facepalm. Kinda easier to dig and built underground stuff when there is no overground yet. These people need to play Cities Skyline more.

[@toahero5925]

Technically, Cities Skylines doesn't substantially penalize you for tunneling under existing structures, and public transit isn't unlocked until your city's grown

[@BuriedDimension]

​@@toahero5925🤓🤓

[@Ciurk]

@@toahero5925 rip

[@MatheusC1729]

Unless you're building a modernist capital in 1958 and the whole philosophy of the thing is "Rio de Janeiro is too bad for people who love cars, it's just better to walk and use trains. Let's build a city entirely around cars in the middle of nowhere!" So Brasília is the exact opposite of that lol

[@trainsandmore2319]

@@toahero5925 Nah, they just want to do it all under "God Mode".

[@DarkHarlequin]

How South Korea of all places could forget to build a modern transit system into their planned city is absolutely beyond me... 😮😮

[@timothystamm3200]

Planned administrative capitol. Though, apparently, the BRT connection to the high speed rail is enough for a 2 hour commute. Sounds like they didn't move it far enough in some ways.

[@LordManhattan]

Hyundai and Kia are both South Korean. It makes complete sense that they would lobby AGAINST building an actual functioning public transit system. That would certainly hurt car sales! Corporations won again.

[@oceanrocks]

@@LordManhattan Rapid transit systems operate in six major South Korean cities, except for Ulsan and Sejong. And Hyundai Rotem is basically behind the creation of Korea’s robust public transit system. So there is something else going on.

[@bgnr0107]

​​@@LordManhattan you certainly haven't been there if you think there's no functioning public transit like New York.

[@oceanrocks]

@@bgnr0107Clearly. Especially since 50% of the population lives in Seoul where public transit is very much the norm.

[@quercusoak98]

What's interesting about Sejong is that it has the highest birthrate in the entire country, nearly double the national rate at 1.12 births.

[@roevhaal578]

That's so bad, their best region is still worse than any non-city state. For comparison neighbouring Japan only has 1 prefecture (Tokyo) with lower fertility rate and Tokyo is higher than every other region in South Korea.

[@spyczech]

High fertility rate isn't a good thing or bad thing per se

[@kempo_95]

Is that per person or per couple?

[@Planet.Xplor3r]

Let's see when the population all dies off and everyone left is too racist to accept immigrants

[@sammymarrco2]

per woman @@kempo_95

[@theotheronethere4391]

It makes a little more sense if you take security considerations into account. Seoul is 35 miles from the North Korean border. If conflict breaks out between the Koreas, there is actually a non-trivial chance that the entire South Korean government is captured/collapses within the first week of the war. That is not even taking into account covert operations (like the Blue House Raid in which North Korea attempted to assassinate the President of South Korea). So, putting the capital (or at least the bulk of the government) in a semi-accessible city farther from the border actually makes a lot of sense if South Korea wants to have a city that can function as a wartime capital (as Seoul will probably be destroyed by countless rocket fire/artillery).

[@nataliapiekarska21]

Yeah, but they still have presidential palace in Seul and don't plan on moving it. Honestly baffling how they build this capital in the worst way possible

[@PhyrexJ]

So... They would just stand still the whole week? Seems logical.

[@theotheronethere4391]

@@PhyrexJ Well a week is probably a median guess. In a worst-case scenario, NK can have troops in city center in an hour. During the Korean war, Seoul fell 3 days in the start of the war. Even if they evacuated, where will they go? Modern warfare requires a complex communication/control operations and given how Seoul-centric South Korea is, there is really no city that can evacuate too. So, they built one.

[@evancombs5159]

@@nataliapiekarska21 moving capitals is always controversial, so it is hard to get the political and financial support you need to do it in a republic. That seems to be exactly what happened. The plan was put in place, but then backlash and subsequent governments prevented it from happening at the scale it need to to be done right. Politically they took a bad approach. A more covert approach probably would have been more effective. Would have taken longer, but it would have put off most of the political issues until a second city was well established as the "other" capital.

[@UzumakiNaruto_]

@@theotheronethere4391 *During the Korean war, Seoul fell 3 days in the start of the war.* Well unlike during the Korean War, the South Korean army is VASTLY more superior technologically and probably any ground attack by the North Koreans would end up getting wiped out before it ever reached Seoul even if there weren't American troops on the ground helping them. I don't think there's any scenario where the North Koreans could launch a conventional ground invasion where they would have a chance in hell of beating the South Korean armed forces with how modern their military is these days.

[@stellacollector]

As a Korean, I think if the government back then really wanted to move the capital, they should have taken more decisive actions. Moving 'some' ministries to Sejong while leaving Parliament and President's office in Seoul simply wouldn't work, and the new city should have had more efficient transportation system (they just led Sejong people to use high-speed train station in weird faraway neighboring city instead of building a new one, and the overall design of the city is simply weird to easily navigate). EDITED to correct minor historical inaccuracies.

[@li_tsz_fung]

They should just plan the city around KTX station then. Some cities have train that take you from the airport from the city centre with 15 minutes. If you can't beat that, why have high speed rail?

[@DarkHarlequin]

I am struggling to understand the transit choice. If the US or UAE builds a planned city around cars... sure they already boned up their entire culture to hate everything but cars. But as far as I understand from the outside, trains and other public transit are a fundamental part of modern south Korean culture. Do you have any context how the government could even GET the idea to build an administrative capital without a transit system or good connections? I'm genuinely at a loss to imagine the reason 🤔

[@stellacollector]

​@@DarkHarlequin Simple enough. They thought that whatever little public transit system they built there would be enough. That sounds silly, but that kind of misjudgment happens in the first attempt to a big project like this. As for the railway, there already existed high-speed rail (KTX) passing the neighboring town before the plan to develop Sejong came up. Of course, they could and should build a diverting route that passes through Sejong, but due to the political conflict between cities, that plan is still not being executed.

[@I-0-0-I]

Non-Korean here. Was the fact that the new city is outside the range of North Korean artillery a factor at all in the decision to create it?

[@ethankim9811]

한국인인데 도시를 키우려면 한 번의 정권이 아니라 두 세번의 정권이 지원해줘야하는데 우리나라는 야당이 집권히면 여당이 펼친 정책 지우는게 우선순위라 부흥을 못함....세종 가보세요 정부청사에 근무하는 공무원분들 엄청많고 주변에도 여전히 공사중인 부지가 많음요....

[@mrjack08722]

Seems pretty smart to move the Administrative capital outside of artillery range of the hermit kingdom though.

[@spyczech]

It seems like the elephant in the room of course youruber didn't even mention it

[@klawiehr]

Whoa, didn’t even think of that

[@7deEspadas]

In that regard, that almost nobody knows or cares about Sejong, may be more of a feature than a bug

[@Novusod]

That is the real reason this was done. They just didn't say it openly as it would encourage more bad behavior from North Korea.

[@Bianca_Toeps]

Busan exists.

[@bluepotato8187]

Hey! A Sejong resident here. A lot of the problems you mention in your video are getting fixed slowly but surely. We have 2 cinemas(a CGV and a Megabox), we have a cool ass lake park with festivals, hospitals came in from nearby Daejeon and Chungnam, and new bus routes mean that more people are using it day by day. We still have a lot of problems tho, like some areas being neglected(like Hansol-dong, where I live), and the traffic light system is a piece of garbage. But we are the only province-level area with their population actually growing, so i think those problems will get solved eventually. :)

[@Oceanrocks121]

Is it true there’ll be a subway that’ll connect to daejeon in 2029?

[@iiiiiifggffggffgfgfg]

What's up with the nonsense of there being no train/subway system? Super cheap to build if you're building a city from scratch. Not so much now.

[@Daejeon_is_U]

​@woodwood3468 Yes. It is planned, but I'm not sure when that is complete.

[@connectworld1HNN]

⁠@@iiiiiifggffggffgfgfgBRT was their way of replacing subway, and I can say that it is actually quite useful. I mean, only if the constitutional court didn’t rule that way, I believe Sejong would have had its own subway system as well as the train station, which is currently 30 minutes away by car from the government complex, not in Sejong but in Osong. - Also a fellow Sejong neighbor

[@linhtruong2872]

Ridiculous video!

[@michaelkim8134]

As Korean whos relatives been working in Sejong as public officials, the city is a "governmental backup" in case of the North's invasion, bc it's just 30m ride between Seoul to Kaesong (closest city of DPRK from the capital) and well in range of their mass artilleries. There just is no guarantee that Seoul will be harmless from mass invasion of 1.4m soldiers marching towards the city regardless of how technologically advanced the allied forces are.

[@busetgadapet]

your first sentence talking about sejong then you switch to seoul, lmao

[@metro-v8]

​@@busetgadapetyes, that is what language is

[@AICW]

"Quantity has a quality all its own." - Josef Stalin

[@Jusung_Song]

I think Sejong being simply backup function for the North's invasion is not plausible. Backup of government can be possible by Daejeon, nearby city of Sejong which also takes significant government facilities. Therefore, there would be other reasons, such as de-overcentralization from Seoul to lower the living cost and local development(지역균형발전). By the way, 세종시 어떤가요? 행정고시 해볼까 하는데, 세종시 공무원 삶의 질이나 생활 이런 쪽이 궁금합니다

[@_blank-_]

Is there really no room for peace instead? NK doesn't want American troops in the peninsula and many South Koreans still remember the two 14 yo girls crushed to death by a US military vehicle in 2002. The soldier was never sentenced, SK's judiciary couldn't even prosecute him, he was judged by an American martial court. IMO, American troops should be replaced by UN peacekeepers.

[@emikomina]

Even koreans make fun of the fact that so much people are steadily moving to Seoul, that they "nickname" their country the "Republic of Seoul" instead of "Republic of Korea" because of how much bigger and vital Seoul is compared to the rest of the country.

[@jesseberg3271]

America created Washington DC at the start precisely to prevent New York City from having that same outcome. The way Seoul is today is how London was in Britain and especially how Paris was in France at the time. We didn't want that, so we split off all the Government functions and sent them down to the Potomac River.

[@duncanluciak5516]

People in America complain about NYC/LA influence. Russians outside of Moscow hate it. Canadians mockingly call Toronto "the centre of the universe". But it's where the people and money are.

[@SuperibyP]

We have the exact same problem in the UK. When you exclude London, the UK has an average GDP per capita lower than Mississippi, the poorest US state.

[@sulphuric_glue4468]

@@SuperibyP The UK is one of the worst sufferers of "capital disease" in the developed world. It's ridiculous how much the government puts resources and effort into just London at the expense of the rest of the country (especially the north of England).

[@pradhyudh]

Same thing happening in state capitals in India. Every resident of the state wants to move to the capital, putting huge pressure on resources like water ,land. In a few decades we will have ten 100 million population cities and whole of India will be empty 😅😅

[@calebbyars]

Worth mentioning that the new capital is conveniently out of artillery range from North Korea. Which Seoul is painfully close to.

[@NoNeckKota]

I visited in 2018 and it was beautiful and somewhat eerie at the same time. Imagine a giant city with beautiful apartments, malls, gardens, and museums, but seeing 10 people at one time. It was very nice to not have to wait in lines though

[@drimodramo6567]

I'll pack today

[@JK-qi7pp]

I've been there years ago and again last year and it has improved massively. It's honestly one of the nicer cities in South Korea but it still feels a bit soulless. The eerie feeling that this isn't a real city is hard to shake off. In the end that's something that can only come with time and no amount of money will speed up that process. The national arboretum is pretty cool even though it feels weird to have an arboretum before building a courthouse in what is supposed to become the future capital.

[@DiabolikSilhouette]

No lines?! Count me in! I'm packing my bags too!

[@paulklp8262]

Sounds like a lot of the Chinese funded new developments in third world Asian countries. Or rural China itself.

[@adamazingballs]

​@@JK-qi7pp*Seoul-less!

[@TheRealKevbot]

“…the electric thrill of throwing down train lines before anyone can stop you” It’s lines like this delivered the way you do that makes me love this channel. Keep up the great work! So informative!

[@Duncan_Campbell]

Australia didn't build a capital city to move its population, it moved it so it wasn't Sydney or Melbourne, and it is kinda sort of in the middle.

[@ericburton5163]

Yeah I think there is a difference between federal states like Brazil, Nigeria, Australia, US, Canada, etc., not wanting the primary city of one (often powerful) state being the national capital, and highly centralized states like South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia (which is a federation but its reasons and location for choosing a capital were more in line with a unitary state), Egypt, Pakistan (see Malaysia comment), etc., which want to move administration (and related jobs) away from a crowded primary city (with often secondary military / security concerns). They are all "planned capitals" but understanding the reasoning behind them provides important context.

[@jeffbenton6183]

​@@ericburton5163I wish Sam could pin replies to comments. You nailed it.

[@jeffbenton6183]

@Duncan: You're right and that's actually a good reason to move a capital. Trying to move all the population from the biggest city to the middle of the country is much harder than just moving the center of government administration (which is still quite difficult)

[@aSome1]

​@@ericburton5163I am Brazilian and it was one of the DUMBEST moves ever made down here...Brasília is a dystopic town that looks like the world in the George Orwell's novel 1984 in which politicians are kept away from people's pressure and they can do whatever they want to once the city was planned to make the access to our leaderships hard...anyone from countries whose biggest city is the capital, I tell you: keep it this way! Every smartass politician dreams of moving power away from masses, pressure over dumb decisions is crucial for a country! Remember in the French revolution the Royal family was brought back to Paris from Versailles for a reason!

[@user-op8fg3ny3j]

@@ericburton5163 Kuala Lumpur is not in one of the states though, it's its own federal territory with its own flag like Washing DC

[@sabikikasuko6636]

Honestly the lack of good transportation is the actually astonishing. Seoul, Busan, Toukyou, Oosaka, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Northeast Asia has always been the capital of great transportation and they know better than ANYONE that a good transportation system is the BEATING HEART of a city's economy. Like I can't put into words how much of a fumble that was 💀

[@cooltwittertag]

i think people overestimate these cities. Even tokyo has some pretty shoddy anti-pedestrian and especially anti cycling oriented street designs. Its very far from a peefect city. There's a lot of transport, but good transport cant completely compensate for hostile city design. Same goes for a lot of chinese cities

[@lhk7006]

@@cooltwittertag Imma stop you right there, Hong Kong's extremely walkable but also cycling hostile laws and road design isn't a bug, it's a feature. A great one indeed.

[@cooltwittertag]

@@lhk7006 if you are afraid of cyclists, just say so. They improve cities. There's still lots of cyclists in tokyo, they just have to do dangerous shit to get where they want to. They are forced to ride on sidewalks or 12 lane wide roads. This doesnt help anyone, no matter how afraid you are of booboos.

[@lhk7006]

@@cooltwittertag The entire city doesn't have to cater to your entitlement, especially when cyclists don't follow god damn traffic laws themselves.

[@cooltwittertag]

@@lhk7006 thats why HK is a shithole and Amsterdam is not ♥️

[@veschyoleg]

Maybe they should ask Kazakhstan how it’s done. The capital moved from a beautiful city near some mountains to a place literally named “the white grave” because of extreme winters. My hometown btw.

[@ToastieBRRRN]

Oh, have they changed the name recently? I thought it was called Nur-Sultan?

[@GlaceonStudios]

​@@ToastieBRRRNit used to be, but it got changed back to astana

[@3abxo390]

Also no public transit in Astana which blew my mind. Just busses, which get stuck in bad traffic...

[@eavn9684]

To be fair, there were a lot of strategic reasons for Kazakhstan to move its capital.

[@aut1stickid]

@@eavn9684 Well there's one reason for South Korea too - not to be under the range of North Korean artillery

[@josiasescobar2879]

I’ve been living in Sejong for 2 years now and it’s actually a pretty nice place to live. Super clean, really bikeable, and great public spaces. A little boring, but it’s slowly developing more attractions. My only criticism is that it lacks a subway or even a TRAM system to alleviate the traffic that gets pretty bad in the mornings and evenings. Can’t believe they failed to plan for that.

[@lawrencebautista1]

A light rail/tram system would be nice, since the population of 350-500k does not warrant a subway system yet.

[@Likelyfairy]

Thanks for the info , I was wondering how someone that lives there feels about

[@josiasescobar2879]

@@lawrencebautista1 true, but they could’ve always built a connection to Daejeon’s Line 1 from the start. It’s in the plans now, but they could’ve started it 10 years ago when the rest of the plans for the city were happening

[@knpark2025]

Sejong City: aimed to be a Korean Washington D.C.; got struck down in court after a constitutional crisis; now practically the sixth burrow of its bigger neighbor Daejeon. It could have been much cooler than a letdown that it is right now. Fun fact: had the initial plan followed through and the seat of government managed to move to Sejong completely, Daejeon would have also had a lot of features to be called a South Korean Arlington. It borders Sejong, there's a lot of military bases within and around it, and it has its own National Cemetary as well.

[@MarvinPowell1]

In five years here, I've lived in Daejeon, as as well as many cities in Gyeonggi (Uijeongbu, Guri, Anyang, Gunpo, Dongtan/Osan, etc). Daejeon was legit the worst place I've lived. So extremely boring and lacking anything modern except fast food restaurants. It's like the worst aspects of a big city (1.5 million people) and small town, combined into one, and probably the smallest-feeling "major city" I've ever experienced. I couldn't wait to leave my job there. Suwon and Osan, only about 30-45 minutes south of Seoul, are _way_ more interesting places to live!

[@rileybanks1191]

also helps that it's a *little* further away from the border with the north and might not get *completely* flattened within hours if the korean war were to turn hot again

[@jaykoerner]

Yep the positives are it's not in artillery range, the negatives are it's near almost nothing else that matters

[@tranquoccuong890-its-orge]

understandable that Seoul is like 40km from the border now on the other hand, moving political institution like government, parliament & ministries is one thing, moving all the other things Seoul has is near impossible

[@Big_Caesar1]

I don't think Seoul would get flattened, it would be like Stalingrad, high casualties, massive damage, but still a giant impenetrable fortress. Cities that large are very, very hard to destroy.

[@ericburton5163]

I will say that I consider Sejong to be more like Islamabad, Putrajaya, New Administrative Capital (Egypt) than Canberra, Brasilia, Abuja, or DC (I guess maybe Abuja is kind of a cross), in that South Korea is a highly centralized state whose primary city is its capital and the central government is trying to "decongest" / "spread the money pie" by creating a new administrative capital rather than Brasilia and or Canberra which are Federal states in which letting the capital be in a powerful / populous state is considered politically unacceptable to the other states. Only reason I make this distinction is because the reasons for having the new capital are different (if overlapping) and this makes how they develop / succeed different. Not excusing any mediocrity on Sejong's part, but more just saying its important to know context.

[@jeffbenton6183]

He should've also pointed out that nearly every capital in the US is outside of big cities. Showing a World map with only two dots representing this phenomenon is quite misleading. (Although he probably figured that most of his viewers already knew the story of Washington, DC)

[@theviniso]

Brasilia was made for similar reasons, actually. It was built from scratch in the middle of nowhere not only because it was safer than having the capital in the coast (it used to be in Rio), but also to bring people and money away from already rich and populated places and into the underdeveloped heart of the country. It's been over 60 years and now that Brasilia has over 3 million people and a strong economy of its own it's safe to say that despite all of its problems it was a success.

[@user-op8fg3ny3j]

Don't know about the rest, but at least Putrajaya has a strong transit link with Kuala Lumpur so it's not that big of a deal

[@죽은_시민의_사회]

This should be pinned

[@nlpnt]

The same thing has been considered in the UK, moving the capital to Birmingham, Leeds or the like.

[@danielk2055]

I didn’t expect my interest in planned capital cities and NewJeans to crossover 😊

[@omisenker]

Was searching for this comment😂

[@fer3250]

Now we need a crossover between newjeans and bricks

[@zmimgo]

for anyone confused about the english subtitles, its likely that: - another video was supposed to go up instead of this one but due to reasons, it got delayed (its still on nebula for anyone wondering) - factor (the actual sponsor) likely bought an ad campaign for this week, so they had to edit in the ad into this video - this video originally probably had nebula as the sponsor (and the subtitles were already made), so they likely forgot to change the subtitles for the sponsor read

[@adamengelhart5159]

- Sam's ad read cadence is *amazingly* consistent

[@aariyanmahmud301]

i said this in another comment but this will be a fine addition to HAI's collection (of mistakes they have made)

[@ljphoenix4341]

There's no captions available from HaI anymore, so assuming that they've been removed as of 3 days after the video's release.

[@ryanmiehl8720]

I was driving through Parma Ohio when he said the quip about Parma Ohio and it gave me a nice chuckle on this cold winter day!

[@mystoftheraptor8622]

Bro I had a work gig there today

[@chipgaddis8472]

Lol same

[@jesseonline24601]

The intonation of the word "Hospital!" is hilarious. That mix of surprise and humor was delightful.

[@Jasper_4444]

The fact they forgot to build one is not so delightful.

[@ThePieMaster219]

They didn't forget to build a hospital, there is one. It's the Regional university's hospital (충남대). It's located next to an elementary school

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

Didn't even have to elaborate on that one. The one word was enough.

[@noahguy2023]

Just a note that the subtitles for the sponsored segment are still for a Nebula ad, despite the video having a Factor ad. Great video--I never knew about Sejong City!

[@Merennulli]

I think he had to switch videos in a hurry. The Nebula video for this week was "Why Tokyo is earthquake-proof" which, obviously, was really bad timing.

[@aariyanmahmud301]

@@Merennulli damn it sam jinxed tokyo

[@phantomredraven]

As someone who travels between Seoul and Sejong every week for work, this is one of the most accurate video by a KZbin channel outside South Korea. Great work!!!!

[@HarrisonJamess]

Can I ask what you do for work?

[@phantomredraven]

A reporter!

[@olivesareoliver]

That sounds incredibly tiring lol. Luckily Korea appears to have quite fast transportation systems.

[@4RILDIGITAL]

horoughly enjoyed this deep dive into the transition from Seoul to Sejong as South Korea's administrative capital. It's intriguing to see how a city like Sejong once a farming community can rise into a significant urban area in a span of a decade.

[@aariyanmahmud301]

absolutely with the right investment

[@FutureBoyWonder]

I don't think you know what a deep dive is

[@myfriendjimbo]

That Parma callout made me audibly laugh, such a meme of a place around here

[@jimmyryan5880]

How does a city of 80,000 not have a hospital? There is a similar city near me and it has 4.

[@theviniso]

Oopsy

[@ThePieMaster219]

There is. This is a mistake Source; I literally live right next to Sejong, it's the regional university's hospital.

[@ThePieMaster219]

I'm not sure if I follow, I can't show a link on KZbin anyway: it's the region's university hospital- One of it anyway. 세종충남대병원 is its name, and it's next to an elementary school.

[@RadicalCluster]

@etrestre9403 probably didnt take university hospital into account, which isn't fully fledged hospital in a sense that they arent all trained professionals

[@Park-bo3dl]

There are many private clinics in the neighbourhoods in Sejong and a major hospital in the city. There are wrong informations in the video. also there are multiple movie theaters and national museums in the city🥲

[@c.b.8193]

It is important to note that the urgency behind moving the government / important offices there is due to them not being in range of North Korean Artillery anymore.

[@Park-bo3dl]

Some of the information is wrong! There are multiple movie theatres like CGV and Megabox chains, two national museums ( three by 2026), many private clinics and a major university hospital in the city. The electronic BRP system goes around the city but needs improvements. By 2030, there will be an underground metropolitan metro system, ITX, which connects the nearest cities, such as Daejeon and Cheongju and the nearest airport, Cheongju International Airport. Additionally, an underground metro system, Line 1 for Sejong and a new national high-speed train (KTX) station for Sejong City in a few years

[@mattbowdenuh]

Any Cities Skylines player will tell you that not planning for public transit when planning a city just creates more headaches. Even if you don't build it right away, at least leave space for it because destroying building and rezoning everything is too much of a headache. I don't see how the South Korean government forgot that important part of city building.

[@emjayay]

Also development around transit stations is different from elsewhere.

[@EvanBoyar]

Was Seoul's proximity to their angry hat really not part of the reason to move the capital?

[@Snp2024]

yeah seoul is literally in artillery range of north korea then again i doubt that starving army will even reach seoul now.

[@Wolf950]

That's what I was thinking. I figured they would want to get away from that massive hoard of artillery pointed at them.

[@idrathernot_2]

That starving army would be only forced to reach the ashes of Seoul. The entire city is toast in a war. ​@@Snp2024

[@stellacollector]

I think the comment is not meant to be taken seriously, but as a S. Korean I can guarantee that the NK army is so out of date and in a bad shape that they couldn't even conquer a single outlying cities on the north of Seoul (the conquering of skyscraper-filled modern city requires intense urban battle, and they simply don't have the ability to carry that kind of battle). Hell, their army is so corrupt and poor that they don't even have enough oil to cover the mere ~50 km distance between the border and Seoul. The only viable option that can inflict at least some damage is their long-range artillery, but even that proved to be quite ineffective since their weapons are so old and unreliable (the good example is their 2010 attack on South). And because we know very well that NK artillery is a threat, we have been greatly investing in developing various countermeasures and defense systems against such strategy.

[@johnny_eth]

​@@stellacollectoreven the world's worst artillery can still shoot rounds randomly at the city. The war of Russia against Ukraine is showing really well how an incompetent useless army fights, just cause as much destruction as possible and murder civilians. Do you accept those of odds? What do you think will happen to daily life, business and evacuations is shells start landing in Seoul?

[@bababababababa6124]

New capital cities rarely work. Yeah sure you can make a rural, underdeveloped area of the country wealthier, but it’s no use if nobody wants to move there in the first place anyway Indonesians, I hope you know what you’re doing and learn from the mistakes from previous countries like Myanmar and SK to make Nusantara a nice city

[@coodog9943]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C.

[@bimasetyaputra8381]

​@@coodog9943there's also moving the turkish capital from istanbul to ankara

[@timmccarthy9917]

​@@coodog9943 DC rules, but to be fair it took like two centuries to move away from "muddy backwater" status

[@TheMetaMoss]

Indonesia might have a better chance, considering a reason they're moving is that Jakarta is sinking into the sea.

[@thomaswilis4682]

Brasilia worked pretty well

[@stevens1041]

Seoul is within artillery range of North Korea. North Korea didn't even have to use its missiles and Seoul would be destroyed. Its at least a little bit of a terrifying prospect for a beautiful city. It makes sense the seat of the government would need to be away from any front-lines of such a conflict. Maybe in a few decades, Sejong City will come into its own.

[@bowlerhatguy1925]

I live in Dajeon, the city next to Sejong, it's an alright city but the main reason ppl go is bc it has the closest Costco lol.

[@DCYote1]

I think there might be a security consideration there as well. I remember when I was stationed in Seoul there was a popular line "We're in range of NK artillery" used to explain our high state of readiness (our personal combat loadouts were stored in lockers, ready to "grab and go" if things kicked off) so moving the capital a bit further away makes military sense too.

[@asdsdjfasdjxajiosdqw8791]

Imagine building a city almost from scratch in the 21st century and yet making it car-centric. How behind the curve can you be.

[@oceanrocks]

Politics gets in the way.

[@aariyanmahmud301]

fr and especially in the part of the world where public transport is the best it can be and is the heartbeat of the economy

[@oceanrocks]

@@aariyanmahmud301 I heard it has to do with moving the government populated city away from North’s artillery range.

[@furorceltica185]

​@@oceanrocksthe lobbying power of automotive industry bosses is insane

[@kimandre336]

I've been living in Seoul for almost a decade now as a Canadian-born Korean. Here's something that most people kinda forget about. South Korea's politics is extremely unstable. It kinda reminds me of Latin American countries for some reason. That's why South Korea's business associations operate more advance than the political arena. South Koreans may be proud that they are a democracy, but it's a democracy that seems to be extremely inefficient and where people become too passionate about politics that people hating each other is a norm. It's even weird that South Korea has an American style presidential system, but its customary political practices are somewhat closer to a parliamentary system. Kinda ironic. Also South Korea is a very rare country where judicial prosecutors have slightly more power than elected lawmakers of the national and municipal legislatures.

[@donkeydik2602]

So you think the political landscape is stable in Canada and the USA. The countries have never been this divided. All this left and right wing crap has people fighting over two corrupt systems. South Korea is the country that has gained the most economical growth in the past 30-50 years so the political landscape can’t be that bad. On the other hand, Canada and the USA economies have been stagnant and civil unrest is at an all time high!

[@faber3969]

It sounds exactly like the United States

[@죽은_시민의_사회]

As a Korean, I'd argue that the administrative branch has more power than the other two branches. Sometimes it feels like a "democratic dictatorship" where the leader changes every election term

[@CW0123]

You have to understand that South Korea has a communist country right on their border and to make matters worse they too are Korean. It’s a fear response but with good reason.

[@connormcgee4711]

@@donkeydik2602 According to the world bank, all three are roughly equal in terms of growth since 2010, and I don't think it is fair to call any of these stagnant. You are correct that it has achieved the most growth out of three over the past 30-50 years. I think the thing that all three countries should work on is quality of life improvements. Both Canada and Korea have GDP per capita growth rates around 2% presently, along with increasing wealth and income inequality. Let us hope and work towards making sure that both of our countries improve not just their economy, but the status of their citizens. Let me know if I am mistaken.

[@dana.d.4627]

You should also add Albany, New York to the list of "Places where the most interesting thing about them is that they're the capital instead of somewhere more interesting."

[@tomquirk9411]

Albany, New York is also where the term “Steamed Hams” comes from, if Principal Skinner is to be believed.

[@Spacemongerr]

That is the case for over half the state capitals in the US. Trenton, New Jersey - Carson City, Nevada - Olympia, Washington - Pierre, South Dakota etc

[@randomguy555]

There's plenty of regional capitals like this outside the US too - for example, La Plata, a planned city which is the capital of Buenos Aires province instead of Buenos Aires and is a perfect square with rounded corners and diagonal avenues. Oh and if we include British county towns (even though they're not really official capitals), then we've got to include Wilton, a tiny suburb of Salisbury that gives Wiltshire its name but that hasn't been relevant for roughly the past 8 centuries.

[@Yonkage-ik5qb]

US Capitals are usually centrally located in the state, which is often not the economic center (that being on a river or coast).

[@rickrennyoneill]

I studied in Albany for a year. Wasn’t anything to do apart from drink.

[@jd4278]

A former cilent of mine works in Sejong and he hates it. He take the 6:30 am fast train from Seoul every day. Since the station is far form his office building, he then drives from the train station to work. He just leaves his car in Sejong so he usually do not drive on the weekends. I asked him why doesn't he just live there. His number one complaint is that there are no young pretty women in Sejong.

[@billygoatgruff3536]

I mean if he's spending all his time driving and working in an office, how would he know?

[@gladitsnotme]

Korean logic

[@daniels.2720]

Maybe he should lower his "standards"

[@Croz89]

I appears the city is planning to build a subway line, by extending an existing subway line from Daejeon and running it through the countryside. Does make you wonder why they didn't just pick Daejeon as the administrative capital in the first place considering it's only 30km away from Sejong city (so not really in the middle of nowhere), but there you go. There's also Cheongju 40km to the north east too, another big city of 800,000 people and one that clearly looks like it needs a subway line.

[@CB0408]

As a Brasília dweller, I'd like to express my objection to your statement that there's nothing interesting to see here. We have chubby capybaras and murderous scorpions besides being an uninteresting capital city.

[@shashankmahalingam5254]

5:50 Captions went rogue during the ad read. 🎺

[@DevonFarmer]

I live in Seoul and travel to Sejong semi regularly. Actually the public transport system is very well designed and the BRT is great. You can get to and from Osong station very easily. Compared to almost everywhere in the US or Canada it's a dream. Its also very bikeable. A lot of people do drive, as its also easy to do so and there is so much parking availabile compared to Seoul. Overall I think most people would be happy to live there if you ever actually experienced it. Yeah, its a little dull compared to Seoul and it definitely failed its goals of pulling people from Seoul. The biggest winners were property developers 😂

[@r.ilhamsastronegoro5397]

So HAI found a clever way to do multiple adverts at once. While video says this was sponsored by Factor, the subtitles disagrees and says the video was sponsored by Nebula.

[@Kokurorokuko]

They really had an opportunity to build a completely new city and they made a boring American city with barely any entertainment and with giant highways but not a tram or a subway...

[@furorceltica185]

I won't be surprised if the automotive giants there were involved

[@pashcroft]

The alternate ad at the end in the subtitles is very smart

[@CwMGameplays]

Subtitles are for a Nebula ad read and not a Factor one lol

[@_daisiesforyu]

0:05 Didn’t expect Sam to be a Minji stan…

[@dunnowy123]

I dig it to be honest. Seoul is already so dominant, it makes sense to spread the wealth so to speak. It's been done before.

[@thaichicken0210]

super interesting, actually! thanks for sharing this! btw the captions on the sponsor segment are for the wrong sponsor... which! makes me happy bc i know you're using pre-written, quality captions instead of voice-recognition ones! but you also might want to change them :)

[@coreamicorazonvlogs6048]

I live in Daejeon, the neighboring city of Sejong. Living in Sejong is getting pretty expensive and it is developing more and more every year.

[@chheinrich8486]

Could have told you from the Beginning it was also because Seoul is to damn close to the border in case war Breaks out

[@Shay45]

The new capital isn’t in the middle of nowhere. People can commute from Seoul to it. Which is dumb because they were trying to stop the reliance on Seoul

[@PtLeoJet]

I'm very glad Canberra got a mention haha. I believe it was formed after Melbourne and Sydney couldn't agree on which became the capital, so they stuck it halfway with its owns little landlocked territory

[@alinacimpoeru5034]

@@PtLeoJet xaxqqq b`90, pq0

[@alinacimpoeru5034]

10 b sujvaOG

[@alinacimpoeru5034]

QQAAAWLB1P1 KLN1 K1FSR9 DOZQ CNSUDO

[@alinacimpoeru5034]

LqjqhT

[@ydp868]

As a Korean, Sejong city was doomed from the start because of all the local business interests that got involved. The site of Sejong city sits between a couple minor regional cities, and when the government attempted to connect Sejong to the national high-speed rail network (KTX), the neighbouring cities collectively threw a bitch fit arguing that the railways should pass BETWEEN Sejong and their cities instead of into Sejong itself, so their citizens can get faster access to the rail station as well. As a result, the high-speed railway station that was supposed to service Sejong sits miles ouside of the city proper, and it is one of many factors that slowed the growth of the city.

[@JayceeOnYouTube]

I know I shouldn't feel surprised that NewJeans got mentioned in an episode of HAI about Korea... But hearing their name still caught me off guard

[@aoefsmrap]

Why? Is the guy behind HAI a known kpop fan? A bunny, perhaps?

[@mildredthegoat8340]

How to get two adverts onto the end of a video: one by audio and visual, and a different one in the subtitles! Such fun!

[@kateemma22]

As an Australian I can with absolute sincerity say that putting your politicians in a little rundown city with substandard public transport that no one visits is not actually a bad idea.

[@lucas.demello]

At least Sejong isn't at a stone throw away from the northern-forever-at-war-neighbour

[@timmccarthy9917]

If by "stone" you mean "artillery shell" then yuh

[@riku3716]

​@@timmccarthy9917 war might have changed a lot over millenia but it is still fundamentallu about throeing rocks at each other. The rock and how it is thrown have just changed.

[@yuzeymaokanime583]

Having their capital so close to the North Korean border is something I will never understand. Busan being their capital would make so much more sense

[@possiblyijt7400]

Seoul had been the capital since the 12-13th century and is historically and culturally very important. This as well as the fact that the split was never meant to be permanent that's basically why.

[@yuzeymaokanime583]

@@possiblyijt7400 okay but adapt to the current situation change is not something to be scared of

[@KenArmitage]

Sejong has 2 large hospitals, including a major university hospital, in addition to numerous smaller clinics. I'm a former Sejong City (Jochiwon) resident of 18 years.

[@adamekp]

@halfasinteresting: Wow, that's a 2-in-1 sponsorship endorsement! You talk about and show us Factor on screen, and tell us about Nebula in the closed captions. 😉

[@BrakeCoach]

3:30 Fun fact: Sejong was one of the candidates for building the junction for the high speed line diverging to the Gyeongbu (to Busan) and Honam (to Gwangju), but it was practically robbed by the YIMBYs at the neighboring city Cheongju, which its advocacy group also made bomb threats unless the junction station was made at Osong, a Cheongju suburb. You can still see the line crooked, taking a turn for Osong, and going back to its intended route.

[@AlanTheBeast100]

South Korea has a much more important reason to move government out of Seoul: North Korea. You can look it up elsewhere, but it's estimated that N. Korea can pretty much decimate Seoul within 48 - 72 hours using conventional artillery alone from north of the DMZ. This estimate accounts for US/Allies response in defence of S. Korea. Washington DC was also "created" to be the capital of the USA. Used to be a pretty sleepy place until the lobbying industry got into full gear with some serious cash.

[@MarvinPowell1]

I'm an American who currently lives and works in South Korea. The biggest thing about Seoul is that it's got everything you could ever want, and only a few relatively bad problems, like expensive housing and being a bit too crowded. Of the 51 million people who live in South Korea, 90% of the 2.5 million of the English-speaking population, live in Seoul. I've lived in several cities in Korea: Daejeon (boring AF), Uijeongbu (okay), Guri (only good for families, not singles), Dongtan (snobby people,) Suwon (kinda awesome,) Anyang (basically Seoul Jr.) and I've lived in Seoul twice. The best area, in my opinion, is to live _near_ Seoul, but not more than an hour away in far places like Pyeongtaek, Daejeon, or Sejong. Those are too far away, but Anyang, Seongnam, Guri, Suwon, etc, are great. The government would have been smarter to make a place like Yongin, which is southeast of Seoul, the new capital, as it's only an hour away from Seoul by train. Anything beyond that, besides Busan, really is like living in the middle of nowhere, which is exactly what Sejong is, and why I wouldn't want to live there, either.

[@ServerManagment]

To be fair DC was also whipped up just to be a capital city

[@linuxman7777]

DC at least has a geographic reason to exist where it is, it is where the Potomac and Anacostia rivers meet

[@darthutah6649]

Tbf, DC was created to be more fair to the south

[@GamerSloth2275]

Hello from Canberra! For a population nearing 500k ourselves, we only have 1 tram line, and the only train goes straight out of town with no real local stops. New capitals worldwide seem to love bad public transport options 😂

[@PakBallandSami]

Note: Moving government agencies would hurt Seoul's global competitiveness and result in inefficiency, according to then-President Lee Myung-bak, who opposed the idea when the Grand National Party retook the presidency in 2008. As per Lee's instructions, arrangements were made to transform Sejong into a center for industry, science, and education. Many, including Roh's allies and a few members of the ruling Grand National Party, including Park Geun-hye, Lee's arch-rival and eventual successor, were against this plan.

[@nickmcgookin247]

COVID showed that's a lie

[@thekwoka4707]

If Queen Park was against it, then it might have been a pretty good idea.

[@aSome1]

My country, Brazil, has the answer for you: since Brasília was built (1960), our otherwise capital city, Rio de Janeiro, is now a crime ridden corrupt shithole whose main income is tourism once all the economic power left the city and no more focus was given to keep the city in high standards as it once was while capital city of Brazil...

[@cloudkitt]

I just assumed it was simply to move the government a little further from all of the North Korean artillery pointed at it. But you are totally right about the oddity of lacking transit. As you say, by far the most fun thing about fabricating a city from scratch would be the freedom to go ham with train lines.

[@lewatoaofair2522]

0:54 “Gyeonggi” But you said “Jyeonggi”

[@stormyinfinity]

Almost every Korean word and name was totally butchered tbh 5 minutes checking pronunciation in Google translate would have gone a long way.

[@batbeeps]

Funnily enough Malaysia already did this back in the 90s, keeping the official capital, legislature and executive in Kuala Lumpur whilst moving all of the other functions of government into the new city of Putrajaya. Oh, and Sejong is totally twinsies with Putrajaya too!

[@jjcorp3535]

Being from Northeast Ohio and hearing Parma, Ohio caught my attention.

[@GlamorousTitanic21]

One of the biggest headaches for South Korea when dealing with their northern neighbor is that Seoul is within range of the North’s missile launchers and long-range artillery at the border.

[@K3NnY_G]

That they'd build something like this from near scratch with no mind paid to public transit is kinda mind blowing...

[@ivanv754]

I don’t know why, but that tends to be the case with planned cities. They are a very 1950’s idea.

[@chief1325]

Especially when convenient public transit in Seoul is one of the biggest benefits to quality of life there. You'd think if you're making another Seoul you'd try and replicate that.

[@silvershinesayshi]

Love how the captions are for a nebula ad lol.

[@jimmyryan5880]

If Sejongs population is growing it's working. Just because Seols population hasn't stagnated immediately doesn't mean it failed.

[@RecordSlowrun]

The ad: Factor The subtitles: Nebula The hotel: Trivago The me: confused

[@n00bnetrum]

It's probably also important to note that the new capital is out of North Korea's artillery range.

[@Ssgmfs]

I lived in Cheongju a city right next to Sejong city. I've been to Sejong many times and it looks very high tech and expensive. Theres a really cool park and botanical gardens and even a little fake beach. Theres also a lot high rises that all look a like. It was cool to go to but everywhere looked the same, unlike the country town I was in. Sejong is actaully named after the emporer and was near the old capital city. But there was also some big high rise squares that felt like ghost towns and were super weird to go to.

[@cloroxbleach2520]

Factor sponsorship with Nebula sponsorship closed captions lol

[@hyukjaes]

I'm a S. Korean, and one thing I can say is that it's all politics. The two major parties never really agree on anything and this was one of those issues, and that is why it's not a complete success but like a job half done. And now, it seems like nobody really wants to move anything down there any longer. But in the general election this past April, the leader of the ruling party suggested moving the parliament to Sejong, so it seems like that is possible, but since the Constitutional Court already made the ruling against moving the capital itself, it's gonna be impossible for the president and the whole govt. to move there.

[@shkim652]

1:55 Because all those judges owned quite some properties in Seoul, and of course, the establishment didn't want to share the pie with the rest of the country. South Korea has a very structured and detailed WRITTEN Constitution, which makes this ruling an absolute oxymoron. This ruling kept contributing to the hyper-speculation in the housing market in the capital area, which is considered as the number one reason for the disastrously low brith rate in Korea at the moment.

[@knightrider585]

Isn't one of the reasons Sejong was founded, somewhat similar to Canberra, that Seoul is under the constant threat of North Korean artillery? (One of the reasons Canberra is so far inland is it was thought to be outside the range of naval bombardment at the time it was founded.)

[@fyang1429]

Seoul really just means "Capital City". It was called Hanseong for like 600 years, which means city on the Han River. However, during the Japanese rule, it was just called the "capital city", and they chose to stick with it afterward. Now they might want to change the name first if they truly want to move capital.

[@jxz107]

That's not entirely correct. The name used during the colonial period was "Gyeongseong" (or "Keijo") in Japanese, which means capital but in Chinese characters, or hanja/hanzi/kanji. "Seoul" is a native Korean term that originally referred to any capital, used far before 600 years. Meaning that previous Korean kingdoms which had capitals with names that used Chinese characters (such as Goryeo's "Gaeseong" and Silla's "Seorabeol" and later "Gyeongju"). The term had existed prior, but while they did stick with using the term "capital" to refer to the capital city, the specific terminology they used had changed.

[@johnsonbedford83]

Japan also moved it's capital in the Meiji Era from Kyoto (which means Capital) to Tokyo (which means Eastern Capital).

[@randus7053]

When you are an uncreative DM and just refer to the Capital as the Capital.

[@theviniso]

@@jxz107 Unrelated fun fact: Keijo is how you say cheese in Portuguese.

[@aSome1]

​​@@johnsonbedford83moved from [Kyo][to] to [To][kyo]...how could I've never thought of that! A change of capital and syllables haha

[@rachelcookie321]

The fact that you can even travel between Seoul and Sejong in 2 hours is impressive to me. Being able to commute to a whole other city half way across the country sounds wild. Like, that’s so far away but they can get there so quick. There’s no other cities near where I live so the idea of just popping over to another large city for the day sounds crazy to me.

[@aariyanmahmud301]

as an australian i can relate to this like wth they just spawned in a city within 10 years and only 2 hours from the biggest city

[@salvasquaredmusic9997]

I went there recently and it was great. The transportation was excellent! A nice city. It's definitely not as bad as people are making it out to be. Compared to my hometown in the US, I could only dream of such an efficient transportation system and public services, parks etc.

[@directhex]

You have the wrong subtitles for the ad read at the end. The subs are for a Nebula ad, the video is for a Factor ad

[@bertrammollen]

Makes negative sence why you don't hard focus on puplic transport in a new city. How hard can it really be. Every city ever with great puplic transport does well.

[@linuxman7777]

Transport usually comes later as the city grows. Build it and they will come when it comes to both transport and city making isnt a great idea if your country is shrinking

[@teeteetuu94]

@@linuxman7777 On the flipside, it is easier to plan for and build transport infrastructure from scratch when there isn't much around the landscape. A well-thought-out transport system that works from the beginning would attract more residents earlier on and city would grow quicker.

[@linuxman7777]

@@teeteetuu94 While I agree that is true, cities don't just spring from nothing. Look at almost all major us cities, they are where they are for geographic reasons, they sit on bays, or at the intersections of rivers, or where rivers meet the ocean. While it would be nice to just build a city with the best infrastructure out in the middle of nowhere with the most advanced planning techniques, the reality is the city could still fail or be out competed by a more geographically advantageous city

[@legreg]

There's probably a high cost of building and running a fully functioning transportation system for a big city when there's no people and no businesses. The cities with well functioning transportation systems built them over decades and used existing population center and traffic flows as guides.

[@tristan7588]

Oh my god how long have you been doing that with the add subtitles it's genius

[@S14N9LS]

Anyone who watched The Drew Carey Show should be aware of Parma OH. Cleveland Rocks! BTW...GO BROWNS!

[@tancreddehauteville764]

Seoul is dangerously close to the border with NK, hence the need. I do think that Pusan would have been more suitable as a capital though.

[@kytai3312]

I have no infrastructure planning experience but I actually think it’s a great idea. It’s like an over investment in the future.

[@CapnSnackbeard]

Yeah, just think how many jobs were created by not putting in a Hospital or light rail. When mortality skyrockets, people will demand one, and they will "need" to spend billions to destroy some of those new buildings and make the space into a hospital. Not to mention everything that will need to be destroyed to make way for light rail. Just decades of waste and grift for government contractors. Their futures are bright ❤

[@kytai3312]

@@CapnSnackbeard I have no precise knowledge on the city, but you’re right, the base infrastructure (no transportation and no planned hospitals) sounds terrible. But I still think the initial idea of building another city isn’t terrible. Definitely not to the extremes that I’ve heard about in China with multiple empty cities, but the idea of government funded construction for one or two new cities in a growing country sounds great.

[@theviniso]

@@kytai3312 Building a new capital has worked in several countries before and Seoul being close enough to North Korea to be within their artillery range sounds like a great reason for them to do it.

[@axpuser671]

Video during Sponser: Factor Captions during Sponsor: Nebula The subtitles are about nebula, but the video is sponsored by factor lol.

[@williamgeorge2580]

Hi. I spent the last five years in Sejong. You showed my former apartment in your video. I got nostalgic. A slight push back: The buses were always more than adequate, frequent, and far superior to any system in any similarly sized city in North America. Same with Korean taxis, which are cheap as hell compared to other wealthy nations. It wasn't until a few years ago that the city gained more than just government employees living there. And those guys all make bank and weren't taking the bus. The people who are now pouring their coffees are the people taking the bus. The main problem Sejong has is that it's a ten minute drive from the far larger Daejeon. Most people live there and commute in. My feeling is that Sejong will eventually merge with Daejeon at some point. They're basically the same city now.

[@thirdpedalnirvana]

Why are you confused that they'd build a car-dependent city? South Korea works like the US except if we had never made any antitrust laws. And the US auto industry bought and destroyed passenger rail. The Korean Auto Industry is also huge. I'm sure they made sure this new city would be car dependent.

[@oceanrocks]

Probably because there’s so much public transit in Seoul and Busan

[@westrim]

I guess you had a couple videos lined up and ready to go and swapped this one in? It makes sense that now feels like the wrong time for a video on earthquake protection in Tokyo, but I did appreciate the insight watching it on Nebula.

[@Merennulli]

I was really surprised when that popped up on Nebula. I'm guessing he had the release automated. I do feel sorry for him. It always hurts to work on a project and have it shelved because of bad timing of a disaster. Your work feels like it's wasted, but you also feel guilty for feeling disappointed because something far worse is going on.

[@jamietown8002]

sam the caption of your factor_ ad read was actually the script for the nebula ad read

[@tanningbed]

So they essentially wanted their capital to be half as interesting

[@theviniso]

Well, then I'd say it is a great success!

[@김김-k5b1w]

Actually this concept firstly came from Park-jung-hee. he really wanted to move capital to more southern part than Seoul because of Seoul which is close to border.