Credit where it is due. The fast-track planning scheme Seoul introduced in 2021 genuinely shortened the time it takes to designate a redevelopment zone — from roughly five years to an average of two years and seven months, by the city's own account. Having the public sector draw the guidelines first and consolidate the reviews clearly worked. Candidate sites passed two hundred by early 2026. That is the achievement.
Now the other numbers. According to city data disclosed at the 2025 parliamentary audit, of roughly 190 fast-track project sites, three had reached project implementation approval. Exactly one had completed the management disposal plan. About one in three had been designated as a zone; fewer than one in five had an approved union. The funnel's mouth grew wider — and a few drops came out the other end.
Why? Because what the scheme shortened was the front section of the administrative process. The real bottlenecks of urban redevelopment sit behind it: residents split over contributions, disputes over rights-assessment dates and public contributions, and the wall of finance — surging construction costs and restricted relocation loans. In 2026, districts have begun suspending consent collection or reconsidering their approach altogether. The plans are drawn; the projects stand still.
Here an old fallacy of policy shows itself: speed is set not by the policy but by the bottleneck. However fast the plan is drawn, residents do not move when the contribution exceeds what they can bear. What turns the clock of redevelopment is not an administrative procedure but a contribution invoice. A scheme that saves two years at the front and loses five at the back is not a policy of speed. It is a policy of illusion.
And the number two hundred itself deserves questioning. When everywhere is a candidate, nowhere is a priority. Multiplying candidate sites atop finite administrative capacity and market absorption issues a debt of expectation across the whole city — and the interest on that debt is paid by residents of the stalled districts, locked into homes that neither appreciate nor sell.
What is needed is not speed at the front but structure at the back: early and transparent determination of contributions, mechanisms for resolving construction-cost disputes, relief for the financing squeeze at the relocation stage. Above all, the courage to choose the sites that can work, instead of promising that all of them will. In a city where the plans got faster, why did the shovels get slower? Until that question is answered, the next five years' report card will look much the same.