Hello Internet,
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| Buildings with N Tower in North Seoul right behind them |
If you look at a list of the most populous metropolitan areas of the world, Seoul was 4th last year (2014) and now, they passed Delhi and became the third most populous metropolitan area of the world, at around 26.1 million! And that's MORE than half of South Korea's population of 51.4 million in August 2015. So why is Seoul's metropolitan area so populated?
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| Photo of Park in 1963 |
It all has to do with Korean urbanization since 1961, to be exact. See, there was a coup in 1961 led by Chung-hee Park, who later retired from the army and became "president" (He was a dictator for 18 years; being the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, AND 9th president!). Park, who was the father of current president (and the first to be a female), Geun-hye Park, was known for his huge violence and the killings of tens of thousands of Koreans, as well as aggressive anti-communist policies that still effects many Koreans today. However, without his really bad labor policies and the suffering of many laborers including young girls, South Korea couldn't have become the economic giant it is now today. Oops, off topic. (I'll explain this in another post.)
Anyways, former "president" Park made the Korean agriculture market smaller and made many farmers lose jobs and come up to Seoul, where there were plenty of minor jobs you barely could live with.
South Korea was (and is) a VERY capital-based nation; Seoul is the largest, most wealthiest, the most economically developed... almost anything you can say about. In fact, that might "go around in circles" and the "most developed" part might be the reason why more and more people are coming to live in Seoul. And as the young children in the start of the Republic of Korea (I meant the late 1940's) were getting older and older, they began to quit their city jobs and go back to their hometown for farming. And now, that's what almost everyone's doing: coming up to Seoul following their parents or when they go to college, living there until you're old enough to quit your job, and go back to the place you lived when you were young. No wonder Korean stereotypes show only old people in farming towns. However, things might change; a lot of parents in Seoul are starting to send their children to farming towns to study. Who knows what's going to happen next? You decide. In the future, that will be just another topic for me to write about.
[DO NOT COPY]
South Korea was (and is) a VERY capital-based nation; Seoul is the largest, most wealthiest, the most economically developed... almost anything you can say about. In fact, that might "go around in circles" and the "most developed" part might be the reason why more and more people are coming to live in Seoul. And as the young children in the start of the Republic of Korea (I meant the late 1940's) were getting older and older, they began to quit their city jobs and go back to their hometown for farming. And now, that's what almost everyone's doing: coming up to Seoul following their parents or when they go to college, living there until you're old enough to quit your job, and go back to the place you lived when you were young. No wonder Korean stereotypes show only old people in farming towns. However, things might change; a lot of parents in Seoul are starting to send their children to farming towns to study. Who knows what's going to happen next? You decide. In the future, that will be just another topic for me to write about.
[DO NOT COPY]
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