In the middle of global urbanization, in particular, developing countries have been rapidly urbanized, which causes a number of problems including urban poverty, lack of infrastructure such as road, water and sewage, insufficient housing, city hygiene...
In the middle of global urbanization, in particular, developing countries have been rapidly urbanized, which causes a number of problems including urban poverty, lack of infrastructure such as road, water and sewage, insufficient housing, city hygiene, traffic, natural disaster, environmental pollution and social inequalities. In case of a developing country, nevertheless, they cannot deal with the urbanization properly due to their government’s or public insufficient financial resources, and limited capacity. Hence, it has been consistently said that the urbanization should be managed through the private sector and private participations are required in various ways. Even though Korea suffered from the similar problems to ones the developing countries have currently had, they utilized the private sector to overcome public financial resources and limited capacity. Especially, the private participation cases played a great role to boost urbanization in Seoul by constructing city infrastructure for its development in 1960s.
A public sector sets and offers infrastructure as a rule. In general, central government and local government are in charge of setting the infrastructure and finical resources come from taxes as a finance program. If there is an infrastructure cost caused by a development project, it is a rule that a beneficiary or a person who brings out the cost will pay. There is also a case although the infrastructure has to be built as a finance program for a public need, it will be completed through private participations. Among private participations, private procurement is a way that a private sector delivers and deals with capital for infrastructure establishment instead of a public sector. The private enterprise secures benefits through fare to use the infrastructure during a limited time instead and it will belong to a public sector later.
Private procurement in Seoul was slightly different in the 1960s and 70s. In the time, since there were no sufficient financial resources in Seoul in comparison with rapidly increasing population and the scale of the town, there was no way to secure insufficient infrastructure except private procurement, which is identical with current state of developing countries. Seoul encouraged private entrepreneurs to participate in a development project and infrastructure establishment to solve the problem. Mostly, infrastructure such as roads, railroads and parks with a private participation are built by the private sectors and they secure benefits through operating revenue for the related facilities, entrance fee and usage fee. On the other hand, Seoul link development projects that are close or connected with infrastructure establishment including roads the city needs as one project, which enables the city to reinvest in infrastructure with benefits from the development projects.
One of the representative cases is a complexed apartment with stores in the downtown of Seoul. Particularly, in case of one set with river maintenance and a project to cover river, it was managed with a way to build the complexed apartment on the top of the covered river after the river maintenance and the project with private financial resources. In the case, a public sector owns the facilities related to the river and a private sector needs to pay occupation and use fee to use the river area accordingly. This case with a project to cover a river and a complexed apartment built is for Ahhyeon river, Seontongmool river, Seongbuk river, Hongjea river, and Euljiro Ditch. As for Sewoon Arcade and Nagwon Arcade, they are a case to tear down illegal built structures, build roads and manage a complexed apartment building project. The project can be considered as a type of ‘PPP(Public-Private Partnership)’.
The private sector to had taken part in the procurement project for the private investment, and to present a construction enterprise played a significant role to urbanize Seoul. The biggest role the private sector handled was to manage liability for risk. While it occurs a higher chance for profits by connecting a development project with infrastructure in comparison with general private investment project or an infrastructure project as the existing PPP type, the project should be performed with consideration whether the development project will succeed for a business structure linked with a development project. The private company was also in charge of funds supply. It is a significant characteristic of a private procurement project or PPP project, and the project way Seoul performed was not happen in the 1960s and 1970s. It is, nevertheless, meaningful that Korean private company had a partnership with a public sector including Seoul and participated in infrastructure actively for the first time without foreign aids for postwar recovery. Besides, it is worth that complex three-dimensional structure or city development for multi purposes according to a business structure connected a development project and with infrastructure, which contributed to efficiency of land usage in the downtown as a private role. It is significant not to cause problems such as damaging fairness and choosing untitled companies caused by a back-scratching alliance of government and businesses that happened in the middle of selecting a private company in the past.
This study is expected to offer one private participation case to a developing country in the middle of urbanization Korea or Seoul went through in the 1960s and 1970s with Seoul’s experience with private investment procurement project, that is ‘PPP project connected with Private Development’.
Keyword : Seoul, Urbanization,1960s,PPP,Private Investment,Public Private Partnership,Infrastructure,Development