The Ten Most Dynamic Cities

Lovely Little Rebels

Built by the state, an affluent enclave is now battling it

Until the early 1990s, this was quiet farm country on the Han River, lined with barbed wire to keep North Korean infiltrators at bay. But as relations with the North thawed, Seoul began building residential high-rises at Ilsan, now the core of the city of Goyang. With its man-made lake and vast flower beds amid woods preserved by the cold-war development freeze--all just 30 minutes by subway from downtown Seoul--Goyang has proved wildly popular. Its population has quadrupled in the last decade, and now includes some of the richest people in South Korea. Kim Doo Ik, a resident since 1995, boasts that Goyang is the most "pleasant and convenient" of all the "bed towns" popping up around Seoul.

Who says the state can't pick winners? Now, however, Goyang is fighting state pressure to build yet more apartments. It wants to bring in jobs, not more people--mirroring a debate raging in satellites of Seoul from Bundang to Pyongchon. The mayors of all these towns are from parties opposed to the populist, blue-collar president, Roh Moo Hyun.

Goyang Mayor Kang Hyun Suk says that what they want is "quality, not quantity" of growth. Goyang has opened a convention center and is building a theme park, Hallyuwood (for South Korean hallyu pop culture ), aiming to capitalize on its location at the end of South Korea's main bullet train. It also wants to rip down that barbed wire on the Han (not a quality tourism experience). So far the government, still security-conscious, is resisting.

B. J. Lee