A shout out to my peeps, or it's all in how you look at it

Having departed from the world of academia I know that if one is willing to dig deep enough one can find enough evidence to support any theory, no matter how crackpot it may be. I also know that if one does not do enough research on a subject one can walk away with too little information and come to an under-informed conclusion thinking it is grounded in fact.

The reason I bring this up is because one of my favorite planning magazines, Next American City [www.amerciancity.org] published an article in their 20th issue entitled, "Beijing's Olympic Problem: Too Much Seoul" written by a Mr. Josh Leon (pages 15-16), which included a misleading title. The article focused on the fact that in China's zeal to add all the bells and whistles to their hosting of the Olympic games they also undertook one of the biggest slum clearances since the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

Unfortunately, or is it fortunately?, Mr. Leon only wrote two sentences on Seoul's slum clearing,
"A notorious slum clearance took place in Seoul, Korea, in advance of the 1988 summer games. To accommodate the flood of international visitors, 720,000 people were relocated, one of the largest urban dislocations up to that time." (Leon, 16)
The rest of the article centered on China and other places that are or have displaced its low-income residents for various reasons.

I take issue with Mr. Leon's title because some people who may read this article may not undertake additional research to see what else Seoul has done since displacing over 700,000 of its residents in a misguided urban housekeeping effort.

[disclaimer: I am adopted from South Korea, as is my brother, so this isn't based entirely on objective journalism. But I don't automatically identify myself as Korean-American or even Asian. Some days I'm surprised to see almond-shaped eyes staring back at me.]

I admit that the title Mr. Leon concoted is amusing with its pun on the word "soul", but it is also distressing, because in the 14th issue January/February 2009 of Good magazine [http://www.good.is/] there were two separate articles which mentioned environmental advances in Seoul. In "Mayoral Fixation" by Benjamin Jervey it was cited that Seoul's mayor, Oh Se-Hoon "wants to turn his city into the world's first truly environmentally megacity. He also tirelessly vouches for- and drinks only- local tap water, urging residents to do the same." (Jervey, 21)

The article "Here to There" by Laura Kiniry cited the Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project, which "through an ambitious two-year plan completed in 2005, the Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project replaced the city's most heavily trafficked roadway- the remains of which were later recycled- with a five-mile-long, 1,000 acre park that attracts both wildlife and people." (Kiniry, 70)

So in the end things balance out. I'm not condoning slum clearances in any way, but I also don't think that a city should be permanently marked for its past mistakes. Here's to balanced journalism!