首都圏の過密化現象とその問題点-ソウルを中心とした-

抄録

1. This article is designed to deal with the overpopulation problems arising in the process of urbanization, with special emphasis on the case of the capital city of Seoul in Korea.
Although some 587 years have passed since Seoul was first founded as the capital of the country, it was only after 1945 that Seoul began to show symptoms of serious overpopulation problems.
There is on denying the fact that Seoul has already become one of the leading megapolises in the world in terms of the size of population.
The rapid rate of increase in population in Seoul is now one of the top in the world with a result that the seriousness of overcrowdedness has outweighted the advantages of its growth.
At the present, even if the area occupied by Seoul is only 0.6% of the entire territory of the nation, its population accounts for 22.3% of the total of the country and over 25% of the total manufacturing industry are coneentration in Seoul.
2. Viewed from its historical perspective, however, it is not so clear why Seoul should have necessarily suffer from such over-concentration problems as it does now.
During more than five-hundred years from 1394 to 1900, the rate of increase in population in Seoul had only accounted for natural increases in its residents.
Aside from considering the history of fluctuations in the size of population in Seoul chronologically, the more learned classes of society some of our forefathers belonged to, the more steadfastly they stuck to their hometowns and the efforts to move to urban areas were regarded as a disgrace and betrayal to their native towns.
3. After World War II, however, Seoul began to put on quite a new aspect as a metropolis, with the important point of starting its expansion reached in 1955.
The past trend in the increase rate of population in Seoul ever since 1955 has been 7.3%, 13.0%, 17.2%, 19.8%, and 22.3%, at the intervals of every five years.
The reasons for such an accelerating phase of population growth can be attributable to the following four factors.
First, Korea is not a land which has been reclaimed or exploited by pioneers or frontiersmen. Second, self-governing or local autonomy in terms of politics and administration has not been achieveed. Third, there are some social discriminations against and between different regions in the country. Fourth, there in a worldwide tendency of the general public in migrating into a certain region of a country.
These combined with other reasons have given rise to serious problems of over-population in the metropolitan areas.
In this connection, it is fortunate that some improvement measures for redressing the current difficulties in urban areas have been constantly studied and explored under the Second Ten-year Land Development Plan.