Seoul Subway System Extended to Dongducheon, No Protesters in Sight

This is great news for all the soldiers living on Camp Casey:

Getting to Seoul became a lot easier in the past few months for many Area I soldiers.

Unable to drive their own vehicles, soldiers at Dongducheon bases were once reliant on buses to Yongsan Garrison or had to transfer from trains or buses to Uijeongbu before finding the subway.

And farther south at Camp Red Cloud, servicemembers no longer have to take an expensive taxi ride or long bus trip through downtown Uijeongbu traffic to get to the station.

The Seoul Metro system’s Number One line extension opened in December and now allows servicemembers to get to popular destinations like Itaewon for as little as 1,100 won, or about $1.20, each way.

In the past soldiers at Camp Casey had to take a train from usually Dongan Station outside Gate 2 that left once an hour to reach Uijongbu.  The train cost about $2 to get to Uijongbu on.  At Uijongbu Station you had to transfer over to the subway and buy another ticket to get to Itaewon which cost about $1.50.  With the completion of the subway line to Dongducheon soldiers will save time and money whenever they travel to Seoul which I think is great. 

The subway expansion has actually been under construction for about the past 10 years.  Every time I came back to Korea I always found it interesting to watch first hand the slow, but steady progress of the subway expansion between Uijongbu and Dongducheon.  What was additionally interesting was the fact that large portions of Dongducheon including parts of the ville in front of Camp Casey, had to be knocked down to make way for the subway.  This map should give you an idea of how many buildings were impacted by the subway expansion:

You can see the subway line runs right through the center of the city.  This picture should give you an idea of how densely populated Dongducheon is:

During the whole time homes and businesses were being knocked down to make way for the subway expansion not once did I see or hear of any civic groups protesting the forced relocation of these homes and businesses.  However, when less people are forced to move due to the Camp Humphreys expansion in Pyeongtaek suddenly all these civic groups appear demanding that the government stop the forced relocation of the farmers in the Daechu-ri village who don’t want to move. 

Having watched people in forced to move due to a subway expansion I have always considered the protesters outside Camp Humphreys total hypocrites.  People in Korea aren’t just forced to move to make way for subways either.  I have seen people forced to relocated due to highways and new shopping centers as well and not once did I see or hear of these civic groups outside of Camp Humphreys protesting them.  The truth is that the Camp Humphreys protester don’t care about the fact that people are forced to move due to imminent domain because if they did there are a whole lot of bigger imminent cases out there than Camp Humphreys.  Their whole motivation is pushing their anti-US agenda and the farmers of Daechu-ri are just pawns in their game to bash USFK. 

So don’t expect any protesters for the opening of this subway line, but don’t expect them to go away outside Camp Humphreys. 

You can read more over at Lost Nomad.