Development Leaves Little Evidence of USFK’s Camp Kyle and Camp Sears

In recent months I made my way up to Uijeongbu to visit friends and we ate dinner at a budaechigae restaurant near where the old USFK military bases Camp Kyle and Camp Sears were located. For people that have never seen Camp Kyle before, here is what it looked like before it closed in 2005:

From the restaurant I could look right into where Camp Kyle was once located. Currently there are no buildings standings and essentially the land is slowly being reclaimed by nature:

Long time ROK Heads may remember that Camp Kyle was at the center of environmental pollution claims made by the anti-US groups and the ROK media at the time. For example the ROK media was claiming that Camp Kyle was so polluted that people had to walk around in “anti-contamination suits” to protect themselves. I knew this was bogus and did something no one in the Korea media decided to do and actually visited Camp Kyle. Of course I saw no one wearing anti-contamination suits.

Regardless Camp Kyle remained one of the frontlines in the USFK pollution debate with the ROK government demanding that U.S. pay to decontaminate the soil at the camp. ROK Heads may remember that the pollution clean up costs have come up during the ongoing US-ROK alliance cost sharing negotiations this month.

After eating dinner we then took a walk around the Geumo-dong neighborhood towards where Camp Sears used to be located.

For those that have never been to Camp Sears here is how it looked back in 2005:

This is what Camp Sears looks like today:

Besides the typical commercial buildings that have gone up around the old camp, a couple of major government buildings have been constructed right on where Camp Sears was once located. The first is a Uijeongbu government service building:

The other is the Northern Gyeongi-do Provisional Police headquarters:

Around these buildings a number of parks have been constructed on the old Camp Sears property, however they are not being maintained:

You would think that with all the money spent on these new government buildings there would be enough money left over to pay a gardener:

Around the government buildings there is now a road that has been constructed, Cheongbo-ro which is named after the mountain behind the old camp, Cheonbosan:

A walk completely around the old camp and could find no sign of the existence of the former camp anywhere. Adjacent to Camp Sears there used to be an area that housed ROK Army fuel storage tanks. This property now has a major construction project underway on it:

After walking around Camp Sears we then walked over to the major Geumo-dong shopping district that has not changed much since 2005 when Camp Kyle and Sears closed.

The Home Plus remains the major shopping attraction in the Geumo-dong neighborhood:

It may be hard to believe, but prior to 2000 this shopping area was actually home to various farms. The closing of Camp Kyle and Camp Sears is just a continuation of South Korea’s incredible development. The camp’s are mostly a long forgotten memory for people that live there, just like the farms the shopping district now sits on top of.