The government has completed district designation for the Goyang Daegok Knowledge Convergence District and the Uiwang Ojeon-Wanggok District 22 months after naming the sites, stepping up its push on housing supply. Yet most analysts expect only a limited short-term effect on home prices. Supplying 23,400 homes in the Seoul metropolitan area with strong transit access carries weight, but the target for breaking ground is the end of 2029, three years away. Experts said land acquisition procedures will be the gauge of how fast the supply arrives.
According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on the 21st, the two districts were announced as candidate sites for new housing land in November 2024. At the time, the government set targets of district designation in the first half of this year, the first presale in 2029 and first move-ins in 2031. This time it presented a target of starting home construction at the end of 2029. Under that schedule, construction would begin only at the point when the first presale had originally been promised, making a considerable gap before actual move-ins unavoidable. District designation also slipped about three months past the first-half target.
The government says it will shorten the project timeline by running procedures in parallel, including starting work on development plans ahead of district designation. In May, the Korea Land & Housing Corporation (LH) held a design competition for an integrated urban architecture plan for the Uiwang Ojeon-Wanggok District. Still, the prevailing view is that even with plans drawn up in advance, it is difficult to compress all the time needed for land compensation, infrastructure development and home construction.
The decisive factor for the actual pace of supply is land compensation and acquisition. If compensation talks drag on or lead to lawsuits, the construction schedule presented by the government could also be pushed back. Seo Jin-hyeong, a professor at Kyungin Women's University, said, "Unlike in the past, lawsuits over private property rights are being filed, so land acquisition is not easy even for a state project." Seo added, "The pace of supply will differ depending on how much the acquisition process can be moved up and how much resolve LH shows in managing the project schedule."
In its Aug. 13 policy package, the government said it would pursue measures for faster land compensation and acquisition, including incentive payments for cooperating with compensation, more active use of integrated permit coordination meetings, and substituting objective materials such as photographs for land and property records when owners refuse a basic compensation survey. On this point, an industry official said, "The actual construction period will be determined by compensation and relocation," adding that the projects "could follow the path of the third-generation new towns, where move-ins were delayed more than a year beyond schedule after land acquisition procedures stalled."
Some also assess that the strength of the locations will help improve market sentiment right away. Daegok can draw on Daegok Station, where five rail lines converge, including the Great Train Express (GTX)-A. Access to the Seoul Ring Expressway and Jayu-ro is also good, and with Ilsan New Town and the Goyang Changneung and Hwajeong districts nearby, using surrounding amenities is straightforward. In Uiwang Ojeon-Wanggok, Uiwang City Hall Station (tentative name) on the Indeokwon-Dongtan double-track railway, scheduled to open in 2029, will be located about 700 meters from the district. Park Won-gap, senior real estate specialist at KB Kookmin Bank, said, "Both areas rate B+ or better as locations," adding that "just sending a signal that housing will continue to be supplied will help stabilize the market."
