According to the Kyunghyang Shinmun's late-night report on Oct. 13, a plan from the Ministry of the Interior and Safety would send 44 central administrative agencies from Seoul and the surrounding region to Sejong. Their combined staffing quota is 9,929, close to the 'ten thousand' in the headline. The moves start next year and run to 2031, split between agencies that go first into leased space and those that wait for new buildings.

The ministry reviewed 142 agencies in the capital region and set a rule that all central ministries will move, while bodies that serve the public directly are excluded, the paper said. The 44 fall into two groups: 27 agencies (quota 2,995) that need no separate building, and 17 (quota 6,934) that need standalone buildings or special facilities because of investigative, security or control functions. By headcount the second group is about 70 percent of the total, which shows the weight of the plan sits with buildings not due until 2031.

Leased space first, from the first half of next year

The 27 agencies without special needs will use private leased offices in Sejong and move in phases during next year. The Kyunghyang Shinmun lists six for the first half: the Korea Media and Communications Commission, the Personal Information Protection Commission, the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission, the National Human Rights Commission, the National Education Commission and the Overseas Koreans Agency. The remaining 19, including the Financial Services Commission, ministry-affiliated bodies and advisory committees, follow in the second half. In a separate piece the paper noted that the FSC, long rumored to be moving, is greeted with a 'this was bound to come' reaction, and that its union calls the move inefficient in the headline's words; we could not confirm the union's detailed arguments or the exact timing, so we do not go further.

The Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family are outside the current legal basis and are slated to move next year in step with an amendment to the Administrative City Act. The Kyunghyang Shinmun reported that the ruling Democratic Party introduced a bill earlier this month to give legal grounds for moving five ministries: foreign affairs, unification, justice, defense and gender equality. Part of the 'next year' schedule therefore depends on the National Assembly. The Segye Ilbo, covering the September government announcement, reported that the prime minister asked lawmakers to cooperate on budget review and legal revisions.

Standalone buildings by 2031, tied to presidential and Assembly timelines

The 17 agencies needing their own buildings include the Board of Audit and Inspection, the prosecution service, the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, the National Police Agency, the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials, and the foreign, unification and defense ministries, as well as the National Institute of Korean History and the Korea National Diplomatic Academy. New buildings are planned for completion by 2031, with agencies moving in sequence. The Segye Ilbo said the foreign and unification ministries will set their timing with the presidential office move and the opening of the National Assembly's Sejong hall in mind.

Dates for the landmark facilities were also given: the presidential Sejong office is targeted for 2029 and the Assembly's Sejong hall for 2033. Presidential units such as the secretariat and the National Security Office were left out and will be reviewed separately, linked to the timing of the president's full move, officials told the Kyunghyang Shinmun. On cost, about 89.7 billion won is estimated for next year's leased-space setup, operations and relocation support such as civil-servant housing, with roughly 3.1 trillion won more for constructing the standalone buildings and future leasing.

A city people want to live in

Once the plan is carried out, the 14,731 quota at the 43 agencies already in Sejong plus the 9,929 arriving would bring the central-government quota there to nearly 25,000, the paper noted. Sejong city says it will expand a deputy-mayor-led task force and create a new division for office space, housing and living conditions. A civic council pushing for an administrative-capital special law wants the government to publish concrete timelines, budgets and office-space plans and to avoid gaps in public services during the transition.

Yang Seung-hoon, a sociologist at Kyungnam University, pointed out that many officials with posts in Sejong still live in or commute from Seoul, and said that pattern will not break without better regional transport, jobs and schools, the Kyunghyang Shinmun reported. The larger the move, the greater the risk that an 'administrative capital' becomes a city where only the buildings relocated if housing, transport links, schools and hospitals lag behind. The government also plans to settle a second round of regional relocation for about 350 capital-area public institutions in the fourth quarter and begin next year, so the pace and coordination of the wider decentralization policy will be tested too. Things to watch are the Assembly's budget review, handling of the Administrative City Act amendment, and whether the leased-office move-in dates prove realistic.

Third-party view: moving the functions of a capital is a long-running challenge for many countries. Brazil moved its capital in 1960 to Brasília, a planned city built inland; Australia chose Canberra to avoid a Sydney-Melbourne rivalry, and Parliament moved in during 1927; Washington, D.C. was likewise created in the late 18th century, with the federal government relocating in 1800. These cases show that erecting offices is only the start, and that settled residents and an economic and cultural base take far longer to grow. Japan debated moving capital functions in the 1990s but did not carry it out. South Korea's own new-capital plan was reshaped into the Sejong multifunctional administrative city after a Constitutional Court ruling, so success this time will depend on how firmly it builds both pillars: legal groundwork and livability.