Rebuild, reconnect, reform | Joseph Araneta Gamboa

SECHONG, South Korea. About 120 kilometers south of Seoul, this smart city in the country’s central region was founded in 2007 as South Korea’s new national capital. Designed from scratch, it was modeled after the planned capitals of Canberra in Australia, Brasilia in Brazil and Putrajaya in Malaysia.

To date, 12 out of 17 cabinet-level government ministries have moved to the de facto administrative capital of the Republic of Korea. Sejong is also home to the Korea Development Institute, the country’s leading think tank. However, that hasn’t helped unload the Seoul metropolitan area, whose 26 million people make up half of South Korea’s total population of 51.7 million. In fact, most of the country’s economic activity is still concentrated in Greater Seoul, which includes the city of Incheon and Gyeonggi Province in northwestern South Korea.

Last week, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) held its 56th annual meeting of the Board of Governors in Incheon, home to the country’s main international airport and seaport. More than 5,000 delegates attended the four-day conference at the Songdo Convensia on the theme of “Recovering Asia: Recovery, Reunification and Reform”. Participants included finance ministers, central bank governors and heads of regional banking institutions, with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol as the keynote speaker.

During the opening session, ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa launched the Innovative Climate Financing Facility for Asia and the Pacific (IFCAP), ADB’s first financing facility that serves as a one-stop-shop for climate finance. Also for the first time in the world in terms of scale and reach, IFCAP will leverage ADB’s lending capacity and could release up to $15 billion in new climate projects.

The designation of Sejong as the planned new capital hit a snag when the Constitutional Court ruled that Seoul must remain the national capital, as well as keep the offices of the president, the National Assembly, and the Supreme Court. Only in 2012, a special self-governing city of Sejong was created, uniting the whole of Yonggi County, three townships of Gongju City and one township of Cheongwon County.

For a closer analogy, the establishment of Quezon City as the national capital of the Philippines failed when then President Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. in 1976 issued a presidential decree returning the status of the national capital to the city of Manila, while the entire Metro Manila was declared the seat of the national government.

Recently, the Philippine Supreme Court finally ruled that jurisdiction over the Fort Bonifacio Military Reservation, where the Bonifacio Global City (BGC) complex is located, belongs to the city of Taguig by virtue of its superior legal rights and historical title. The decision also applies to several barangays in the city of Makati, which were previously known as Barrios for Private Men or EMBOs.

Although the City of Makati filed a second motion for a retrial to bring the case before the full Supreme Court, the final decision of the Third Division of the High Court stated that “no further pleadings, motions, letters or other communications will be accepted.” because he ordered the immediate release of the record of the judgment.

The end of this three-decade land dispute between the two local governments marks the beginning of a new chapter for Taguig and its people. Over the past decade, Taguigenhos has witnessed the gradual transformation of his city into an emerging central business district after the Philippine Stock Exchange and many leading corporations transferred their headquarters to the BGC.

In some ways, Taguig is not the only winner in this territorial dispute. As both sides trust the legal system, the rule of law has prevailed – similar to what happened here in Sejong ten years ago when local authorities decided to respect the decision of the South Korean Constitutional Court to keep Seoul as the national capital.

Joseph Gamboa is Vice Chairman of the Finex Ethics Committee and Director of Noble Asia Industrial Corp. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of these institutions and BusinessMirror. #FinexPhils www.finex.org.ph