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Toward a Cultural-Ecological Revival of Military Bases

“Ecological revival of military space” does not merely mean the restoration of ecologically contaminated, destroyed military spaces. It includes utilizing military space as a means to actively respond to ecological crisis. If no effort is made to restore such spaces using lots of time and money, that space will become an almost permanent space of death. Even though ecological restoration can succeed through a judicious deployment of time and money, reckless development will surely turn the space again into a lifeless site. This is the reason that we should engage such sites using a cultural-ecological politics whose aim is to create cultural-ecological spaces. This article will make the case that the U.S. Yongsan Garrison in Seoul could be culturally and ecologically rejuvenated by transforming the whole site into a natural forest. Such a project would contribute to the lives of not only the people presently living in Seoul but also their descendants. The natural forest in this conception is a slow space as well as a natural space. Such a space would provide a welcome respite to time-starved, speed-driven urban dwellers and would provide the people of Seoul with the opportunity to reflect on some of the more inhuman aspects of their accelerated lives. The culturalecological-space concept can be brought into being through a project that seeks to transform time and space. Such a project inevitably becomes a political issue. Thus, an approach is needed that regards cultural-ecological politics as cultural politics for the sake of ecological revival.