Seoul, Capital of Korea
Seoul, officially the Seoul Spe-cial City, is the capital and larg-est city of South Korea. With apopulation of over 10 million,it is one of the world’s largestcities. The Seoul National CapitalArea, which includes the majorport city of Incheon and mostof Gyeonggi-do, has 24.5 millioninhabitants, and is the world’ssecond largest metropolitan area.Almost half of South Korea’spopulation live in the Seoul Na-tional Capital Area, and nearly aquarter in Seoul itself, making itthe country’s foremost economic,political, and cultural center. Itis an important destination forimmigrants to South Korea, witha rapidly growing internationalpopulation of over 255,000.Seoul is located on the HanRiver in the center of the KoreanPeninsula, and historically wassettled in 18 B.C. when Baekje,one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, established its capital inwhat is now south-east Seoul.The city then became the capi-tal of Korea during the JoseonDynasty and the Korean Empire.As the center of Korean historyover the past millennia, the SeoulNational Capital Area is hometo four UNESCO World HeritageSites: Changdeokgung, HwaseongFortress, Jongmyo Shrine and theRoyal Tombs of the Joseon Dy-nasty.
Grobal City
Seoul’s influence in business,international trade, politics,technology, education and enter-tainment all contribute to its roleas a prominent global city. It isconsidered to be an Alpha WorldCity, ranking 9th in the 2008Global Cities Index. Seoul is theiconic city of the Miracle on theHan River and hosted landmarkinternational events such as the1988 Summer Olympics and the2002 FIFA World Cup and will be the host city of the 2010 G-20Summit. It is one of the world’stop ten financial and commercialcenters, home to some of theworld’s largest conglomeratessuch as Samsung, LG and Hyun-dai-Kia. Seoul was Asia’s mostexpensive city to live in 2007,and the third most expensive cityworldwide. With a GDP per capitaof $31,095 in 2007, Seoul has aliving standard comparable toFrance and Italy. In 2008, Seoulwas named the world’s sixthmost economically powerful city by Forbes.com, ahead of Parisand Los Angeles.
High Tech City
Seoul is the 2010 World De-sign Capital and has one of theworld’s most technologicallyadvanced infrastructures. It isranked first on the Digital Op-portunity Index, with the highest broadband internet penetrationof any city. Seoul’s Digital MediaCity is the world’s first complexfor high-tech technologies anda test-bed for futuristic IT andmultimedia applications. Seoul isthe only city in the world fea-turing DMB, a digital mobile TVtechnology and WiBro, a wirelesshigh-speed mobile internet ser-vice, as well as a 100Mbps fibre-optic broadband network, whichis being upgraded to 1Gbps by2012. Seoul Station houses the350 km/h KTX high-speed railand the Seoul Subway is the thirdlargest in the world, with over 2 billion passeng gers every year.Seoul is connected to IncheonInternational Airport via AREX,which is rated as the world’s bestairport by ACI since 2005.
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