Abstract
Seoul and its suburbs host half the Koreans living on the southern part of the Korean peninsula, that is 25 million living souls. Seoul is 2000 years old, and has been the capital of Korea for 600 years. Tradition and history are nowadays still deeply rooted in the city, but coexist with the dynamics of the 21th century.
Seoul was destroyed during the Korean War: the way it is built today is still deeply related to this destruction. It was quickly rebuilt and thus appears as a socialist city. Yet since the end of the twentieth century, Seoul is evolving and becoming a globalized city. Its urban policy is becoming more and more complex. The spatial spaces are reevaluated, a new spatiality emerges. The regionalization process leads to the development of the suburban areas but those are linked to the central city, what is urban cannot be thought separately from what it not urban. This spatial reorganization began with tan important economic crisis in 1997 which lead to the involvement of the international organizations in Korean politics. The change in urban policy was also influenced by the democratization that emerged in South Korea in the same years.
We state that Seoul has started to become a post metropolis since the end of the twentieth century, and is one nowadays. Our main focus will be to analyze the way 1997 appears as a turning point. After having considered the urbanization of the city at the wake of the war, we'll see how it evolved after the 1997 crisis and along with the democratization process. Then we will study the aspects of Seoul that make it a post metropolis: the digitization and the city and its globalization.
