Even after approval,nothing seemed to change.
City Hall was always like that.
Meetings were many.Decisions were slow.New projects were often buriedunder the name "under review."
But this case was different.
A single handwritten memofrom the mayor's officechanged the air across every department.
"Establish a Truck City pilot project TF.All departments to cooperate."
The shorter the sentence,the more clearly it came from the top.
Planning Office Meeting Room No. 1.
There were no blueprints.No presentations had been shared yet.
Instead,people gathered first.
Urban Regeneration.Architecture.Culture & Tourism.Employment Policy.Public Health Administration.
They looked at one another,all thinking the same thing:
Is this actually happening?
Then the head of planning spoke.
"Who will take charge?"
From the start,the project's name itself was ambiguous.
Not a new city.Not redevelopment.Too many elements to call it a cultural project.
"Mobile City Experimental Project."
The room fell silent.
Then,a man flipping through the documentsraised his hand.
"I'll do it."
He was not a talkative person.
He rarely made standout remarks in meetingsand showed little interest in taking credit.
But he was known as someonewho finished what he took on.
His name was Han Seojun.
Urban Regeneration Division,designated working-level lead of the TF.
His résumé was simple.
Seoul National University,College of Humanities,Department of History.
Not a civil service exam elite.Not an urban engineering background.
That made it more unusual.
"Why?"the director asked.
Seojun slowly turned the printed proposal pages.
"This isn't a city being built,"he said.
"It's a city being reused."
"And?"
"When something is reused,records matter more than structure."
A small silence passed through the room.
Seojun had always been someonewho recorded disappearing things.
Alleys erased by redevelopment.Markets that survived only in name.Neighborhoods removed from maps.
History was always written from above,but he knew—
far more things disappeared from below.
That was why he chose administration.
Not to block things,but to leave them behind.
He turned another page.
Trucks.Modules.Medical care.Housing.Food.Safety.
And what they all shared.
"They go where people have been pushed out."
Seojun felt a strange sense of déjà vureading that line.
— Why does knowledge always move inward?
A drunken conversation from college resurfaced.
The person who said it—
Chae Isol.
A classmate from the history department.Someone who preferred the field to the library.Who talked longer about people than papers.
"Records diewhen they only go into books,"Isol always said.
"They have to come outside.They need to get on people's hands."
Back then,Seojun had laughed it off.
Reality, he thought,was not that romantic.
But this proposal was different.
This was a recordthat wouldn't be locked in books.
An experimentthat wouldn't remain only as policy.
A structure wherethe places people moved throughbecame the record itself.
The director spoke.
"If this fails,we'll take all the blame."
Seojun nodded.
"That's whyI should do it."
"Why you, specifically?"
Seojun hesitated, then answered.
"This isn't a projectthat becomes an achievement if it succeeds."
"Even if it fails,it has to be recorded."
The meeting didn't last long.
The TF structure was finalized,and a name was writtennext to the project title.
— Lead: Urban Regeneration Division, Han Seojun
After the meeting,Seojun stayed behind alone.
He opened the proposal againand pulled out a contact.
Chae Isol.
A name he hadn't calledin years.
He didn't dial yet.
He still needed certainty.
But one thing was clear.
This project needed a passagefor knowledge to come outside.
And at the end of that passage,he sensed—
Isol would be there.
Seojun wrote quietly in pencilat the bottom of the proposal.
Records surviveonly when they move.
The citywas not yet complete.
But within the administration,someonehad already begun to move.