(funky electronic music)
- [Joshua] Taco Bell, Starbucks, Burger King,
can't go wrong with a Whopper.
Yongsan, it's kind of a little bit of a slice of home.
- We have a elementary school, grocery stores,
you can buy your clothes,
and we also have a hotel here on the installation.
Yongsan is very much like
a small town within the United States.
- [Narrator] This community is just like
any American suburb.
But there's a catch:
(vehicles running)
this base, Yongson Garrison,
is not in America.
It's in the heart of Seoul, South Korea.
- And you got the Seoul Tower over here, which is amazing.
New York City doesn't have a base, Chicago doesn't.
This is a unique example.
You can walk out one of the gates
and you're in the middle of a hundred different restaurants.
(officer speaks indistinctly)
- [Narrator] For more than 60 years,
Yongsan Garrison has been
one of the most important strategic military centers
to help South Korea contain North Korea.
- U.S. Forces Headquarters,
the United Nations Command Headquarters,
any type of planning operations, everything started here.
(helicopter whirring)
You're making sure that you're ready to support
not only in peacetime, but also being able to fight
if, unfortunately, a contingency
or some type of war situation were to break out.
- [Narrator] In recent years,
North Korea has aggressively developed
its nuclear program, while China is increasingly
asserting its military influence in the area.
So the U.S. is revamping its strategy.
It's decided to shut down the symbolic facility.
- This was a training ground for the cavalry.
- [Narrator] John Nowell lived and served
at Yongsan Garrison for 54 years.
He was part of the Seventh Infantry Division
and remembers the crucial role the base has played
in peacemaking and defense operations in the region.
At its peak, about 22,000 Americans were stationed here.
- This was the center of the universe.
This place was just a hubbub of activity.
Well, they had buses coming in and picking up troops
and taking them up to other camps all over South Korea.
- [Narrator] Back in the day, he says,
Seoul wasn't as densely packed around the garrison.
But by the 90s, skyscrapers popped up,
a new metro line was built,
urban sprawl caught up with the base.
- When I first came to the Yongsan Garrison,
you wouldn't see any of that.
You wouldn't see those tall buildings over there at all.
We had, then, two movie theaters.
It was special because it brought America home to you.
Whenever the war broke out, in 25 June in 1950,
there was just very few Americans over here.
- [Film Narrator] We found out we were surrounded.
- We lost the Yongsan area to the North Koreans.
We pushed the North Koreans out.
(explosion)
When the Chinese came down, they pushed back
and took the Garrison again.
So it was a push, push, push, push.
- [Narrator] Nowell says, because of that history,
he remembers always feeling welcomed by South Koreans.
- They wouldn't have the life they had
had we not come and assisted them to save Korea
from being swallowed up by the North Korean communists.
(funky electronic music)
- [Narrator] But over the years, that sentiment has changed.
Once on the outskirts, Yongsan is now
right in the middle of the capital,
just across the river from hip neighborhoods
like Gangnam and just a few miles away
from the financial center.
While the base is in the process of closing
over the next couple of years,
the military is still leaving behind
a helicopter pad and hotel, with the U.S. Embassy
moving in at a later stage,
which isn't sitting well with some Koreans.
(drum beats)
Some local residents like Ki Man-hee
want to remove all trace of the U.S. presence
in the heart of the city.
- [Narrator] Yongsan has come to represent
people's resentment towards
America's decades-long presence in their country.
The South Korean government is currently debating
whether to build high-rise buildings or a park
on the site occupied by Yongsan Garrison.
(children yelling)
- [Narrator] Yongsan wasn't just a military base,
but a home for families.
Kids were schooled on the base,
and families came to pray at the Garrison's chapel.
Some army staff are even buried in Seoul.
But with the base being slowly dismantled,
this bit of Americana on the Korean Peninsula is fading.
("The Star-Spangled Banner")
This is the closing ceremony for Yongsan High School,
which opened its doors in 1959.
- U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan has been the center
of one of the largest peacetime
transformation in the history of the United States Army.
(somber electronic music)
- [Narrator] Streets are now nearly empty.
Sections of the base are cordoned off,
and buildings are left crumbling.
- This was hook-ups for classified material.
- [Narrator] Colonel Monica Washington
is in charge of the closure.
She says shutting down a 60-year-old institution
like Yongsan is not easy.
- So you are talking about moving people, moving equipment.
The sheer scope of what we're having to move,
it is a tremendous process.
- [Narrator] And being the military, they face
a very particular challenge:
there can't be any lapse in the mission.
- How do you unplug from one location
and move to another location, at the same time
maintaining your day-to-day operations,
because the operations don't stop just because
you're moving from one location to the other.
- [Narrator] That means, though things are being moved
out of the Garrison, people can't stop working.
Technicians still need to tune up helicopters,
and specialists must continue monitoring
North Korea's nuclear activity.
If anyone goes off-duty, the consequences could be fatal.
- [Monica] We are in the midst of a huge transformation.
Yongsan will never be what it used to be.
(chill electronic music)
- [Narrator] So, where is all of this moving to?
The closure of Yongsan doesn't mean
the U.S. is leaving the Korean Peninsula.
Far from it.
The military is in the process of opening new headquarters
40 miles south of Seoul.
Camp Humphreys will the U.S. Military's
largest overseas base in the world.
It's in a more strategic location than Yongsan,
with better access to sea and airfields.
- This is the A-10,
one of the baddest attack planes
that we've got in the Air Force.
This will do some damage rather quickly.
- [Narrator] Master Sergeant Mace is part of
the Air Force's weather squadron.
He recently moved from Yongsan to the new headquarters.
- It's vast.
It's like going from playing soccer
at a small little stadium to
a stadium of like 100,000 people.
- [Narrator] To him, leaving Yongsan is nostalgic,
but it's a necessity.
- It is kind of sad to see some abandoned buildings,
but at the same time, that's how moves go.
You're gonna have to abandon the old
and move in with the new.
Camp Humphreys, the metropolis of Humphreys,
certainly is unlike anything that I have seen
on any military post.
It's the future of the military.
(man yelling indistinctly)
We are more prepared to complete the mission.