The sigh of an engineer visiting a construction site in Gurae-dong, Gimpo City, captures the reality of South Korea’s data center industry: “It’s been three years since groundbreaking, but we’re still only working on the foundation.” While artificial intelligence and cloud computing continue to advance at a rapid pace, the data centers that underpin these technologies remain stalled.

Growing Demand, Stalled Construction

Between 2025 and 2029, a total of 732 data centers are scheduled for development across South Korea, with 56% concentrated in Gyeonggi Province. Within the Seoul metropolitan area, data center capacity is expected to grow from 1.3GW in 2023 to approximately 3.2GW by 2027.

Despite this rising demand, construction progress remains slow. The “Digital Seoul 2” data center in Gurae-dong, Gimpo City, has yet to complete its foundation work, even several years after breaking ground in 2022. Similarly, a data center project in Deoki-dong, Goyang City, has been delayed due to opposition from local residents.

The NIMBY Phenomenon

One of the primary obstacles to data center construction is the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) phenomenon, as local residents voice concerns over electromagnetic waves, noise, and heat emissions.

However, measurements conducted by the National Radio Research Agency indicate that electromagnetic fields from power facilities near data centers peak at just 14 milligauss (mG)—only 1.5% of the government’s human safety standard of 883mG. This suggests that public concern over electromagnetic exposure is driven more by vague anxiety than by scientific evidence.