This book provides an unprecedented perspective on Korea's simultaneous experience of rapid, economic development and substantive democratization from the early 1960s to the late 1980s. By analyzing the state-societal relations reflected in the design, architectural monumentality, and other spatial arrangements of the capital city over three central periods of Korean political history (Hanyang, Kyeongseong, Seoul), this study attempts to find the cultural origins of the power of the state and the Neo-Confucian origin of democratic forces.