A Metropolis
with Culture,
High-tech

New Seoul Mayor Oh pledges to push redevelopment projects to make Seoul clean, attractive

Seoul Mayor-elect Oh Se-hoon of the opposition Grand National Party officially became the 33rd mayor of the nation's capital in a ceremony held July 3 at Sejong Performing Art Center in downtown Seoul.
The new Seoul mayor, in his speech, promised that he will use creativity and passion as a tool to make the capital city an attractive global city during his four-year term of office. Seoul City has been at the center of the nation's economic resurgence in the past four decades and made the country known throughout the world.
But, he said, we cannot be satisfied with Seoul being just a good city and it has to be reborn as a special city and compete with other major cities with new thinking and creative imagination. He said he has had many dreams about what he should do as city's mayor; he dreamt that Seoul should be like New York with a vibrant economy, Paris with culture, London with dignity, Milan, a city of fashion, and Sydney with its symbolic landmark. He would like to make Seoul a city with its own brand and a global city that can be counted with five fingers among the most fabulous cities in the world. "If Seoul becomes a competitive city in the world, Korea's competitive edge will move a step up,"the new Seoul mayor claimed. Why? A competitive Seoul will make the country competitive. An improvement in the quality of standard of living for Seoul citizens will also mean improved living standards for the whole country.
He would like to make Seoul a clean and attractive global metropolis, together with the city's residents, a cultural city with tradition and high-tech, an environmental city with nature and people, a happy city where dreams and hopes can come true, an economic city with full of creativity, and vibrancy. In the end, he would like to raise the happiness index for its residents and their living standards to strengthen Seoul's competitiveness in a way to pull up Korea's competitiveness higher.
Korea is a country populated by people with superb brains and Seoul's 10 million residents have dynamic and creative passion. Furthermore, the city has a talented pool of public servants, which is a great asset for facing new challenges.
"I would like to say to those public servants at Seoul City Hall that public service should be more business like, than business itself,"quoting from Peter Drucker, who is known as the god father of modern management. He also quoted Jim Collins, a global management consultant, from his book, "Good to Great,"that good is an enemy to great. Here is the way for Seoul to go now, not stopping at just being good, but move on to become a great Seoul, the new mayor said.
In order to make Seoul more competitive and raise its happiness index, the city's public servants and citizens must get together and work together. The Seoul municipal government must create a pleasant working environment and show that it can work hard enough to make itself a dynamic organization. The new mayor pledged in this connection that he will create "the 100-day Seoul Headquarters for Promotion of Creativity"to refresh the minds of the city's employees and make a dynamic environment and move ahead with the promises and pledges he made by following detailed steps. He will also open a portal site, "Oasis of Thousands of Thoughts,"to collect dynamic and creative policy ideas from citizens to be included in the city's policies. He will also create the post of cyber citizen policy officer in charge of those ideas suggested by the citizens.
He will develop the northern part of Seoul as part of the plan to make Seoul a cultural city where tradition and high-tech mix together. He will try to mix culture, economy and environment in the North of the River Revival Project, which will be the first project to upgrade the competitive edge of Seoul and Korea as a whole. He will also secure 1 million pyeong of green space to make public parks and build 100,000 rental houses, in addition to pushing ahead with the new town, redevelopment and reconstruction plans in the northern part of Seoul. He will see that the number of foreign tourists to increase to 12 million a year, from 6 million now. He will also try to create many jobs, especially, for young men and women by focusing on the development of the Yongsan area and the Sangam Digital Media Center as two new growth engines to make Seoul the center of international business. nw

New Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon makes a speech at his inauguration ceremony July 3 at Sejong Performance Art Center in downtown Seoul.