Eunpyeong aims to attract more tourists
Show houses inside Eunpyeong Hanok Village sit at the base of Mount Bukhan in Eunpyeong-gu, Seoul. The houses, currently under construction, will welcome visitors to experience living in a hanok and chill out at a book cafe inside the venue. / Courtesy of Eunpyeong-gu Office
Mayor develops Mount Bukhan, hanok village as main destinations
By Ko Dong-hwan
Eunpyeong-gu in northwestern Seoul is on track to transforming itself as the national tourism hub.
Designated by the government’s Small and Medium Business Administration on April 24 as the “Korean Culture Experience Specialized District,” Eunpyeong-gu has rolled out six new city development project proposals to revive its sagging economy. The district has begun working on two of the proposals — the Mount Bukhan Development Project and the Traditional Culture Development Project — which will help develop national tourism assets.
“Korean culture has built a reputation across the world, and we have seen an increasing number of foreign tourists visiting the nation to see our heritage,” said Park Young-su, representative of the Public Relations Department of the Eunpyeong District Office. “But sadly, the tourists could only view our tourism ‘commodities,’ which are concentrated mostly around the four main gates of old Seoul.”
“We have been trying hard to make our district the No. 1 Korean cultural experience destination, where tourists from the nation’s other regions and from overseas can not only view but also feel and experience our culture by, say, wearing traditional Korean clothes — ‘hanbok’ — and eating Korean foods inside a traditional Korean house — ‘hanok.’”
With the Mount Bukhan Development Project, scheduled to be completed by 2018, the 837-meter-high mountain is being developed with new experience programs and facilities to entice visitors.
The project will build a 63-hectare forest based on the theme of Korean traditional culture, as well as a yoga village. It will also hold sports competitions, such as a 10-kilometer trail run and trekking competition along the Bukhansanseong Fortress on the mountain; festivals, like a yoga festival, mountain film festival and traditional Korean music festival; and a Korean culture photo contest.
The project will turn the Jingwan Temple located on the mountain into a cultural experience site by introducing a temple-stay service and building a traditional Korean food experience hall inside the temple. It will create a cultural storytelling tour on the trekking course around the base of the mountain and build a tour guide center on the mountain that will provide information on the district’s tourist services.
Meanwhile, the Traditional Culture Development Project, also scheduled to be completed by 2018, aims to give tourists the opportunity to experience living in a hanok. At the center of the project are the Eunpyeong History Hanok Museum and upcoming Eunpyeong Hanok Village, both located at the foot of the mountain. Eunpyeong Hanok Village is an area in which people can buy residential lots and build their own hanok. The village’s residential lots have recently sold out.
The project will also build a 2,834-square-meter exhibition hall dedicated to the history of Eunpyeong district and the hanok, showcase artifacts unearthed from the site of Eunpyeong New Town — a large modern apartment complex — before it was built in 2012, and build traditional Korean pavilions on the museum site. “Experience labs” will also be added to the village, where visitors can experience living in a hanok and making traditional Korean handicrafts.
Having secured a 21 billion won ($18 million) budget for the two ongoing projects, the district is looking to generate approximately 129 billion won ($113 million) in revenue and 1,365 new jobs after five years of operation, according to Park.
Eunpyeong-gu Mayor Kim Woo-young
The man behind the ‘specialized district’
Behind Eunpyeong’s designation as the Korean Culture Experience Specialized District is district mayor Kim Woo-young. He saw the designation as a key element in realizing his goal of strengthening the district’s economy, so he rolled up his sleeves and proceeded with the designation application process despite the required audits by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the complaints of district residents who weren’t happy with the possible designation.
“Some of the people who signed up to move into Eunpyeong Hanok Village have complained that their residential environment would be disrupted with visitors if the district became the specialized district,” Kim said. “I persuaded them that the designation will not bring some kind of fancy resorts or theme parks to their front yards. I told them that it will boost the district’s local economy using the ecological merits of Mount Bukhan, the district’s existing infrastructures and legal perks from the regulation benefits given to the specialized district.”
Kim saw that sales of residential lots in Eunpyeong Hanok Village were slow and decided to spearhead the marketing of the lots. His efforts were fruitful, selling out all of the lots.
The 46-year-old mayor talked about how grueling it was to move Eunpyeong History Hanok Museum to where it is now — Yeonseo-ro 50 gil-8 — from its original planned site next to Tongil-ro. The move had postponed the museum’s groundbreaking ceremony from May to September 2012.
“I had to change the location because I wanted to put the museum right next to Mount Bukhan and the hanok village,” Kim said. “So that the three venues could benefit from each other through their proximity to each other and create synergy as one strong tourism destination.”
Kim first stepped into the Korean political world when his professor and the former chancellor of Sungkyunkwan University, Jang Eul-byeong, was elected Liberal Party representative in 1996 and hired Kim as a secretary. Kim first became committed to Eunpyeong district when lawmaker Lee Mi-kyung, to whom he had once served as a legislative aide, was elected in the 17th National Assembly in 2004. Having served as the district mayor since July 2010, he is also an incumbent member of the planning committee of the Roh Moo-hyun Foundation, a nonprofit donation community named after the late former president.
Part of the show houses of Eunpyeong Hanok Village, above, will act as the village's community hall for the residents who will move there.
Citizen budget planning
Eunpyeong district also owes its designation as the “specialized cultural district” largely to the district’s “citizen budget planning.” Introduced in 2010, citizen budget planning lets the district’s residents plan and decide how to spend part of the district’s annual budget of about 1 billion won ($885,000). It was the first such policy in the nation and became the benchmark for policies in other administrative areas in 2013. It helped boost the district’s profile and consequently, chances of receiving the designation.
“The policy is the most transparent reflection of grassroots democracy because it gives our district’s residents power over how to spend the budget for where they live,” Park said. “We have heard from other local governments that our district has been the most effective in managing such a policy in Korea.”
In August 2010, the district set up a preparatory citizen budget planning committee comprising of 17 residents with experience in civic movements and experts from various fields. The committee was then tasked to write a set of regulations for the proposed policy. The National Assembly passed the policy and made it effective in December 2010, which also made the committee official.
In September 2011, the committee’s inaugural members for the first term were ordained. Two months later, the first citizen budget planning committee meeting in the nation was held. At the meeting, the residents’ requests for their district were prioritized. In September 2012, the committee launched the nation’s first mobile poll, through which the district’s residents voted on what they wanted for their district.
“The committee is diverse, with members from a wide range of residents, from those who are physically disabled to youths and female students,” Park said. “The committee holds meetings in each neighborhood of the district five to six times a year to gather the residents’ opinions as often as possible. When deciding on some important issues, residents from the neighborhoods directly linked to the issues are required to participate in the meetings. Last year, 44,496 citizens from our district participated in the meetings.”
So far, the committee’s policy has been successful in its savings goals. From 2011 until 2014, the district saved about 26 billion won ($23 million) of its budgets by removing business items that are not necessary or urgent. During the same period, the district also implemented a total of 80 business items suggested by the committee, worth four billion won ($3.5 million).
The policy’s effectiveness has drawn accolades. In 2012, it won the presidential prize with recognition of a local government’s effective budget management, and in 2013, the grand prize from the Korea Future Management Award in the local government category.
“With mutual association between the residents and the district office, we encourage citizenry involvement to build a stronger participatory government and to raise the quality of our living,” Park said.