Mayor aims to make Seoul charming
By Cho Jae-hyon
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Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon
Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon has pledged to make Seoul a truly international city that appeals to foreign investors and tourists.
Park, a long-time civil rights activist, says his top priority as the chief of the megacity with a population of more than 10 million is to make Seoul a city where tradition and modernity coexist in harmony.
To that extent, he is drawing up long-term projects to preserve and restore traditional “hanok” villages of traditional Korean homes, old residential and commercial back alleys, and ancient fortress walls surrounding the capital.
Park said he will make sure all the projects are based on a long-term perspective and the active participation from citizens.
“For years, Seoul has been suffering from reckless showy development projects. It’s impossible to restore historical and traditional assets in a matter of several years. But it’s possible with a longer-term perspective of 100 years,” the mayor said in an interview at his office.
Park said he will set the foundation for an environment- and tradition-friendly “100-year city planning project,” looking into the next century.
Unlike his predecessors who prioritized large-scale, ostentatious building projects, the soft-spoken mayor has been working in a low-profile and quiet manner.
When asked about his plans to attract tourists and investors, however, Park’s voice rose a notch and he looked excited and passionate.
His office walls are filled with bookshelves filled with binders, documents and books, with many of the documents, compiled by himself, about measures to promote tourism and attract foreign investors.
“We are drawing up a master plan to promote tourism,” Park said. “From rooting out practices of overcharging tourists to building more hotels, we are making every effort to improve the environment for tourism.”
He said the city needs more duty-free shops, which are mostly controlled by top conglomerates now. “It’s nonsense for only chaebol to run duty-free shops. We need a lot more.”
Park also said the city needs more casinos to attract foreign tourists as part of its project to build an infrastructure for the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) industry.
“The MICE industry is very important. We are making preparations to overtake Singapore, which is very strong in that field,” Park said. “To that extent, I think more casinos for foreigners, especially those targeting Chinese tourists, would be possible, though there is a negative public perception of casinos.”
Park will visit China from April 21 to 27 to attract investments in hotel, leisure and other tourism industries.
“I picture the future of Seoul as a truly international city. I’m going to strengthen ties with sister cities around the world,” Park said. “We will continue to attract investments from these cities and export our city planning know-how to other cities. Through this ‘city diplomacy,’ I believe Seoul will become a more internationally competitive city.”
Regarding his plans for expatriates and multicultural families here, he stressed the importance of building more ethnic communities.
“I think it’s very important to help expats and multicultural families form their own communities, such as Japanese, Chinese or Arabic towns,” he said. “Preservation and development of ethnic communities are crucial elements to secure the diversity of the city.”
Park said the city government will support the construction of libraries equipped with books and materials in foreign languages.
“These people came here to live permanently. Therefore we must build a better education system for them and establish a system where they can start business more easily,” he said.
He also said the country should shift its multicultural policy to one that absorbs the culture of immigrants from its current model that focuses on assimilating them.
“When I visited Germany a while ago, I was impressed to see ethnic Koreans there regularly learning and playing traditional Korean percussion music. Likewise we should build an environment where immigrants can preserve and develop their own culture here,” Park said.