'Seoul to be friendly to residents and visitors'

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon speaks during an interview with The Korea Times at his office on Thursday. Park said he will take long-term projects to make the capital more attractive to foreigners and tourists. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

By Kang Hyun-kyung

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon has been pressing ahead with a variety of projects to make Seoul a more livable city.

His style is a stark contrast to that of his predecessors. While former mayors Lee Myung-bak and Oh Se-hoon left large construction projects as their legacies, Park is doing his work without making much noise and causing as little conflict as possible with residents and interest groups.

Park said he places top priority on listening to citizens and reflecting their opinions on city planning.

“My top goal is to make Seoul a city for the citizens themselves. And that is possible only when citizens actively participate in the planning,” Park said in an interview.

He said he will continue to communicate with citizens.

“Don’t you feel that Seoul is quiet these days in terms of projects causing conflict or noise in communities? That’s because we are implementing things after thorough consultation with residents,” he said. “That’s why communication is important and that’s how residents are actively participating in various projects.”

Park said one of the most important tasks facing the capital is the widening development gap between the southern and northern regions of Seoul.

“We are preparing long-term plans to develop northern districts as a means to narrow the gap with the more affluent southern districts. Chiefs of four northern districts are collecting residents’ opinions on how to develop their towns,” Park said. “Process toward reaching a consensus is far more important than the content of any projects.”

Park has a far-sighted vision to transform the city into a culture-friendly, modern urban space with a well-thought-out plan.

One such plan is to restrict the height of new apartments to be built alongside the Han River.

“We’ve lowered the maximum height of new apartments to 35 stories from 70 stories. Although there was some resistance against these kinds of restrictions, they will ultimately raise the quality of residents’ lives,” Park said.

The 57-year-old mayor said his long-term urban planning guidelines will help future generations recreate a livable city while leaving cultural heritage intact.

The city will hold a series of hearings on its long-term comprehensive urban planning guidelines.

Park said his mayoralty signals the beginning of Seoul entering a modern age. Having taken office through the Oct. 26 by-election in 2011, the activist-turned-mayor has almost a year left in the job. The next mayoral election is scheduled for June of next year.

Park characterized the period from 1945 to October 2011, before he was sworn in as mayor, as pre-modern days featuring urban development at the expense of cultural heritage.

“I think so because, before I assumed the position, there were lots of quick fixes and short-sighted plans dominated urban planning. The city authorities were overwhelmed by the influx of population from the rural areas to the capital city over the past decades,” he said. “Now is the time for us to look in retrospect at what we did in those days and think seriously where we should be in 100 years, and put our thoughts into the urban planning.”

He said the city would list its historic sites and restore and preserve them to push for registering them as UNESCO cultural heritage items.

Park lamented the disappearance of “Igansumun,” a hundreds-of-years old water gate under the Cheonggyecheon (Cheonggye Stream) designed to steer the direction of waterways so they were diverted out of the city, during the restoration project while Lee Myung-bak was in office.

“We lost precious cultural heritage because of the hasty project,” he said.

Park seems energetic and tries to pay attention to every detail of the city.

He told a story highlighting his endeavors to fix inconveniences facing foreigners.

“One day, I saw a sign reading, ‘Under construction’ in Korean, somewhere in Seoul while driving my car. It was written only in Korean. What the heck? Does that mean we do not care if foreigners who don’t speak Korean fall in the hole that is under construction?”

The experience prompted the mayor to direct his staffers to change all signs, including road signs, so they are also marked in English, Japanese and Chinese.

Immigration

Park said Seoul, by any standards, is a global city as some 400,000 expats reside here but there are barriers that made it difficult for foreigners adjust to the city.

Park pledged the city will provide support for ethnic groups.

“I was told that a Japanese town is set to form in Sangam-dong near a Japanese school there. We are trying to figure out if there is need for our policy support for them,” he said.

He said the city will try to help immigrants preserve their own culture and language.

The mayor made the point that it’s time to upgrade current policy. “I think that we have done relatively well for people from the West. But I feel that we have not done enough for marriage migrants and migrant workers,” he said. “We need to pay more attention to their children and education.”

Park said foreigners who stop over at Incheon International Airport for hours before they head to their final destination are one target group he would like to attract to Seoul.

Legacy

Unlike his predecessors, Park rarely uses big words but he seems talented at pitching his achievements.

Park stressed he felt no pressure from his over-achiever predecessors. Former President Lee Myung-bak renovated Cheonggyecheon. Oh strove to position Seoul as a global city by making huge investments in massive development projects.

Park downplayed his predecessors’ legacy by using a rain analogy, noting that he felt no need to seek a signature project.

“Showers may cool people during summertime. But hours later they will soon feel it’s scorching again,” he said. “What drizzles do is quite the opposite. It takes time for people to know their clothing is wet because drizzle works slowly but helps the entire earth revive. This is what I would do as a mayor.”

He indicated his legacy is to encourage people to be part of the metropolitan city, although he didn’t use the term, legacy.

He called his leadership style “Wikipedia-like management” referring to the role of empowerment to pull the power of collective intellectualism together.

Who is Park Won-soon? Park Won-soon, 57, became mayor of Seoul after winning an election on Oct. 26, 2011, following the resignation of his predecessor Oh Se-hoon, who stood down after a failed referendum on providing free school meals for all students. He was supported by Ahn Cheol-soo, an independent candidate currently running in a by-election for a seat in the National Assembly representing Nowon, Seoul slated for April 24. Before becoming Seoul mayor, Park led the progressive civic group, the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD), and its sister charity foundation, dubbed the Beautiful Foundation, for more than a decade. As an activist, he was critical of conglomerates and attacked their unfair business practices. He is the winner of numerous awards, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award. Park passed the state bar exam and served as a prosecutor for a year before practicing law as a lawyer in 1983. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history at Dankook University.