'Seoul becoming darling of city diplomacy'

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon speaks during an interview with The Korea Times at his office, Nov. 27. / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk

Developing cities courting Seoul to share 'special' experiences

By Kang Seung-woo

Korea's modern history could be described as “turbulent.”

Starting with the colonial occupation, the nation was divided and almost totally destroyed by war. It also experienced rapid economic development and decades of dictatorships as well.

However, Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon believes that what he calls the “experience of troubles” is a selling point as he pursues “city diplomacy,” under which the capital shares its best practices and systems in public transportation, water supply, e-government and smart city planning with developing cities and even countries.

“Seoul is a very special city. Different from Western cities, Seoul rose up from the ashes,” Park said in

an interview with The Korea Times

conducted in English, Nov. 27.

The third-term mayor said while the central government has traditionally dominated diplomacy, now there is a trend toward city-to-city or “local-to-local” diplomacy.

“Many developing countries and cities really try to learn from Seoul's experiences. Rather than signing perfunctory memoranda of understanding, we are doing substantive city-to-city diplomacy focused on sharing policies for urban issues.”

Seoul started its city exchanges in 2006 and as of July this year, it has “exported” 80 projects to 58 cities in 32 countries.

According to the mayor, around 200 civil servants from other countries come to Seoul every year and some of them spend a year at the University of Seoul, a public school funded and supported by the city government, to study Seoul's performance in various fields.

The mayor, a former human rights lawyer and civic activist, said many cities are paying special attention to the bus rapid transit (BRT) system, among others. The BRT is a bus-based mass transit system, designed to improve transportation quality and remove typical causes of delays, emerging as a solution to chronic traffic congestion and low-quality public transport.

“Last July, we won an $8 million (9.3 billion won) contract to create a BRT system in Tanzania's largest city of Dar es Salaam. Over the next four year, the Seoul Housing and Communities Corp. (SH) will create the system, and we expect the deal will pave the way for Seoul City to export its public transport and bus operation systems to the African continent.”

Exchanges with Pyongyang

On the back of the city government's success in intercity diplomacy, Park has set the bar higher, seeking exchanges with Pyongyang.

“Pyongyang cannot be an exception and we can establish a city-to-city friendship with it,” Park said, although he acknowledged the lingering challenges such as the currently frozen inter-Korean ties and the absence of local autonomy in North Korea.

“On the occasion of the (inter-Korean) summit in September last year, I had an opportunity to meet Chairman Kim Jong-un and he asked for Seoul's cooperation to clean and purify the Taedong River [which runs through Pyongyang] because we have experience cleaning the Han River. After that we established a taskforce to cooperate on the issue. But it is not easy because relations with North Korea should be normalized first and then city-to-city relations can be improved in the future.

“But anyway we should be prepared and beyond that, there are so many ways to cooperate with each other.”

Currently, Seoul is seeking to co-host the 2032 Summer Olympic Games with Pyongyang, claiming that sharing the quadrennial sporting event would serve as a driving force for peace in Northeast Asia.

In order to come up with a successful bid to host the Summer Olympics, the city government held a forum, Nov. 26, with the Ministry of Unification, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and the Korean Sport and Olympic Committee, where participants suggested a vision of peace on the Korean Peninsula, and discussed expected outcomes the co-hosting could bring about.