ayor Jin Ik-chul of Seocho City in Seoul, who is in the second year of his four-year term, said the major aim of his administration of the city is to further improve the city’s pleasant surroundings and uphold Seocho’s glory in order to retain the top honors in the Happiness Index among the 25 districts in Seoul.

Jin also stresses that he has been trying to listen directly to the residents to learn what they want from the city either through direct calls or SNS and reflect them in policies. He will also try to create jobs for young residents and further lengthen the average life expectancy for residents, which stands at 83.1 years for men and 88.1 years for women  °™ even beating those for the Japanese by two years. The mayor also said he will try to keep the city’s employees clean and the policies transparent for the remainder of his term. He also wants to finish various projects including the Mayor JinTunnel, the Woomyun-dong High-tech R&D Center, and the Bangbae City Integrated Cultural Center, among others, before his time is up as the mayor.

The following is Mayor Jin’s written interview with NewsWorld:

Question: The Seocho District got the highest score in the Happiness Index among the 25 districts in Seoul in a recent survey and what do you think about the survey result?

Answer: When I first arrived at the Seocho ward office, I felt gagged by the huge bureaucratic system. The officers and staff did not know the pertinent laws and regulations they needed to know in order to execute official duties. They just followed precedence tangled up in laws and regulations to find the easy way out by relying on the usual administrative practices. Every officer and staff member, from the staff in charge, team heads and section heads to department managers relied on formality swept up by bureaucratic whims, with everything in documents, no support between departments, and the delayed execution of official duties.

The confusion in policies at the office was due to a lack of communication. For example, there was a limit to the height of the building for the R&D facility at Woomyun-dong to four floors and buildings in Bangbae-dong were restricted to 10 floors. This resulted in major confusion for the residents in the area regarding building height limits.

I came to the conclusion that the answer to the problems lie in visits to the jobsites, since every policy made at the ward office should be focused on its residents from the start. So I tried to change the minds of the officers and staff at the ward office and focused everything on the voices of the residents in improving the quality of life and making Seoul a top city in the world. I had the officers visit the worksites to listen to what the people there had to say and think about what the residents said they wanted in order to draw up policies for the ward in a speedy manner.

Q: Did you have any problems changing the ward office around, since the work load must have increased from the point of view of the ward officers and staff as you tried to change things around at the ward office?

A: I heard them complaining that it was tough to work for the Seocho District office, an allergic reaction to new systems at the ward office since my arrival. I didn’t look at them as negative reactions. I took it as the physical pain of breaking out of an egg now that have to follow my directive to contact the residents first before doing any work for the ward in an effort to break out of the lethargic patterns of life at the ward office, relying only on cut-and-dried administrative office manners.

I inaugurated the system under which officers and staff at the ward office who have no intention to carry out the resident-centered ward policies can be transferred to other wards. As of now, a total of 61 employees have been sent to other wards on the exchange program.

In order to change the ward office around, I have adopted a number of measures. Strengthening the camaraderie with the ward chief, which can be done through a variety of methods including having lunch together or going to a movie together after office hours and having mugs of draft beer after seeing the shows in order to have frank conversations on any subjects.

I also decided to give citations to any employee of the ward if they make notable contributions toward improving the quality of life for ward residents at any time of the year. I also helped them to go abroad for training with the money collected from ward employees. In 2011, 38 employees were sent to Singapore to learn how the public office workers in that country work, as well as to recharge their batteries away from the ward.

The meetings to solve current issues at the ward, which were previously held only with managers and higher level staff, were open to all staff so that ideas and problems could be introduced at the meetings including by those at the bottom of the bureaucracy so that we can create policies that can really work, since they are more broadly based and are also helpful for developing future leaders in the public offices.

Those who attended the meetings most often gained confidence and insight for solving problems.

Q: What are some of the representative results from the communication-based administration you practice?

A: In the past half year, I called on 8,000 homes and shops along with higher-than dong chief officers of the ward and listened to what they wanted and solved their issues. I also set up an internet window for ward residents to list what they wanted from the ward chief. As a result, some 4,990 problems were solved with related officers directly discussing the problems to find answers.

In the past, things had to pass six steps to get to the ward chief, starting from a staff member in charge, section head, department manager, and others, but now we can all sit down at a table and take care of the problems all at once. The collective power can solve anything for over 440,000 ward residents, I believe.

We implemented the traffic violation jurors’ committee to deal with parking violations in the ward. They judged the seriousness of the traffic violations by reading the explanations submitted by the violators and meted out penalties. So far, they met for 34 times and dealt with 6,459 parking violation cases so far. We started the system to introduce the rulings on public offenses on the side of the residents, not through the bureaucracy. The ward also appointed 639 residents to supervise public construction projects undertaken in the Seocho ward.

Q: What did the role played by the Seocho ward chief mean in connection with the Seocho Ward securing the highest Happiness Index among the 25 wards in Seoul?

A: I would like to refer to what Khalil Jibran said on the relationship between children and parents. He said that the parents are like the bow in bringing up their children. The bow has a lonely and difficult mission, which is to shoot the arrows as far as they can fly with the love of parents for their children.

The ward chief is like the bow for its 440,000 residents and should be like a dyke to safeguard the lives of the residents seeking happiness in their lives in the ward. In the center of the ward chief’s mind is an incorruptible cleanliness. I suspended the exclusive contract system for projects of less than 1 million won and installed the transfer system for officers and staff who spent more than three years in the same position in the ward office.

I also made public all the details of the wards expenses and adopted the one-strike policy for any requests for personnel matters. I believe that the root power for making the ward the top ward in Seoul in terms of happiness has been the direct communication with the ward residents, which helped the ward to pursue various policies aimed at making the ward a happy place to live. 

A special outstanding characteristic of the Seocho Ward is that every resident cares for others and has a positive mind towards life in general. The ward has the largest space among all the wards in Seoul and the highest ratio for green zones. Amid the natural environmentally-friendly infra-structure are excellent traffic, logistics, and sites for large businesses to do business. The educational levels of the residents is also among the highest among the wards in Seoul with 73.6 percent of the family heads with a college degree or above.

One of the major focuses of my policies for the ward is healthcare for the residents by seeking out those who are ill and taking care of them, especially those who are economically distressed, and, in particular, those who live in the vinyl houses in Naegok-dong to provide them with free healthcare services.

A focus will also be paid on killing mosquitoes during the summer by using mudfish. The ward will secure a lot of mudfish and have them spread around the places where mosquitoes live like swampy areas and unsanitary places, such as dirty streams and ponds.

An overall aim of the wardr policies is to maintain or even lengthen the average life span for the residents, which stands at 83.1 years for men and 88.1 years for women, which is about 2 years longer than that of the Japanese. The death rate stands at 284.2 persons per 100,000 residents, far lower than the national average of 414.3 persons.

The ward will also host various events where residents meet and exchange greetings including the Hanbul Music Festival, a global music event, and the Seocho-gol Festival.

The ward will also hold events to create jobs for the young people such as free lessons on tax accounting, which provided jobs for 56 young people in the ward, and the flea market, whose annual turnover amounted to more than 10 billion won.

The ward will see that free bike leasing will continue during the rush hours from subway stations and other major transportation points to solve traffic jams. During the past year, some 40,000 people used the bikes and the ward secured 175 bikes at nine bike leasing points at subway stations in the ward.

Q: What do you plan to do during the upcoming two years left in your job as the ward chief?

A: I think the ward can change the lifestyles of its residents, as policies of the ward depend on the bureaucrats that make up those policies and the ward chief can change the way of thinking by the bureaucrats working for the ward.

I will continue to stick to the ideas that the ward residents are the sources of various ward policies and the answers lie in jobsites.

We at the ward are pondering setting up a program called the ‘door-to-door visit’ to hear directly from the residents what they want from the ward and reflect them in our policies.

The Seocho Ward won the Internet Communication Award twice in a row in 2010 and 2011. During the remainder of my four-year tenure as chief, I will make sure that every household in the ward will be visited and through SNS listen to what the residents want from the ward and solve their problems.

My other aim in the last two years of my tenure, I will make sure that every bureaucrat working for the ward will be clean. I will continue to ban exclusive contracts for projects worth more than 1 million won and transfer officers and staff who stay on the same job over three years. I will continue to uphold the one-strike system in personnel matters at the ward, meaning that a special request for a favor on personnel matters at the ward will be dealt with harshly. I will make sure that 1,300 officers and staff of the ward will continue to remain clean and at the same to maintain the ward’s top happiness index and lead the world in that regard.

We will faithfully complete the unfinished projects in the ward including the Jeongbosa Tunnel, the Woomyun-dong High-Tech R&D Center, the Bangbae Integrated Cultural Center, the reconstruction the Seocho-gu Citizens’ Center, and the Banpo Public Library right on time without a hitch so that the residents will be able to enjoy their lives in a better surrounding.