“In 2024, the city of Seoul will fill the city with warmth and add beauty and charm to various parts of Seoul through ‘accompaniment with the weak’ and take an even stronger leap forward toward a happy future for 10 million citizens.”
This is a sentence that summarizes Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon’s New Year’s address. Since starting his term, Mayor Oh has been talking about ‘Seoul as a special city of companionship and charm’ as his administrative motto.
In the New Year’s address, the city of Seoul emphasizes the slogan by including single quotation marks around ‘accompanying the weak’, but in fact, only about 20% of the text is related to that slogan. In his New Year’s address, Mayor Oh speaks more about tourism development and projects for economic development.
In fact, Mayor Oh Se-hoon focuses on the attractiveness of the special city rather than on the eastern side, promoting related policies such as design innovation and waterfront space development, announcing six major deregulation measures to revitalize redevelopment, and planning a tourism development project to make the Han River a global landmark. We are pursuing a “great transformation and renovation of urban space.”
For example, among Mayor Oh’s many development and redevelopment projects, there is the ‘Great Han River Project’. The Great Han River Project is connected to the Han River Renaissance Project promoted by Oh Se-hoon’s administration in 2007. In particular, a budget of 20.8 billion won was allocated for the ‘River Bus’, which is being promoted with the goal of operating in September next year. However, there are voices from climate justice groups that condemn the reckless development of the Han River for reasons such as its ineffectiveness as public transportation and destruction of the ecosystem.
Seoul Innovation Park disappears
One of the places disappearing due to Oh Se-hoon’s urban development is Seoul Innovation Park. Seoul Innovation Park (hereinafter referred to as Innovation Park), which opened in 2015, is introduced by the Seoul Metropolitan Government as a social innovation platform where citizens become co-creators and work together to create innovation in everyday life. Innovation Park was a space where civil society organizations moved in and sought to solve social problems or social enterprises took on new challenges, and for residents, it was a resting place where they could take a walk and enjoy nature.
However, after Mayor Oh took office, the city of Seoul suddenly notified the Seoul Innovation Center of the end of Innovation Park operation in August 2022. In December of that year, a “high-quality economic town” redevelopment plan was announced and tenant organizations were kicked out. He announced plans to create landmarks such as a 60-story building and a large shopping mall. He also said he would lay off workers at the Innovation Park and only hire some workers at lower wages for two years before construction begins in 2025. In fact, it appears that the intention is to destroy the Innovation Park during the temporary operation period and develop it later.
In relation to this, there was opposition from civil society and local residents who said, ‘Obtaining commercial profits by developing public land undermines the public nature of Seoul.’ In particular, there are tenant organizations that are still holding out in the Innovation Park to this day, such as ‘Cafe Sul’, which practices zero waste and veganism, and ‘The Smile Dental Clinic for the Disabled’, which provides accessibility for the disabled.
‘Because it is located in the Innovation Park,’ Cafe Sul was able to sell drinks made with ingredients grown directly in the garden in front of the store. At The Smile Dental Clinic for the Disabled, the behavior of children with developmental disabilities who ran away during treatment was accommodated within the park, ensuring safety for patients. Ignoring that reason, the city of Seoul is trying to drive them out by filing a lawsuit against them.
When the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced plans to collectively demolish buildings in Innovation Park as a temporary utilization plan, on January 18th, the ‘Citizens’ Meeting to Protect Seoul Innovation Park as a Public Space’ organized around Eunpyeong-gu residents and local civil society groups. “Until a safe plan for the use of the park is realized for citizens, the demolition process and relocation of public institutions must be completely halted,” he demanded.
In his New Year’s address, Mayor Oh said, “Through innovation in urban space, we will increase the attractiveness of Seoul and significantly expand leisure space for citizens,” but he is carrying out a contradictory policy of trying to eliminate Innovation Park, which citizens are already using as a leisure space. there is.
Furthermore, the city of Seoul is trying to retreat the space of ‘innovation’, where cultural artists work, social enterprises and youth take on new challenges, and civil society organizations question the social system, back to private development and commercialization. This is taking away everyone’s space, that is, public space, from the citizens of Seoul.
Rights-centered public jobs customized for people with severe disabilities have disappeared.
While budgets have been allocated for the construction of the River Bus and Seoul Port, there are also institutions and policies that are disappearing without a sound due to full budget cuts. ‘Rights-centered public jobs tailored to the severely disabled (hereinafter referred to as rights-centered public jobs)’ is one of them.
The rights-centered public jobs implemented by the Seoul Metropolitan Government are public jobs at the local government level tailored to the rights of severely disabled people who have been excluded from the non-disabled labor market, especially the most severely disabled and post-institutionalized severely disabled people. Workers hired for rights-centered public jobs worked in three fields: rights advocacy, culture and arts, and awareness improvement, taking into account the types and characteristics of disabilities.
During the budget preparation process in November last year, the city of Seoul cut the entire related budget, eliminating rights-centered public jobs and firing 400 disabled workers. In addition, as a policy of Donghaeng Special City, specialized jobs tailored to each type of disability are introduced. However, not only does this specialized job not succeed to all laid-off workers, but it is also tantamount to exclusion because ordinary specialized jobs are made impossible for people with the most severe disabilities.
While rights-centered public jobs have the important purpose of informing the community of the rights stipulated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and ensuring that the rights are implemented, specialized jobs involve inserting severely disabled people into a profit-oriented production system. It is only used as. The guarantee of labor rights for the disabled, which was intended to take a step toward rights-centered public jobs, has seriously regressed.
Mr. Kim Hong-gi, who participated as a dismissed worker in the ‘Citizens’ Debate on the Abolition of Rights-Oriented Public Jobs in Seoul and the Layoff of 400 Persons with Severe Disabilities’ held on December 27th last year, said about the layoffs, “Are they telling us to die quietly in facilities or in the corners of our houses again? “It’s no different,” he said.
Rights-centered public jobs have created an environment where people with the most severe disabilities can come out into the community rather than in a facility and live together with the disabled and non-disabled people. The city of Seoul trampled on the pride of disabled workers who created rights and created a social foundation by saying, “This is also labor.”
What’s left in Seoul?
In addition to Innovation Park and rights-centered public jobs, the city of Seoul is providing support to social minorities or institutions responsible for public care, such as the independent living support project linked to residential facilities for disabled people, the Seoul Social Service Center daycare center, and the Seoul Women’s Craft Center The Arium. Due to budget cuts, it will not be operated this year.
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon is focusing on attracting tourists by partnering with private companies while developing the city. So what remains in Seoul? What is left for those who make a living in Seoul? As Mayor Oh Se-hoon eliminates and hides things, I wish we could imagine more.
Policies that must be guaranteed to those in need of space and care where no one is excluded, policies that are not only green in name but that prevent climate and ecosystem destruction as much as possible, projects that guarantee rights rather than pity for the weak and can give a new name, etc. . What should we leave behind in the city of Seoul? What do we really need?
▲Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon is giving an encouraging speech at the 2024 Seoul Social Welfare New Year’s Greetings held at Seoul City Hall in Jung-gu, Seoul on the 24th. ⓒYonhap News
