Category: Biden School
Taking Seoul by storm
December 17, 2024 Written and photographed by the 2024 Biden School Seoul Case Study Program group
UD Biden School graduate students, professor recap their time on the Seoul Case Study Program 2024 trip
In October of 2024, Biden School professor Jonathan Justice and six graduate students traveled to Seoul, South Korea, as part of their coursework for UAPP730, also known as the Seoul Case Study Program.
Over the nine-day period, the group, along with peers from Cornell University and the University of Georgia, participated in intensive fieldwork and academic sessions sponsored by the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) and the International School of Urban Sciences (ISUS) of the University of Seoul (UOS). Keep reading to get the group's first-hand recap of their time in Seoul.
What we did during our 2024 Seoul Case Study Program (Oct. 20-28, 2024)
Trip participants:
Letong (Judy) He, student in the Master of Public Policy (MPP) program
Jonathan B. Justice, professor
Milan Katuwal, student in the MPP program
Solbee Kim, student in the MPP program
Shaleen Munuhe, student in the Master of Energy and Environmental Policy (MEEP) program
Tani Salma, student in the MEEP program
Matthew Van, student in the Disaster Science and Management (DISA) doctoral program
Letong, Jonathan, Milan, Shaleen, and Matthew: We left Philadelphia on October 18 to start our journey to Seoul where they'd connect with Solbee and Tani, who traveled separately. Soon after arriving on October 19, we headed to the nearby Gwangjang Market, where we ate a variety of classic, tasty Korean food: tteokbokki, gimbap, mandu, and raw octopus. Solbee and Tani joined us at the hotel after enjoying a day in Seoul with Solbee's mom.
Sunday, October 20, was the start of the official program. The day began, as every day would, after a buffet breakfast in the hotel with our group (Letong, Jonathan, Milan, Solbee, Shaleen, Tani, and Matt) and the groups from Cornell University (Prof. Ron Rigores and six MPA and EMPA students) and the University of Georgia (Prof. Taesik Yun and eight MPA students) boarding a bus that took us from the hotel to the University of Seoul campus.
We enjoyed a lesson in Korean history and culture from the Korean Spirit and Culture Promotion Project, and dressed up in traditional Korean hanbok for a group photo. After lunch, we strolled the UOS campus and nearby hiking trails before traveling from UOS to the Gyeongbok Palace, the seat of government for six centuries of the Joseon Dynasty, and Gwanghwamun Plaza. (Seoul was chosen in the late 14th century as the capital for the newly established Joseon Dynasty, based in large part on its powerful pungsu jiri (feng shui): the walled city and the Gyeongbokgung faced south, with mountains behind and the Han River in front.)
After a buffet dinner with the other program participants near the Gyeongbokgung we enjoyed a late-evening stroll to Dongdaemun, a fashion wholesale and retail sales area near Heunginjimun, the east (dong) great [dae] gate [mun] of the original walled city, via the Cheonggyecheon, a recreated stream running east from Gwanghwamun. The original waterway had been filled in and an elevated highway built above the fill in the 1960s. The elevated highway was torn down and the modernized recreation of the original stream opened in 2005.
The academic part of the program began Monday morning with a brief orientation by ISUS Dean Shin Lee, the SCSP faculty and staff leaders, Professors Yeong-Hee Jang and Seung Beom Seo, and program manager Chris Kim.
Korean Society of Water and Wastewater Director Youngran Kim's technical lecture this morning described the challenges of managing Seoul's water cycle. The city's demand for water, dense development, and extensive impermeable surfaces have combined to lower the water table significantly.
After a boxed lunch on the UOS campus, we boarded the bus to travel to the new Seoul Metropolitan Fire Academy and Incident Command Training Center (ICTC). One of the ironies of successfully reducing the number of fires in the city has been that firefighters don't get much practice in fighting fires and rescuing people from burning buildings. The ICTC includes a virtual-reality setup that allows firefighters to practice searching and rescuing in fire scenes. We got to play the roles of incident commanders giving and firefighters following instructions as we tried to evacuate a burning building.
The day ended with a delicious welcome dinner in the concourse beneath Gwanghwamun Plaza, where Jonathan tried out his Korean on his old friends Dean Lee and colleagues.
Our first lecture on Tuesday was Urban Water System of Seoul+ by ISUS Professor Young-june Choi. Professor Choi led us through a concise history of Seoul's water supply system (95% of the system was destroyed by the Korean War, meaning that the city essentially started again from scratch in the 1960s) and a very detailed description of the current water supply system's technology and management, and the challenges it faces today, including those associated with climate change and the tradeoffs of privacy and data quality presented by new, "smart" water meters. (He had more slides dealing with the combined sewer system, wastewater treatment, and stormwater management, but we ran out of time.)
The second lecture, by Inhee Kim of the Seoul Institute, gave us a similarly detailed and comprehensive understanding of Seoul's overall strategy for urban design and planning, including the Seoul 2040 Plan that began in 2019/2020 and the preliminary concepts for Seoul, Next 100, which had been released only the day before. We learned that the participatory processes used in developing the previous 2030 Master Plan had proved so successful that other Korean cities have adopted more participatory approaches as well. "Maybe we underestimated the citizens," Professor Choi said in noting the pleasant surprise city planners enjoyed when they first tested the participatory approach in 2013. Going forward, the next master plan will be developed with extensive citizen participation, building on the principles of Nature, Humans, and Networks (of economy, transportation, etc.).
After lunch, we traveled by bus to the Hongjecheon artificial waterfall and an adjacent park in the Seodaemun district. Here, we learned about this recently constructed community amenity and visitor attraction, walking on beautifully landscaped (and very steep) trails, including a therapeutic path of soft red clay meant to be walked barefoot. We stayed on the pavement, but saw many local residents and visitors shedding their shoes and letting the clay massage their feet.
Then it was on to City Hall, where we visited the Transport Operations Information Service (TOPIS) to learn from TOPIS Promotion Public Officer Youngjin An about Seoul's ever-increasing use of cameras, sensors, and information integration to optimize the flow of people and goods in and around Seoul.
That evening the Cornell students invited us to join them for dinner at 이조식탁 (Lee and Cho's Table), a restaurant recommended by the hotel staff. It was delicious and inexpensive, and a very good time.
The first lecture on Wednesday, by Dean J. Oullette, focused on understanding the governance of North Korea through a lens of "tourism politics." Relations with North Korea are a perennial unresolved issue for South Korea. Seoul is within artillery range of North Korea, and during our stay there some balloons arrived from the North bearing propaganda leaflets (but not the household garbage brought by some previous balloon drops). Those balloon drops generated some initially alarming, bright red cell phone alerts that warned in English headlines "EXTREME EMERGENCY!" above a dense paragraph of Korean text. In practice, residents of Seoul tend to go about their daily business without thinking much about North Korea, and Oulette's presentation helped us to understand the current situation and future prospects.
Dr. Joeun Kim of the KDI School of Public Policy and Management gave the next lecture of the morning. Listed in the schedule as "Youth Policy," this presentation was a deeply researched and informative analysis of South Korea's ultra-low overall fertility rates and a range of actual and potential policy solutions to increase fertility rates.
In the afternoon, we toured the Mapo Resource Recovery Center (waste-to-energy incinerator). The facility was temporarily shut down for major maintenance work, but we enjoyed a presentation about the advanced technology used in the center (and the many less whiz-bang aspects of making it function as a means of removing solid waste from the city). The center also features a rotating museum of artworks made from discarded objects, and visitors can play some games to learn about generating electricity and steam from waste.
That evening, most of our group strolled through Mapo's Digital Media City area, where we shopped at a farmers market and posed for photos with some large public artworks. Then we walked uphill to the Seoul Silver Grass Festival at Haneul Park (formerly a landfill and now a park with spectacular city views), After enjoying the festival and a spectacular sunset, we took the metro to Gwanak-gu for some shopping and 치킨 (Korean-style fried chicken).
In Thursday's first lecture, Seoul Institute Research Fellow Dr. Youngjun Han provided an overview of Seoul's Public Transportation strategy, particularly the approaches used over the year to rationalize bus service by regulating and coordinating the operations of several private bus operators and to facilitate equity and efficiency using the multi-modal T-Money fare system. More recently, Seoul introduced the unlimited-ride Climate Card as a way to promote the use of mass transit over more carbon-intensive modes such as taxis and private cars, particularly in light of declines in transit use associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
The second lecture, by Seoul Institute Research Fellow Won Seok Nam, provided an overview of Housing Policy in Seoul, including a good explanation of some of the challenges and solutions for housing shortages that are similar to and different from those in other places. For instance, South Korea generally does not have rental housing in the form familiar to the Americas and Europe; instead, the Jeonse and Wolse systems for most rental housing require large upfront deposits and no (Jeonse) or relatively small (Wolse) monthly payments during the lease term. Similarities include the challenges of producing enough housing and maintaining the affordability of housing that meets contemporary acceptability standards. For example, in Seoul, the supply of jjokbang housing has been shrinking, similar to the decline of SROs in the U.S.
After lunch, the students opted into multi-university teams, which spent the afternoon analyzing specific policy areas—birthrates, transportation, and solid waste disposal—and preparing presentations of their analyses and recommendations to be delivered the next morning.
Friday morning began with a Joint Seminar of the SCSP participants and international students in ISUS's master's degree programs. We enjoyed three presentations of masters' thesis projects, followed by the presentations of the three SCSP teams.
Next were the SCSP Closing Ceremony, exchange of gifts, and presentation of certificates of participation. The faculty leaders happily kept our remarks brief so that we were able to make our way to the farewell lunch. The official program for the week came to an end with a trip to the Lotte World Tower, the fifth-tallest building in the world. We took in the breathtaking views and snapped plenty of photos—a great end to a richly rewarding week of learning.
From the Lotte Tower, a few of us took the metro to the Gangnam area, where we visited the Bongeunsa Buddhist temple, the COEX Mall, and the Starfields Library and enjoyed BBQ at a nearby restaurant.
The last few days included Shaleen and Tani's return to the U.S. on Saturday, with the remaining group members spending their time sightseeing, shopping, and visiting with friends. Jonathan visited his old grad school classmate (and first faculty director of the SCSP) Seok-hwi Song and his family in Yongmun, east of Seoul. Others went shopping for gifts and souvenirs to bring back to the U.S. and did some sightseeing in town. Solbee, Jonathan, and Milan returned on Sunday while Letong and Matthew enjoyed a couple more days in Seoul before returning safely to Delaware.
When we reconvened for our regularly scheduled class meeting on Tuesday night, October 29, we all agreed that we had learned a lot, had a great time, and would love to do it again!
For more information on the Seoul Case Study Program, please email Jonathan B. Justice at justice@udel.edu.
