Gwanak District Launches "Mobile Gwanak Office" to Tour 21 Neighborhoods and Communicate with Residents

Starting in Sillim-dong, Continuing Until November 3

Gwanak District in Seoul (Mayor Park Junhee) announced on the 1st that it has launched the “Mobile Gwanak Office (聽),” where the district mayor visits each neighborhood to listen to residents’ opinions, starting with Sillim-dong on September 30.

Park Junhee, Mayor of Gwanak-gu, delivering a greeting at the mobile Gwanak Office held at Sillim-dong Community Service Center. Courtesy of Gwanak-gu.

From now until November 3, the district will visit all 21 neighborhoods, covering one or two each day, to gather feedback from residents on local policies and everyday suggestions. The Mobile Gwanak Office is an expansion of the “Gwanak Office,” an open cafe-style mayor’s office space created on the first floor of the district office in 2018, which has been operated as an outreach program since 2019.

On the first day in Sillim-dong, residents raised issues such as parking, redevelopment, subway noise, bus stop installation, and road safety. In response to requests for expanding public parking lots and redeveloping old housing, Mayor Park Junhee said, “The expansion of public parking lots will be included in our mid- to long-term plans, and redevelopment and reconstruction will be actively supported so that they can proceed quickly through the dedicated maintenance support team under the mayor.”

The district will review and verify the suggestions with the relevant departments on-site, and inform the residents who submitted them of the outcomes. For each suggestion, a management card is created to track progress until the matter is resolved.

According to the district, over the past eight years, it has toured all neighborhoods and collected 1,055 suggestions from 11,804 residents. These gathered opinions have led to changes such as the operation of the “Gwanak Gang Gamchan Bus” and the introduction of the “Gwanak No. 12 Village Bus.” In the current ninth term, the district also plans to operate the “Cheokcheok Haedream Center,” which proactively visits single-person households and vulnerable groups to address residential inconveniences.

Mayor Park Junhee stated, “Our recent win of the ‘Special Award for Excellent Participatory Democracy Cases’ from OIDP, the first of its kind in Korea, is the result of communication and collaborative governance achieved together with residents.” He added, “By listening to residents directly on-site and working to solve local issues, I am committed to ensuring that valuable feedback leads to everyday improvements, creating a better Gwanak for everyone.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.