District Mayor Who Gets Up at 3 A.M. to Read Newspapers: "Budget Execution Rates Aren't Success; Changes in Residents' Lives Are the Real Measure"

Interview with Gangbuk District Mayor Jeong Changsu
Recycling center innovation, "Everyone's Table," deep cleaning at senior centers, and more
"You have to recognize a problem to see it"
"It's not about saving money just to leave it unspent; it's about spending it well"

Jeong Changsu, mayor of Seoul's Gangbuk District, gets up at 3 a.m. It is a habit he has kept for more than 30 years. The first thing he does is read the newspapers. He displays the entire day's newspaper pages across three screens, including a 40-inch monitor, and spends an hour and a half to two hours reading and organizing them.

When we met him in his office on October 8, Mayor Jeong said, "Curiosity is a major driving force in my life." That same curiosity leads him to scrutinize, one by one, how the district's budget is spent.

Gangbuk District Mayor Jeong Changsu is being interviewed by The Asia Business Daily in his office. Behind him are Gangbuk District’s mascots, modeled after endangered animals that live on Bukhansan: Hoya (leopard cat), Haro (eagle owl), Gangbaek (native fox), and Saessak (Bukhansan snail). Photo by Gangbuk District.

"Why buy water to hand out?"

The best example of Mayor Jeong's approach to work is the bottled water distributed in summer. Gangbuk District has long handed out single-use PET bottles of water to residents at places such as heat shelters. Every year, the district budget was spent again on buying and transporting the water. Mayor Jeong began asking questions.

"One of my favorite sayings is, 'You have to recognize a problem to see it.' If you don't recognize a problem, you won't see it. I've spent decades training myself to identify problems, so I started asking, 'Why are we handing out water?'"

This summer, Mayor Jeong changed the "Gangbuk Oasis" program. The district installed water purifiers and ice makers along the Ui Stream, allowing residents to bring their own bottles and fill them with water and ice. Mayor Jeong explained, "Installation costs around KRW 20 million to KRW 30 million, and once installed, the equipment can be used every year. We can reduce bottled-water purchasing costs, which run into hundreds of millions of won, by paying only for water and electricity." The program also helps protect the environment by reducing the use of single-use PET bottles.

This problem-solving mindset was cultivated through his daily early-morning newspaper reading and other reading. "Our country is not small. Its gross domestic product (GDP) is as large as that of the entire African continent. Naturally, a lot happens, but we don't know about it. Local news, in particular, doesn't get much coverage. When I read the newspaper, I make a note of things that catch my eye so I can look them up later."

He first searches for and reads articles on taxation, public finance, and budgets. He adds links to important articles in Google Docs, along with explanations and his own thoughts. Mayor Jeong said, "If I later remember a phrase and think, 'What was that again?' I can search for it." These accumulated notes lead to policy ideas. On weekends, he looks through the book-review sections of all 12 newspapers, including business dailies. He buys and reads around 20 books a month.

"Budget execution rates are not a measure of success"

As a budget expert, the initiative Mayor Jeong most wanted to pursue was performance-based budgeting. He repeatedly emphasized the principle that "budgets should be evaluated not by how much money was spent, but by what changed in residents' lives."

"When people carry out a project, they often don't really think about why they're doing it or what they should be trying to achieve. They do it because it's been assigned to them. That's why I say budget execution rates are not a measure of success. We should be discussing actual results, whether that's satisfaction or something else."

He is starting by discussing his own campaign-promise initiatives with the relevant departments to set precise performance targets. A network of outside experts, including unpaid special advisers and the Nara Salim Research Institute, supports this effort. Recently, he personally gave a special lecture on budgeting to district office executives and staff responsible for budgets. The district is also running "Innovation Forums," where outside experts are invited to speak on specific topics and study them together with officials from the relevant departments.

Because of his background as a "budget expert," some worried before he took office that he would "squeeze the budget." Mayor Jeong responded: "Improving budget efficiency isn't about saving money just to leave it unspent; it's about spending it well. What's important is spending it properly to ensure the community's sustainable development. If not spending money were the priority, we shouldn't collect taxes in the first place."

In July and August, the district reviewed all its programs and improved, consolidated, or discontinued 56 of them. It expects to save more than KRW 1.1 billion next year. It has already saved more than KRW 1 billion by not replacing the existing slogan or remodeling the mayor's office. The funds freed up will be redirected to areas residents feel the impact of, such as housing improvements, education, and welfare.

District chief Jeong visited the site last month and explained the purpose of the project while using a “Gangbuk Oasis” outdoor water purifier. Provided by Gangbuk-gu.

The recycling sorting center is a blueprint for what he calls "spending the budget well." About 100 people currently work at the center, but 80% of the incoming materials cannot be recycled and must be processed again at additional cost. Mayor Jeong believes that with support from the Seoul Metropolitan Government, installing automated equipment could raise the recycling rate to 90%. "Using the budget efficiently while protecting the environment - that's my approach," he said.

Mayor Jeong acknowledged, "Understanding a policy isn't difficult, but changing people's behavior is the hardest part." His proposed solution is to offer meaningful rewards. Starting next year, he has substantially increased bonuses and overseas training expenses, raising the relevant budget from around KRW 300 million to KRW 700 million. The number of eligible employees will also increase.

"This isn't about handing out money; it's about encouraging people to work. When fair recognition and rewards increase, people feel proud and think, 'If I make an effort, someone will notice.'"

He said he would ensure that employees doing difficult work receive rewards. He is also looking for ways to provide additional allowances to the Sanitation Department, which everyone tries to avoid because its staff have to deal with complaints and foul odors. He is also considering ways to motivate technical staff in civil engineering, architecture, taxation, and cadastral surveying, who repeatedly perform the same duties, to work more proactively.

He said he told his employees: "I don't take it for granted that you work hard. That's why I intend to reward those who make even a little extra effort. Whatever public officials do, their work is highly likely to benefit society, so you can take pride in it."

"Learn from the best and aim to be a strong second"

Not being fixated on creating something new is also part of his style. Mayor Jeong quoted a slogan from Moon Seok-jin, former head of Seodaemun District: "Don't try to do something new. Learn from what others do well and aim to come in second. If you do that, you may end up doing even better than the first-place finisher."

A pilot student-care program planned for next year is one example. The district will adapt two models to suit Gangbuk: one from Seoul's Jung District, where each school runs its own after-school care, and another from Dobong District, where care facilities are located outside schools. The plan to automate the recycling sorting center also draws on examples from Eunpyeong District and Hanam City in Gyeonggi Province, while aiming to use better equipment. "Five to 10 years have passed since those examples, so we'll use better equipment," he said.

A policy Mayor Jeong is still developing and has not yet announced is "Everyone's Table." The plan is to create a place where anyone can get a meal for KRW 3,000 to KRW 4,000, operating on a model similar to the district office cafeteria.

"When I looked at the district's population distribution, I found that more than half of the young people live around Suyu Station, where transportation is convenient. So we're planning a place in the Suyu Station area where young people can have breakfast before work, and spaces for older residents in other parts of the district. We'll carefully design the operating model so that nearby businesses aren't adversely affected."

To support older residents, professional cleaning companies are visiting all 105 senior centers to carry out deep cleaning. No one had requested the service. But when he visited in person, he found that some centers were difficult to maintain and had developed odors. Mayor Jeong said, "I don't think the older residents ever imagined that the district office would clean their centers for them." The district also increased funding for food supplies at senior centers. "Even if it doesn't cost much, we should start with changes that people can clearly feel," he explained.

The district has decided to provide KRW 5 million to each of 34 schools for parent-led activities. The aim is for parents and students to plan activities themselves, whether a field trip or a camping event on the school grounds.

Mayor Jeong identified public libraries as one of Gangbuk District's most urgent infrastructure needs. The district has only four public libraries, and they are small. Before the end of this year, the district will begin drawing up its first-ever long-term development plan for public libraries. Securing land will not be easy. "When we inquire about land, owners ask for several times its appraised value," he said. "But we are looking for a way forward while sticking to our principle of not paying more than the appraised value."

At the end of the interview, he recalled the final sentence of a Jack London novel he said he had read 40 years ago. It describes the protagonist's death as having "ceased to know." "That's when I realized: to know is to live."

District Chief Jeong said in an interview, "The point is not to save the budget and leave money unused, but to spend it well." Provided by Gangbuk-gu.

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