The Man Who Changes the System
That evening, the phone rang. The moment I saw the screen, a deep sigh escaped me.
It was my father, Assemblyman Yeo Byeong-guk. Exactly as expected. There was no way he hadn't heard the buzz around Yeojin City lately. I loosened the top button of my collar and picked up.
"Mu-jin."
One word was all it took to read the mood. Nagging mode: activated. Apparently every father on the planet was the same.
"I've been watching the news. You're not doing whatever you please again, are you?"
I closed my eyes for a moment, then opened them and answered in a calm voice.
"Father, the pedestrian-centered commercial revitalization is a policy that came out of thorough review."
"Review? You think that review is actually finished?"
My father's voice rose a notch.
"You can't run city government like it's your personal business. Ram it through half-cocked and you won't be able to handle the fallout later."
I swallowed a sigh. My father had spent his whole life in politics; compromise and coordination were second nature to him. It wasn't that I didn't know that. But I had no intention of doing things his way right now.
"Get too far ahead and the city council and the residents will push back. Shove it through like that and the headwind will hit you instead."
"I've already consulted with the merchants."
"That doesn't mean it's all settled."
I drew a short breath and said,
"Father, I'm the mayor, and I'm pushing this forward because I think something has to start changing, even if it takes this. Trust me for now."
A sigh came through the receiver. Then a low, weighty voice.
"Mu-jin, politics is..."
The speech about how politics demands compromise, how change must be coaxed along slowly, how anything forced too fast snaps. A familiar sermon. And to the man I was now, it meant nothing.
I had thought long and hard, studied the problem, and searched for a realistic answer. The conclusion I reached was that erecting grand buildings or monuments in a place like Yeojin City was not the answer.
In a metropolis like Seoul, money pools easily, so massive projects launch without much struggle, and their effects show up in a dozen places. But in Yeojin City, doing things the old way would buy only short-term results — and in the long run, it would help nothing at all.
So I changed the method: force an issue into existence, and change how people behave. The first step of that was tearing the road open and creating a Car-Free Street. If this project succeeded, Yeojin City would gain an entirely new landmark.
I bit my lip quietly and said,
"Thank you for the advice, Father."
After a brief pause, I added firmly,
"But I'm going to do what I have to do."
And I hung up.
While I spent that week wracking my brain over the old downtown road problem, something far bigger was unfolding inside and outside City Hall: a complete overhaul of the Yeojin City civil service.
To change the city, the administration had to change first. Under the existing system, even the best-laid plans were useless. The bureaucracy was thoroughly conservative, with a strong tendency to spend its hours playing it "safe" rather than actually working.
I knew that all too well. In my previous life, doing urban planning consulting, I had run into it countless times. No matter how diligently you drafted and submitted a report, the officials never made a decision first. Offer an opinion, and all you got back was "We'll consult with our superiors," over and over. In the end, responsibility got shuffled around until everything fizzled out, and a few months later the very same content would be reviewed all over again. In this life, I swore I would never let that happen.
So the first thing I did was change the organizational structure itself.
The night before the official briefing at City Hall, I summoned Chief of Staff Kang Seol-heon. Holding up the draft reorganization plan, I spoke quietly.
"Chief of Staff. I'm announcing this plan at tomorrow morning's meeting."
Kang Seol-heon spread the document open the moment she sat down, her eyes narrowing slightly. Her hand stopped about two pages in.
"Mayor... you're announcing this now?"
"That's right. Everything's ready."
For a long while she looked back and forth between the document and me.
"Normally a reorganization like this happens early in a term, and only when an elected mayor has formally taken office. You came in through a special election, and nearly two years of your term are already gone. In cases like this, most mayors respect the existing structure and settle for creating a single special-task department."
I nodded along as I listened, then said firmly,
"True. Most of them. But I didn't become mayor to be one of the 'most.'"
Kang Seol-heon's expression hardened.
"Push it through like this and the whole organization will wobble. Administration is a train. Yank the direction hard at the front and every car behind jumps the rails. The field staff end up paste."
"That train is already circling with no destination," I cut in quietly. "I've held back all this time because I worried the staff would be thrown into confusion, but that holding back is exactly what let this city stagnate. An organization that suffocates me suffocates the citizens even more. It's time to move."
Kang Seol-heon let out a small sigh and rested her arms on the desk.
"Mr. Mayor, if you're that idealistic, why on earth did you choose administration? Administration is reality. Administrative organizations don't flex. You need persuasion, and you need speed."
"I know that too."
I slid a single sheet of paper toward her and went on.
"But think about it. All that going slow and bending to reality — who did it actually help? Did that 'speed' change a single citizen's life? Not once."
Kang Seol-heon stared at me hard. Conflict flickered across her eyes.
"There may be internal resistance right away. But I'll take responsibility and drive it through. We've shown change on the outside. Now we have to show that the inside is changing too. That's what real reform is."
Kang Seol-heon said nothing for a long time. Her fingertips drifted slowly across the document. Then, at last, she gave a small nod.
"...Get ready for tomorrow's meeting. In exchange, I'll handle any opposition factions."
"Thank you."
She rose from her seat with a short laugh.
"A typhoon really is about to sweep through this City Hall."
I smiled slowly.
"If it's a typhoon we need, then we take the hit."
The next morning, the directors and division heads gathered in the conference room. Whether because of the sudden summons, their faces were mostly bewildered or uneasy. They had already tasted my style, and with no telling what would erupt at today's meeting, they sat quietly, watching for signs. I rose from my seat and put a single document up on the screen.
"Effective immediately, the administrative organization of Yeojin City will be overhauled from top to bottom."
The conference room stirred at once. Vice Mayor Jin Mu-gyeol frowned and asked,
"Mr. Mayor, a sudden reorganization like this... Was there sufficient review of the existing structure and personnel assignments?"
"That's a fair point. But having reviewed the existing organization and its staffing, I concluded that efficiency is poor. In particular, the current department names alone make it impossible to tell what goals they're meant to serve."
I advanced the screen. First the old organizational chart went up, then the newly restructured one.
"The Road Division is now the Walkable City Division."
"...What?"
Someone blurted it out.
"The Culture and Arts Division becomes the Urban Culture and Creation Division, the Traffic Division becomes the Public Transportation Division, the Welfare Division becomes the Happiness Assurance Division, and the Urban Planning Division becomes the Citizen Space Design Division. Every department's name is now aligned with a policy goal rather than a mere task category."
Several officials wore troubled expressions. Changing a name meant changing a department's identity. This was no cosmetic change. Then Noh Chae-eun, head of the Planning and Budget Division, raised her hand.
"Mr. Mayor, changing a name doesn't change a policy direction. Policy has to be tied to the budget. Are you saying the budget allocations for the projects already underway must be readjusted as well?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying," I answered flatly.
Noh Chae-eun's brow creased.
"Then the projects each division has in progress are highly likely to run into serious disruption. That sounds less like renaming and more like putting the projects themselves up for re-examination."
"Correct. Only when a department's goal is clear can the officials doing the work find their bearing. Take the old Road Division: it simply handled road maintenance and repair. But as the Walkable City Division, it must lead pedestrian-centered urban design. In other words, its mission is no longer managing roads — it's creating an environment where people can actually walk."
Vice Mayor Jin Mu-gyeol crossed his arms and spoke.
"Mr. Mayor, it's an ideal direction, certainly. But whether the civil service will accept a reorganization like this is another question. Will officials accustomed to the old ways adapt easily?"
I smirked. That's exactly why I'm going to make them adapt by force. The words circled in my head, but I swallowed them and said,
"It won't be easy, and yes, suddenly different department names will cause some confusion. But the officials will also grasp far more clearly where their work is meant to go and what direction I, as mayor, want. I believe the sense of direction will gradually take hold."
I looked slowly around the room.
"Of course, at this stage it's only a simple change. Only the names have moved; the work itself remains as it was. I don't expect the officials' passive attitudes to shift overnight. I raised it as a way of opening the door to change gently."
I brought up the next screen.
"The second item of the reorganization. From now on, the individual officials' contact information published on the city website will be removed."
"...I'm sorry, what??"
The conference room stirred again.
"From now on, every civil complaint will be received by the Complaint Office first, then routed to the department in charge. Citizens will no longer be able to call individual officials directly."
Once again it was Vice Mayor Jin Mu-gyeol who raised his hand, his face flustered.
"Mr. Mayor, then how are complaints to be answered? If the officers in charge can't communicate with citizens directly, case processing may only slow down further."
"The team leaders will handle the coordination."
I advanced the screen and continued.
"Frankly, in Yeojin City only the front-line officials do the work; the moment people rise above team leader, many of them let go of the rope. So I'm putting the work on the team leaders. When a complaint comes in, the team leaders will coordinate it to the relevant departments. And..."
I let the sentence hang deliberately and watched their reactions. Every nerve in the room was taut.
"From now on, if work a department is supposed to handle goes unresolved for a set period, the team leaders involved will face personnel consequences."
The officials' faces froze for an instant. Vice Mayor Jin Mu-gyeol, unable to hide his alarm, said carefully,
"Mr. Mayor, you've played a bold hand."
At those words, I sank into thought for a moment. It was because of something from the past.
Once, an official I was coordinating work with abruptly canceled a meeting. The reason was simple. He had come in that morning and was just starting the day as planned when a single phone call shook everything loose.
It was a complainant, protesting in a hard voice. Why had that decision been made? The voice on the line climbed and climbed until, in the end, the officer had to rush out to the site on the spot.
The officer reported the situation to his team leader, but the team leader never stepped forward himself; he simply ordered the officer to go down and fix it. So the team leader stayed at his desk with other work while the officer set aside his own tasks and headed for the field.
Hearing the story, a thought struck me. From the complainant's side, it's wonderful that the officer arrives right away — but in the meantime, everything else slips. And in the end, the demands of whoever shouts loudest get priority. Watching that absurdity repeat itself over and over, I came to feel strongly that it had to change.
A solution had come to me back then: do as other countries do — stop publishing officials' phone numbers on the website and receive every complaint through the city's central contact point. Build a system where the complaints that come in are sorted at the team-leader level and dispatched to the right departments.
Wouldn't that just breed departments passing the buck? No. The mayor is me. If a complaint drifts for more than a week, the team leaders of the departments involved take a demerit. With promotions on the line, who would bother shirking? If anything, the departments in charge would hunt for a workable compromise and clear the problem efficiently.
After a moment, I gave my answer.
"In the civil service, nothing matters more than the personnel evaluation. No results, no promotion. So the heart of this reorganization is 'accountable administration.' Delay the work or pass it to someone else, and every team leader involved answers for it. In other words, when one team leader drops the ball, the others pay for it too — so they'll have no choice but to coordinate."
The officials went white. The tension was written plainly across the team-leader-level executives in particular. Then Noh Chae-eun, head of the Planning and Budget Division, raised her hand once more.
"Mr. Mayor, if this system works, wouldn't other local governments have adopted it already? Why has no one else ever tried?"
I smirked.
"The other mayors wanted to stay on good terms with their officials. I'm different."