City Hall Becomes the Citizens' Home

The other structural changes went through quietly, without much friction.

Relocating workspaces, reorganizing hallway traffic flows — the civil servants accepted those with a sort of resigned shrug: annoying, but what can you do.

Removing the partitions, however, was a different story.

The pushback was stronger than I'd expected. A few employees took to the internal bulletin board to air their complaints: that their personal privacy was being violated.

I'd anticipated this reaction, but something about it still struck me as odd.

After a moment's hesitation, I decided to post a reply myself. It was better to state my position openly than to let the whole thing slide in silence.

A straight fastball, right down the middle. No one had imagined a mayor in his late twenties would issue an order like this — and then engage with the response himself.

Right after my comment went up, I could feel the internal mood shift and stir.

Look, I have no interest in defending intrusions into anyone's private life. Nobody's personal affairs, emotions, or everyday self-expression should ever be interfered with.

But a workspace is, by its nature, a place for shared work — and what happens inside it belongs to the organization, not to any individual.

The very idea that a partition guarantees "privacy" in that kind of space struck me as an antiquated notion, pure bureaucratic inertia.

I added that, and as expected, no further debate followed.

It's the nature of bureaucratic organizations: once the tone is set, most people adapt quickly and quietly fall in line. What matters is who makes that first course correction, and how.

At the same time, we decided to move forward with a plan to open the first floor of City Hall to the public.

Ordinarily, citizens have limited reasons to visit city hall. Most come to get a passport, file a complaint, or handle tax matters. Beyond that, there's rarely any occasion to use the place at all.

"But is there really any reason it has to be that way?"

I pushed back.

Why shouldn't city hall be more than a place for processing paperwork? Why couldn't it become an open space citizens visit as a matter of daily life?

Fortunately, Yeojin City Hall stood close to the old downtown district. It was easily accessible, within comfortable walking distance for most citizens — an enormous advantage.

The conventional wisdom when building a new city hall is to secure a sprawling plot of land on the urban periphery and construct it far from everything else.

It comes wrapped in glossy language like "an administrative complex town designed with future expansion in mind," but in reality it just means citizens can't easily reach their own government, the surrounding commercial districts wither and die, and administration drifts further and further from everyday life.

The funny thing is, Yeojin City came terrifyingly close to exactly that fate.

When the previous mayor drew up plans to relocate city hall to the outskirts, local residents rose up in fierce opposition, warning that the commercial district would be killed off.

"If city hall leaves, this place is finished!"

The merchants mobilized; residents took to the streets themselves. In the end, it was thanks to that opposition that city hall was rebuilt on its original site.

For once, the former mayor had actually made the right call.

Looking back now, it was pure luck. Having city hall in the old downtown, even if it's a little awkward to reach by car, means citizens can walk to it — and that is a tremendous asset.

Better still, citizens visiting city hall naturally patronize nearby restaurants, cafés, small bookstores, and markets, breathing life into the local economy as a side effect.

The previous mayor's political calculation — spared from relocation for fear of the ballot box — had produced these positive effects too.

So why not transform it from a mere administrative space into something genuinely citizen-friendly?

I proposed opening up the first floor entirely.

"Let's put a library, a restaurant, and a kids' café on the first floor."

The civil servants stared at me, bewildered.

"Mr. Mayor, if we open the first floor like that, won't it be far too noisy?"

"And what exactly are citizens coming here to do, then? Outside of handling administrative business, they have no reason to come at all."

The staff accepted the old conventions as simply the way things were, but I believed breaking that assumption was precisely what was needed.

"City hall needs to become a space citizens visit regularly. Beyond people coming for passports, wouldn't it be wonderful to see folks dropping by to read at the library, playing with their kids in the children's café, or grabbing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a quick lunch?"

If that happened, city hall would grow familiar to citizens in a whole new way.

City hall shouldn't be a place that merely processes paperwork. It should be the beating heart of the city — an open space where any citizen can come and go with ease.

Reality, however, was nothing of the sort. City hall buildings everywhere carried an unmistakably authoritarian air, and Yeojin City Hall was no exception.

One look at the first-floor lobby said it all. The ceiling had been designed at an absurd height, so that every citizen who stepped inside instinctively tilted their head back — and felt small.

Designers might call it a "sense of openness." What it actually communicated was a message: this is not a place for the likes of you.

And yet, ironically, most public buildings in South Korea are built exactly this way. Everyone talks a good game about "citizen participation," while the space itself is engineered to make citizens feel psychologically intimidated. A genuinely absurd arrangement.

I wanted to change that atmosphere.

Of course, remodeling the entire first floor would take time and money. Knocking down walls and restructuring on the spot wasn't feasible — so I decided to start with what could be done right now.

The first thing we launched was the installation of a library space.

"Let's section off parts of the first floor and set up bookshelves. We'll bring over new releases from the public library and let citizens borrow them on the spot."

Libraries are familiar, welcoming spaces — nothing like city hall, that place you visit only when you have official business. Overlapping the two was the first transformation I had in mind.

People quietly browsing between the shelves, parents walking in hand in hand with their children, someone dropping by on an ordinary weekday afternoon just to read a single book.

The more that scene took hold, the less city hall would be a monument to authority — and the more it would become, grandiose as it sounds, a space woven into the daily lives of its citizens.

Next year, once we secured the budget, we planned to remodel the lofty first-floor atrium into a split-level structure.

The current lobby ceiling was ridiculously high, and all that vertical space existed purely for show. Why should all that room sit idle? I decided to add a mezzanine level instead — divide the space.

Redesigning the gap between the first floor and the new half-story as a split-level layout would let us capture practicality and openness at once, two birds with one stone.

The upper level would house small meeting spaces — gathering rooms, study rooms — with operations managed in tandem with the first-floor kids' café.

Turn it into an open space any citizen could book and use, and city hall would be reborn not as an administrative compound but as a community space embedded in everyday life.

I also decided to rethink the cafeteria arrangement. Cities typically run one small restaurant inside city hall, but that's minimal convenience for the staff and nothing more.

"Why should we stop at one cafeteria, with all this space?"

So I conceived a food-court-style dining hall. If we offered a variety of menus and opened it up to vendors from the surrounding commercial district, citizens, visitors, even neighborhood merchants would start coming to city hall for lunch ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and dinner.

The existing staff-only cafeteria in the basement, of course, would remain as it was.

But surely civil servants, too, deserved the chance to choose from a wider range of meals if they wanted.

The real goal wasn't just a place to eat. It was for city hall as a whole to move into the very center of urban life. That was the true vision of city hall I was drawing up.

At the same time, though, security was a real concern.

"So from the second floor up, let's install an access-control system — no access card, no entry."

By separating the working areas of the administration from the open spaces for citizens, we could protect the staff's working environment while still letting citizens use the building freely.

I moved the second-floor access system forward immediately — and this, unexpectedly, drew an enthusiastic response from the staff.

The reorganization and the partition removal had drawn their share of grumbling, but this measure was met with something close to relief: finally, someone's fixing it.

The truth was, with outsiders free to wander through city hall, employees suffered plenty of inconveniences unrelated to their work.

And opening the first floor to citizens made protecting the upper floors all the more important.

In the old days, whenever I came to city hall for meetings, I'd occasionally see elderly men and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠women climbing up to the offices peddling socks, long underwear, and assorted sundries.

The civil servants had no choice but to be flustered. Even a polite refusal sometimes turned into a formal complaint.

There were more serious problems too. Wallets, phones, and laptops were occasionally stolen.

Several departments had stories of staff stepping away from their desks for a few minutes and returning to find their belongings gone.

Everyone knew about these problems, and for years the practice had simply been to look the other way.

So the access-control system — no card, no entry above the second floor — was more than a security upgrade. It was a measure to protect the safety and working conditions of the city's own employees.

"Mr. Mayor, you really did this one right."

"It finally feels like I can get some actual work done."

Every time I heard words like that on the ground, it struck me how a small change could build real trust.

Civil servants weren't a profession of perpetual complainers — they were people fully capable of gratitude when they sensed a change made for reasonable reasons, with genuine sincerity.

That alone made this measure a meaningful first step.

The air in the conference room carried a strange undercurrent of excitement. A handful of staff filed in cautiously, clutching bundles of documents. The Citizen Space Design Division, the Architecture Division, the design team — everyone had been mobilized.

They told me the first drafts of the old downtown cultural space concept I'd ordered days ago ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were finally ready.

"Mr. Mayor, here is the first draft for the Old Downtown Cultural Space project."

I nodded briefly and flipped through the materials. Unfamiliar buzzwords leapt off the very first page.

What on earth is all this flashy rhetoric?

I turned the page and found the Guggenheim Museum in Spain. Next, Seoul's Dongdaemun Design Plaza, then even the new wing of the Louvre in Paris.

I know my urban planning, but this wasn't city planning — this looked like an exercise in city diplomacy.

"Is this... for real?"

At my words, the staff started exchanging nervous glances. Someone ventured, carefully:

"Mr. Mayor, this space needs to become a symbol of the city. We judged that Yeojin requires a landmark capable of showcasing its new identity."

The moment those words landed, a laugh escaped me before I could stop it.

A symbol? What Yeojin needed right now was one place to rest, one alley, one breezy courtyard. Anyone who believed erecting a single museum would transform the city's image was making a colossal mistake.

"What's the budget?"

Noh Chae-eun, Head of the Planning and Budget Division, quietly raised her head. She'd sat silent through the entire meeting, but as expected, she had a precise answer ready for this question.

"Estimates put it at around 30 billion won including basic construction. Once you factor in land acquisition, ground reinforcement, and exterior sculpture work, the true figure will likely be higher."

"I'm sorry — thirty billion?"

My voice rose before I could help it.

"That site — that was just an old factory lot, wasn't it? The whole point was to build a plaza instead of a parking lot, to give citizens somewhere to sit. Who told you to build the Palace of Versailles there?"

A low murmur rippled through the room. Some hunched their shoulders; others pretended, of all things, to tidy their papers.

"The former mayor always emphasized visible, tangible results. So..."

"The former mayor who got dragged out on corruption charges."

The room froze at my words. A beat of silence hung in the air, followed by a low collective sigh.

I turned to Noh Chae-eun again.

"Realistically — can we afford a budget of this scale right now?"

She shook her head firmly.

"Given Yeojin's current finances, 30 billion won is unrealistic. It's simply not possible without issuing municipal bonds or pulling in national funds. And buildings like this carry even larger maintenance costs. Once you've put up a structure that bleeds tens of billions of won in follow-up budgets every year, it becomes unmanageable."

I nodded at that.

That's Noh Chae-eun for you. She never lies about the numbers.

"Fine. Let's take this project back to square one. Contact the architect Jo Min-hyuk. He's the man who builds spaces to be used, not spaces to be looked at. Instead of a gleaming glass palace — a plaza where people naturally come and go, and stay a while. That's what I meant by a 'cultural space.'"

Before leaving, I swept my gaze around the room one last time.

"I won't ask what you've all been doing until now. But from here on, take the intent behind my directives to heart — and act accordingly."

Still, I suppose I should count it a small mercy that they'd at least produced drawings within a week, not a month.

Either way, the shadow of the former mayor loomed far too large over this city hall.

The meeting wrapped up quietly. The staff filed out with their shoulders slumped, and Kang Seol-heon, my Chief of Staff, who had stayed until the very end, spoke up.

"Mr. Mayor. However good your intentions, if you don't spell them out clearly, this sort of thing will keep happening."

I nodded. She was right. Vague instructions yield blurry results.

Which meant... from now on, I would need to move more precisely. More decisively.