Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon Shares 'COVID-19' Quarantine Experience with Global Leaders

Introducing Drive-Thru, Rapid Testing Systems, and Smart City Technologies Gaining Attention Overseas

[Asia Economy Reporter Jo In-kyung] Park Won-soon, Mayor of Seoul, held a video seminar with the global startup accelerator 'Plug and Play Tech Center' and introduced Seoul's quarantine experience and know-how in actively responding to the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19).

According to Seoul City on the 19th, about 500 participants from city governments in LA, San Francisco, Sydney, and global companies such as Daimler, J&J, Porsche, Bosch, and Deloitte took part in the COVID-19 video seminar held on the evening of the 17th in the mayor's office.

The seminar was initiated by Saeed Amidi, founder and CEO of Plug and Play, who first proposed it to Mayor Park. Plug and Play, located in Silicon Valley, USA, is an investment firm that has produced global companies such as PayPal and Dropbox, and has an extensive international network including 35 branches, global corporations, and universities.

During the 60-minute seminar, Mayor Park had a one-on-one conversation with Saeed Amidi for about 40 minutes, followed by a 20-minute Q&A session with overseas city governments and corporate representatives, where questions were raised about Seoul's infectious disease response status and proactive policies. Participants inquired about Seoul's bio-startup fostering policies, the provision of information at the public policy level for quarantine and the balance with personal information protection, and collaboration with various global cities.

Mayor Park introduced innovative cases such as the introduction of screening clinics like drive-through and walk-through, which were implemented for rapid testing, and emphasized efforts to maintain city functions and allow society and the economy to function as much as possible by transparently disclosing confirmed patients' movement information using smart technology without restricting citizens' movement.

Above all, the city official explained that the reason such a systematic and proactive testing system could operate was the combined result of Seoul City's promptness and transparency, private sector innovation, and mature civic consciousness.

Meanwhile, prior to this video seminar, in response to requests from sister and friendly cities to share Seoul's COVID-19 response experiences and know-how, Mayor Park held bilateral calls with Kostas Bakoyannis, Mayor of Athens, on the 31st of last month, and with Ekrem ?mamo?lu, Mayor of Istanbul, and Pirouz Hanachi, Mayor of Tehran, on the 14th of this month.

Mayor Park said, "Along with a rapid response to COVID-19, which has strong transmissibility and mutation characteristics, we must also prepare for the new world that will come after COVID-19," adding, "We will turn the crisis of living with the virus into an opportunity by investing faster than infectious diseases in new industries such as non-face-to-face services, biomedical, quarantine, drones, and AI, and make Seoul a global leading model."

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