Jongno-gu 'Inwangsan Choso Bookstore' Creation Receives Prime Minister's Award for Proactive Administration

Inwangsan Choso Bookstore

[Asia Economy Reporter Jongil Park] In the '2020 Second Half Proactive Administration Competition' jointly hosted by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and the Ministry of Personnel Management, Jongno-gu (Mayor Kim Young-jong) was honored with the Prime Minister's Award for its case of creating the ‘Inwangsan Choso Bookstore’.

The Proactive Administration Competition, held on the 18th at the Government Sejong Center auditorium, was organized to discover and share excellent cases of proactive administration that citizens can directly experience.

A total of 153 excellent cases were submitted from local governments nationwide, and Jongno-gu achieved the great success of winning the Prime Minister's Award and securing a 40 million KRW incentive.

The Inwangsan Choso Bookstore is a case where a guard post building, which was scheduled for demolition and had been occupied by police forces for protection purposes after the so-called Kim Shin-jo incident in 1968, when North Korean troops attempted a surprise attack on the Blue House, was reborn as a resting space for citizens.

Since Inwangsan was fully opened in 2018, the number of visiting citizens increased, but new construction was difficult due to various regulatory laws such as military control zones and urban natural park zones.

Accordingly, Jongno-gu focused on the fact that the area around the police post had beautiful terrain and good views, and pursued a plan to ‘regenerate’ it for citizens instead of ‘demolishing’ it over three years.

As a result, on the 11th, the ‘Inwangsan Choso Bookstore,’ which anyone can use, opened on the Inwangsan foothill trail. The bookstore, which was expanded and remodeled by preserving the reinforced concrete frame of the existing police post building, has a total area of 194.73㎡ on the first floor and 119.4㎡ on the second floor, featuring a book cafe, an observatory, and a public restroom accessible to both disabled and non-disabled people.

Mayor Kim Young-jong said, “There were many obstacles until the Inwangsan Choso Bookstore opened, but I am very honored to receive the Prime Minister's Award in recognition of the proactive efforts to solve problems for citizens,” and added, “We will continue to strive to establish a culture of proactive administration in the public service, where officials identify and improve inconveniences in residents' daily lives first.”

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