Seocho-gu, Comprehensive Plan to Bridge Polarization and Support the Vulnerable

Focusing on 6 Target Groups: Children, Adolescents, Youth, Seniors, Disabled, Women, and Vulnerable Groups with 20 Projects... Operated on Two Pillars: 'Building a Social Protection Safety Net' and 'Supporting Independence through Jobs'

Robot Coding College

[Asia Economy Reporter Jong-il Park] Seocho-gu (Mayor Eunhee Jo) has established a comprehensive plan for the ‘Walking Together with the Vulnerable Project’ to address the deepening polarization in our society following COVID-19, and decided to concentrate all administrative capabilities on this effort.

To this end, the district plans to integrate welfare projects managed by various departments and create a ‘Walking Together with the Vulnerable TF’ to manage them comprehensively and organically.

Since 2018, the district has uniquely established the ‘Bright Future Bureau’ nationwide to address social challenges such as aging, youth unemployment, and polarization from a long-term perspective, implementing policies for socially vulnerable groups.

These include providing fair learning opportunities for children from difficult families, various customized supports for single-person households, digital education and grandchild care education for seniors, job opportunities for early-retired middle-aged individuals, and startup funds for small business owners, offering support tailored to life stages and situations.

However, as the gap between social classes widened further due to COVID-19 last year, the district recognized the need for more comprehensive and detailed policies for marginalized groups and decided to establish a cross-departmental general management system beyond the Bright Future Bureau.

The Walking Together with the Vulnerable TF operates under the vision of ‘A Happy and Warm Seocho for All’ with four goals: ▲Fair Seocho that gives opportunities to everyone ▲Safe Seocho without anxiety ▲Seocho with a promising tomorrow ▲Smart Seocho realizing digital welfare.

The project focuses on six target groups (care for the disabled, gender violence, child protection, solitary death and elderly living alone, disabled persons, women, youth, middle-aged and seniors) and consists of 20 initiatives to be implemented over five years until 2025.

This plan is not simply about pouring financial resources physically or temporarily but focuses on understanding difficulties from the vulnerable’s perspective and psychological aspects to provide more tangible, practical, and ultimately sustainable support. To this end, external members such as professors and field experts will be additionally recruited to actively reflect field voices, operate flexibly by issue, and further link to legal and institutional improvements for smart support.

The Walking Together with the Vulnerable TF promotes projects under two divisions: ‘Building a Social Protection Safety Net’ and ‘Supporting Self-Reliance through Jobs,’ with a total of four policy strategies. First, realizing a fair society growing together with opportunities and hope.

Representative projects include the kind AI teacher ‘AI Smart Schooling’ and the customized mentoring program ‘Seoripul Saem’ to reduce learning gaps widened by the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic.

The district prioritizes AI-based 1:1 customized online learning ‘AI Smart Schooling’ for low-income elementary and middle school students. Children diagnose their learning individually through ‘AI Smart Schooling,’ use learning programs suited to their level and pace, and engage in self-directed learning. Additionally, ‘Seoripul Saem,’ composed of retired teachers and local talented resources, receives children’s learning analysis data from ‘AI Smart Schooling’ to provide tailored guidance for lacking areas and emotional support.

Second, establishing a safety system through preventive measures and responsible aftercare.

What vulnerable and disadvantaged groups need most to live happily is safety. Especially, the district is committed to systematically responding to various abuses and violence, including ▲child abuse ▲protection of children aging out of care ▲sexual harassment and sexual violence against women, ensuring safety beyond mere protection from the vulnerable’s perspective.

Seocho-gu is moving faster than anyone in child protection. It will establish the nation’s first public-private-police joint response platform, the ‘Child Protection Response Center’ (hereafter Response Center). The Response Center will be a new-concept child protection response center equipped comprehensively with a public-private-police integrated conference room, emergency video conference room, counseling and therapy rooms, parent counseling rooms, and a shelter function for abused children, enabling cooperation from the reporting stage through aftercare.

Child abuse protection facilities will also be provided. Although the immediate separation system will be implemented from the end of March, facilities capable of immediate separation are severely lacking. Currently, Seoul has only five shelters for abused children with a total capacity of 35. Recognizing the need for an abused children’s shelter, the district has secured a site and construction budget and plans to swiftly build and operate a shelter within the first half of the year in partnership with local construction company ‘Hoban Construction’ and startup ‘Ten Eleven.’

Furthermore, to support children’s stability and recovery, one dedicated medical institution for child abuse will be designated to provide smooth physical and mental treatment for abused children.

Third, establishing stepping stones through job support.

According to the ‘April Employment Trends’ released by Statistics Korea on the 12th, unemployment rates among people in their 20s are rising, and the number of employed persons in their 30s and 40s is decreasing, showing continued employment sluggishness in economically active age groups. For today’s youth, who have become ‘suddenly vulnerable’ economically poorer than their parents for the first time in Korean history, the district is actively operating programs that provide competitive employment opportunities.

Representative among these is the Seocho 4th Industrial College (Seocho AI College, Blockchain College, Robot Coding College, Game PD Training Course, Data Labeling Training Course, Media Creator Training Course, etc.), which responds to the increasing demand for jobs in the 4th industrial revolution. It supports job education optimized for change as these are promising niche jobs immediately deployable in the 4th industrial sector.

Additionally, to prepare for this year’s hiring trends such as untact and rolling recruitment, the district operates the Seocho Blueprint (Youth Social Advancement) Academy, job-specific customized employment lectures, and job cafes regularly, and further runs a youth internship system to enable education-first and employment-later pathways.

Notably, the Seocho AI Data Labeling training course held last year selected 50 participants and operated three sessions of 40 hours each. Of the 50, 47 completed the course, and 45 were employed by related companies. The high satisfaction rate among trainees has established this as Seocho’s representative customized job project for youth struggling with employment.

Fourth, realizing smart welfare by alleviating the digital information gap and utilizing future technologies. For information-vulnerable groups (seniors, disabled), digital technology is advancing rapidly and relentlessly. As seen recently in a widely discussed Twitter story where a mother unfamiliar with kiosks burst into tears, Seocho-gu has actively promoted warm smart technology to alleviate the digital information gap.

In particular, the ‘Smart Senior Project’ for a digitally inclusive Seocho is underway, expanding educational programs for seniors to about 200 courses, including kiosk education, drones, and 3D printers. The district also distributes AI robots to elderly living alone to check safety and relieve loneliness through a care robot project, supporting a vibrant old age without digital gaps with younger generations.

One of the most notable features of the Walking Together with the Vulnerable TF is ‘communication and flexibility.’ Besides existing projects, it continuously plans to discover new welfare fields and officially reflect them in next year’s projects. It will regularly hold meetings to gather opinions from various field experts and become a dynamic project entity exchanging feedback.

Seocho-gu Mayor Eunhee Jo stated, “As the saying goes, ‘Where the light is strong, the darkness is also strong,’ various social disparities and relative poverty regarding opportunities are rooted throughout society. Vulnerable people exposed to these diverse discriminatory situations find it hard to endure today and cannot even dream of tomorrow. Under the Seoul sky, they are not abandoned alone; there are companions walking together. We are starting the ‘Walking Together with the Vulnerable’ TF filled with love to help them nurture future dreams, not just endure temporarily. Seocho-gu will take the lead as the ‘People’s First Penguin’ to prepare policies that turn the vulnerable’s ‘hopelessness’ into ‘exciting blessings.’”

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