Daejeon City "Low Participation in UCLG Assembly... Concerned About Event Disruptions"

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] As the World Organization of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) General Assembly approaches, the City of Daejeon is facing deep concerns. The reason is that the scale of participation is far below the initial target at this late stage before the assembly.

According to the city on the 5th, as of this month (based on the 3rd), 156 people from about 60 cities in 33 countries have expressed their intention to participate in the assembly.

This is far below the city's original goal of attracting more than 5,000 participants from 1,000 cities in 140 countries.

The city analyzes that the low participation is due to a combination of external factors such as the global resurgence of COVID-19, China's lockdown policies, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

In addition, the city believes that the uncooperative attitude of the UCLG Secretariat, which is responsible for conducting demand surveys on participating cities and participants, has also had a negative impact on the assembly.

However, when the city requested the list of member cities and asked why the number of participating countries was low, the UCLG Secretariat reportedly only gave vague answers such as "Please wait" and "The number of applications will increase before the opening."

Regarding this attitude of the UCLG Secretariat, the city has expressed complaints that "the secretariat is uncooperative and closed," but it maintains the position that "the city will do its best until the last minute to ensure the event can be held normally."

Last month, Mayor Lee Jang-woo of Daejeon also requested President Yoon Seok-yeol to visit Daejeon during the assembly period to hold a central-local cooperation meeting.

Nevertheless, whether the assembly can be held normally remains uncertain. If the scale of participation does not increase dramatically from the current level, it is expected that there will be difficulties in carrying out the main programs of the assembly. This raises concerns that the assembly could be reduced from an international event to a local festival.

Lee Seok-bong, Deputy Mayor for Science of the city, said, "It is true that participation applications have been low even though a month has passed since the official assembly website was launched," adding, "We will do our best to make it a successful event, but we also have many concerns."

Meanwhile, the assembly is the largest international conference among local governments, and Daejeon was selected as the seventh host city. This is the second large-scale international event held in the region since the 1993 Daejeon Expo.

The city plans to hold the assembly under the theme "Local and Regional Governments Breaking through as One" from the 10th to the 14th of next month around the Daejeon Convention Center area.

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