LH Gwangju Jeonnam Headquarters Successfully Concludes 'Regional Cooperation Forum'

LH Gwangju-Jeonnam Regional Headquarters (Head Kim Jae-kyung) announced on the 3rd that it recently held the ‘LH Gwangju-Jeonnam Regional Governance Forum’ successfully.

This forum was conducted to establish communication channels with local experts in accordance with the government’s region-led balanced development policy, to discuss various regional issues including local current affairs, and to seek alternatives and discover cooperation matters.

The ‘LH Gwangju-Jeonnam Regional Governance Forum’ is composed of experts from various fields such as local governments, regional universities, and local corporations, co-chaired by the head of LH Gwangju-Jeonnam Regional Headquarters and Professor Kim Il-tae of Chonnam National University.

Regarding the response to the local extinction crisis caused by population decline such as low birthrate and aging faced by the Gwangju-Jeonnam community due to concentration in the metropolitan area and deepening national land imbalance, the forum proceeded with LH’s case presentation on the ‘Pilot Project for Public-Private-Public Cooperation Responding to Local Extinction’ and a keynote presentation by Dr. Min Hyun-jung of the Gwangju-Jeonnam Research Institute on ‘The Meaning and Challenges of Housing as a Requirement for Continued Residence Cities in the Era of Low Birthrate and Aging,’ followed by discussions among the attending forum members.

The members emphasized that local population inflow policies should enable metropolitan area populations to migrate through methods such as returning to farming and rural living rather than population movement within the same living area, and that the policy goal should focus not on simple quantitative increase but on improving quality of life and maintaining residential continuity, highlighting the importance of improving overall living conditions including jobs, housing, education and care, health welfare, and transportation.

They also expressed the opinion that since performance-oriented national policies have limitations in reflecting diverse regional characteristics, local governments should take the lead within living areas to cooperate with public and private sectors to discover business models that can enhance residents’ life satisfaction.

Furthermore, in the Jeonnam region where aging is severe, it was suggested that policies for securing young populations along with policies for the elderly, such as building elderly-friendly communities equipped with medical systems, should be accompanied so that both parent and child generations can lead stable lives.

Head Kim Jae-kyung said, “As part of measures against low birthrate and aging, LH is promoting projects to supply housing for youth and newlyweds and housing for the elderly, as well as projects to revitalize the region,” adding, “We will continue to operate the governance forum by seeking ways to strengthen its effectiveness, such as reviewing and reflecting the opinions presented at the forum when promoting LH-related projects to ensure they can be policy-implemented.”

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