Gwangju promotes participatory democracy and local businesses

Civil Politics Festival
Gwangju City held the Civil Politics Festival on the occasion of the 53rd Gwangju Citizen’s Day on May 22 around Geumnam-ro. 20,000 citizens gathered to the opening event titled ‘Gwangju Citizen’s General Assembly’ in front of Jeonil Building at 3 pm. This massive meeting introduced 10 policy suggestions of citizens based on the number of ‘like’ run from April on the assembly’s website (5), agreed by facilitators and policy makers (3) and the highest number of ‘like’ stickers put up on ‘policy exhibition tunnel’ on the day (2). The city is to check on these 10 suggested policies and decide how to reflect them into real policy. The festival also set up a booth for ‘Citizen’s Policy Market’ under the slogan ‘Policy Changes, Life Changes’, and displayed 28 of excellent policies in 7 sectors nationwide spanning from culture and art to youth and women and social economy, jobs, urban regeneration and environment. Private-public governance for social economy of Daegu and women-friendly child rearing platform of Gwangsan District especially attracted a great attention from the people. Marking the 2nd event this year, the Civil Politics Festival is received positively for setting up a role model for participatory democracy. Mayor Yoon Jang-hyeon said “Citizens are no longer the objects for receiving administration services but the main agents to change it. The Civil Politics Festival, in this respect, has paved the road ahead of us.”  

Activating local economy
Gwangju held the ‘Mini Job Fair’ to promote local businesses at the Kim Dae-jung Convention Center on May 24. 20 local companies including Hi Korea, Ssiemteg and Kumho HT joined the fair and carried out on-site job interviews alongside a number of sub events such as career path consulting and writing resume and effective photo shoot. The Mini Job Fair is organized by Gwangju Worknet which has harvested 167 job placements through 5 times of holding the fair last year alone.