Jin-Kyu Jung leads study abroad trip to South Korea and establishes ties with local institutions

IAS faculty member Jin-Kyu Jung recently returned from South Korea with 9 UW students from the Bothell and Seattle campuses. This trip was part of an Early-Fall Student Abroad program, “Mapping Communities in the Smart City,” co-led with Gunwha Oh (affiliate faculty in IAS and lecturer in the Deptartment of Geography).

The seminar provided students with a critical reflection on the smart city, urban regeneration and community-based process in the context of modern cities in South Korea, focusing on Busan. Students worked closely with Department of Urban Planning at Pusan National University (PNU) in Busan and had the opportunity to learn alongside PNU students.

Learning first hand about the theory and practice of the smart city, and seeing the real examples of various forms of the smart in the city, such as smart streetlight, smart infrastructure, smart governance and a smart city platform were important goals of the seminar. Equally important was to examine the concept and practices by working closely with local communities. These communities are often marginalized in planning conversations, yet greatly affected by the outcomes. This experience with local community members allowed students to explore on-the-ground reworkings of smart city technologies and practices in urban regeneration efforts.

One particular visit that students often mentioned as the most memorable was the Ami-Dong community in Busan. While Ami-Dong has a historical reputation as a red-light district, it presents a remarkably resilient community made up of inspiring indivduals who strive to improve the district. The communtiy strategies in Ami-Dong were the ‘smartest’ in terms of making a creative use of available technologies that are often not considered ‘smart,’ such as land-line phones, a community washing machine, etc.

During the trip, Jin-Kyu Jung was also able to establish two MOUs between UW Bothell and Pusan National University (PNU), and also between UW Bothell and Changwon Research Institute (CRI). The Deptartment of Urban Planning at PNU expressed a strong interest to visit the UW next summer to learn about Seattle’s smart city plan and community-based urban regeneration efforts with our students and faculties.

Another outcome of this program’s collaboration with PNU, all participating students received a Certificate of Smart City Planning from the Deptartment of Urban Planning (which was selected as an institution to train smart city experts by the Korean government).

The “Mapping Communities in the Smart City” program would like to thank the City of Busan, the City of Changwon, Changwon Research Institute (CRI), City of Sejong, and Songdo International District in Incheon for their support.