• The mayor announced 20 priorities across four areas to attract outstanding global talents and build an inclusive multicultural society.
• The city government plans to collaborate with leading universities to attract 1,000 science and engineering graduates and doctors, setting up channels to help them find jobs in Korea.
• The city government also plans to address worker shortages in areas such as patient and elderly care, restaurants, and hotels with an international workforce.
• The city will provide care services on pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare regardless of nationality and offer education grants for children living in multicultural families.

As the industrial structure becomes more sophisticated due to technological advancement, competition among countries to recruit excellent talent is intensifying. In this context, the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) has announced a set of new policies for future Seoul that attracts global talent and grows with international residents to secure sustainable competitiveness. The initiative consists of two main pillars: attracting top talent and creating an inclusive multicultural society.

First of all, the SMG will take measures to attract talented people by hosting global companies and providing them support for education, employment, and creating startups. In this effort, Seoul hopes to become a city like Silicon Valley, where talented people from all over the world want to come to work.

The city government will partner up with major Korean universities to attract 1,000 graduates and doctors in science and engineering and establish an English-speaking global startup support facility called Unicorn Startup Hub to attract overseas startups into Korea.

The government will launch the International House Manager Pilot Project in the coming September while actively working with the government to introduce the international workforce into patient and elderly care, food service, hotel, and other sectors suffering from labor shortages.

The SMG will also focus on creating an inclusive, multicultural society that welcomes people from across the world.

To help foreign residents adjust to life in Korea, the Second Seoul Foreign Resident Center will open in May 2025 in the northeast region after opening the first center in the southwest region. In addition, an AI-enabled real-time multilingual interpretation service will be deployed at Seoul Family Centers in 25 autonomous districts. The government will also launch an International Tenant Support Service to help them find places to live.

Pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare services, such as integrated pre-/ post-natal care services and infant and child development tests, will be provided without any discrimination. Starting this month, the city government will provide new multicultural child education activity grants (400,000 KRW to 600,000 KRW) for elementary, middle, and high schools to help ease the difficulties of raising children.

Mayor Oh Se-hoon announced Seoul International Resident Policy Master Plan (2024-2028) outlining the above policies on Mon, May 20 and highlighted the city’s commitment to “building Seoul as a global city that grows with international residents.”

A total of 250.6 billion KRW will be invested over five years to promote 20 priorities and 47 projects across four pillars (① attract and support top talents’ growth, ② expand international workforce on demand, ③ support for community stabilization, ④ foster mutual respect and communication between Koreans and international residents).