For 10 days, from July 26th to August 4th, 2016, the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) held an online vote for foreigners living in Korea and abroad, to select the top 3 SMG policies that attracted most interest.

A total of 1,173 foreigners, from 62 countries, participated in the online vote. The Seoul Bamdokkaebi Night Market placed first; Eungdapso, an online civil complaints management system placed second; and Seoul Station 7017 Project, an integrated renewal of the Seoul Station Overpass placed third. The selected policies obtained the following votes: 253, 239 and 215 votes, from first to third place respectively.

The vote was implemented through an open voting site on the SMG’s homepage, in English (english.seoul.go.kr), to promote the policies of SMG to foreigners; and to facilitate convenient participation of as many people around the world as possible. Of the total 1,173 foreign participants, 167 participants were foreigners residing in Korea, and 1,006 participants were from abroad. The voting participants were classified according to the following occupational groups: 112 participants from public service and the press; 347 participants from academic circles, including students; 414 participants from private companies; and 300 participants from other areas.
 

Each participant was requested to cast votes on the top 3 policies, from a total of 30 policies. The 30 policies were selected based on information posted on SMG’s foreign language home pages for distribution to the public, and classified into 9 main categories of economy, welfare, transportation, culture & tourism, urban regeneration, communication, environments, safety and policy for foreigners. SMG will randomly select 200 participants by end of August, and present them with a souvenir from Seoul city to promote its new brand I·SEOUL·U.

The following were the results of voter classification by language group: Seoul Bamdokkaebi Night Market obtained the most votes from the English language participants; Eungdapso obtained the most votes from the Simplified Chinese language participants; the Seoul Station 7017 Project obtained the most votes from Traditional Chinese language participants; and Visiting Community Service Center obtained the most votes from Japanese language participants.
 

SMG will continuously plan and follow-up through communication and participation oriented online promotion of its policies in order to ease accessibility of people around the world, to what feels like rigid, inaccessible and foreign policies of Seoul city. Additionally, it will provide and disseminate policy related contents, to attract as much foreigner interest as possible, through effective online city marketing.