Ex-mayor of Seoul’s ‘Brooklyn’ sets sights on running South Korean capital

SEOUL – The social media verdict is unanimous: Seoul’s coolest neighborhood is Seongsu, a once-drab industrial district that has become a hotspot for trendy coffee shops, elegant art spaces and starchitect-designed boutiques.

Now, the politician widely credited with the area’s transformation wants to run South Korea’s capital, and he’s leading in the polls.

In the neighbourhood in eastern Seoul, crowds of stylish young people can be seen lining up outside bakeries, or shopping for sneakers at stores so minimal they look like galleries.

Fintech start-ups and K-pop agencies occupy prime office space, and casually dressed staff often pop out to drink iced Americanos. 

“The whole place feels so energetic,” said Ms Kim Ga-yeon, 33, who has worked in Seongsu for more than five years at a marketing company.  “You can feel that trends really take off here.”

Former district mayor Chong Won-o is hoping that the area’s rise and hipster seal of approval will be enough to power him to Seoul City Hall.

As the official candidate for the ruling Democratic Party (DP) for the June 3 election, he will be running against four-term incumbent Oh Se-hoon. 

A win would cap a dramatic rise for Mr Chong, whose only experience of elected office has been the last 12 years at the helm of Seongdong, a district of 275,000 people that includes Seongsu.

While he claims he’s responsible for the district’s success, Mayor Oh says the transformation benefited from “decades-old citywide initiatives” and can’t be attributed to his opponent.

The test is whether the bottom-up administrative approach and re-urbanisation model Mr Chong credits with changing the district can be transposed to a capital of 9 million people.

The job comes with a US$35 billion (S$32 billion) budget and the potential to influence the nation.

The concentration of jobs, people and power in the capital is a long-running dilemma for the central government, but for those who can navigate the challenges, the position can serve as a stepping stone to central government power.

A relentless focus on attracting small businesses “helped drive Seongsu’s success, but you can’t simply recreate that in other areas with the exact same approach”, Mr Chong said in interview before leaving his position to run for Seoul mayor.

But other districts have their own opportunities, he says, adding that he’s already planning to create a “second, third and fourth Seongsu across the city”.

Mr Chong, 57, is helped by his party’s popularity and an opposition still in disarray after ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol was stripped of office and impeached over his abortive 2024 declaration of martial law.

President Lee Jae Myung has reversed some of Yoon’s policies and in one of his most symbolic moves in the capital he has returned the seat of power back to the historic Blue House and away from the Defense Ministry, where Yoon had moved it.

Adding Seoul mayor to the DP’s slate would give it wider berth in tackling some of the city’s most serious issues, such as an overheated real estate market, low birth rates, pollution and chronic gridlock, and could super-charge Mr Lee’s national policy overhauls.

For Mr Chong, the key to his local-level success was not a particular policy, but his method of government, what he calls “platform administration”. 

He is known for texting directly with locals, some of whom told Bloomberg they have flagged everything from uneven steps outside a library to trash in street-side flower pots. 

He worked to preserve the district’s distinctive red-brick buildings rather than raze them for new housing blocks, giving the area a vintage vibe popular with young people.

For local residents, policies such as housekeeping support for pregnant women and more state-run nurseries have even helped boost Seongdong’s birth rate to the highest in Seoul at 0.8.

In an emailed statement, Mr Oh linked the district’s transformation to long-standing initiatives, like designating Seongsu as an IT industry development zone in 2010.

“Seongsu did not become a hotspot in a short time. The foundation was built through Seoul’s efforts over the past 20 years,” said Mr Oh, who was one of the first officials from Yoon’s former party to oppose the declaration of martial law.

Mr Oh pointed out that the city’s overall fertility rate of 0.63 had also picked up from 0.58 in 2024, helped by inclusive policy support introduced in 2022.

Mr Jung Yung-soo, a shoemaker who’s lived and worked in Seongsu – an area once famous for handmade shoes – for more than two decades, has witnessed the neighbourhood’s rise and the ups and downs of his trade, including fellow shoemakers being pushed out by rising rents.

“When a neighbourhood gets hot, rents go up, right? But even if rent doubles, you can’t just double your sales to match it,” Mr Jung said.

“Politicians usually claim credit for everything, especially near the election, but a neighbourhood doesn’t become popular just because one person implements a policy.”

While his approach may not have resonated with everyone in Seongsu, Mr Chong says he tried to inspire residents rather than imposing top-down development models. 

His idea of comparing Seongsu to Brooklyn was never a bid to directly replicate the success of the New York borough, but to show locals where their district could go. 

“Brooklyn stood out as a prime case of urban regeneration,” he said, but once the transformation of Seongsu took off, the comparison “became unnecessary”. 

Ultimately the Seoul mayoral election may be decided by housing, not Seongsu’s rise. 

Mr Lee’s administration has made containing the capital’s red-hot housing market a top priority, seeking to reduce multiple-homeownership and drive down speculative transactions. 

Mr Chong says fixing the housing shortage means ensuring “predictable supply”, and vowed to “resolve supply bottlenecks”.

The mayoral race can be seen as a litmus test of public sentiment toward these policies, said Mr Eom Kyeong-young, director of the Zeitgeist Institute, a Seoul-based research group.

“The real estate market will be the single most decisive factor,” he said.

Mr Chong also has regional ambitions. As a cultural powerhouse, South Korea deserves a capital that reflects the country’s growing global heft, he says.

Seoul has long punched below its weight regionally, overshadowed by Tokyo while still struggling to match the everyday convenience offered by Singapore and Hong Kong, particularly due to language barriers.

Mr Oh admits that even as recently as 2021 Seoul “was not a prominent city from a global investment perspective”, but “now it is rapidly raising in the rankings”.

Under his tenure, he said, “Seoul has been designed with the vision of a global city where companies, talent, and investment flow in,” pointing to, for example, a rise in the number of international schools.

“The next step for Seoul is to leap into a ‘global investment hub’ where companies, talent, capital, and technology grow together,” he said, pointing to his own efforts to streamline administration for foreign investors and boost international student arrivals and retention in the job market.

For his part, Mr Chong believes South Korea’s capital needs to attract Asian headquarters and global companies, and says the model he followed in Seongsu would work citywide – cultivate culture and attract talent, and businesses will follow.

The district saw a 70 per cent jump in the number of companies operating in the area between 2014 and 2023, from startups to established conglomerates, as Chong streamlined business registration procedures.

One factor that undermines Seoul’s attraction as a regional hub is its geographical location just 50km from nuclear-armed North Korea.

But even that doesn’t dent Mr Chong’s conviction that it could become one of the world’s top two cities.

“Some call it the ‘Korea Risk,’” he said, “but the whole world is facing similar kinds of risk at the moment. So actually, I now think of it as an opportunity.” Bloomberg