Global Urban Frontiers through Policy Transfer? Unpacking Seoul’s Creative City Programmes

Abstract

This paper critically examines the Seoul city government’s attempts at the policy transfer of creative cities programmes, both as a policy borrower and as a policy lender, by using the emergent ‘policy mobilities’ approach. Seoul’s way of actualising the idea of creative cities places more emphasis on local-serving administration, tourism and physical cultural infrastructure. The original creative city programmes have been transformed, ideologically and materially, by Seoul into a process of downsizing government organisations and workforce and limiting the use of public space. Seoul’s attempt to be a policy lender is not a product of other foreign cities’ policy transfer from Seoul, but the result of the city government’s promotional practices. Its final outcome, thus bears relatively little relationship or similarity to the original policies, encountering unexpected administrative and operational problems, such as increasing debt and resistance from civil groups.

1. Introduction

There has been growing interest in the global circulation of policy knowledge relating to creative cities programmes over the past two decades. From London to many other European cities like Amsterdam, Berlin and Sheffield (Evans, 2009) to San Francisco, Austin, Memphis, Baltimore, Portland, Providence and Cincinnati in the US (Peck, 2005), all the way to Australian cities in Victoria and Queensland (Gibson and Klocker, 2005), cities have eagerly paid attention to promoting creative industries¹ and nurturing creative workers through policy transfer. Not only these Western cities but also Asian cities, such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Beijing, have recently sought to fund projects with an eye to fostering creative industries (Keane, 2009; Kong, 2009; Leo and Lee, 2004).

The occurrence of this policy circulation of creative cities programmes is increasing and will continue to increase in Asia, as the Asian cities experiencing communication and technological advances are competing against one another to be at the global urban frontier. Despite this growing interest in creative cities programmes in Asia, few have attempted to examine them from the analytical angle of ‘policy mobilities’ (Clarke, 2009, 2011; McCann, 2011; McCann and Ward, 2010; McFarlane, 2010; Peck and Theodore, 2010a, 2010b; Robinson, 2008, 2011; Ward, 2006; Prince, 2010). There are only a few case studies on creative cities, but their focus is on the creative city policy itself, particularly in Singapore and Beijing (Keane, 2009; Kong, 2009; Leo and Lee, 2004). Only a few studies examine urban policy mobilities (King, 1996; Olds, 2001; Peck, 2002; Chua, 2008; McNeill, 2009; Bunnell and Das, 2010). In this paper, we attempt to detail how creative city programmes and ideas have travelled globally and how they have mutated and morphed during their journeys by illustrating Seoul’s experiences. The purpose of this article is thus to outline an analytical approach to the global circulation of the creative city programmes and to show the ‘local globalness’ (McCann and Ward, 2010; McCann, 2011) of urban policy-making.

In this article, we critically examine why and how the Seoul city government has pursued the policy transfer of creative cities programmes as both a policy borrower and a policy lender from an emergent ‘policy mobilities’ approach. The mayor of Seoul, Oh Se-hoon, has fervently pursued a creative city policy since 2006 and has attempted to legitimise his current leadership through policy transfer from Western creative cities programmes. The mayor recently attempted to make Seoul a global urban frontier by creating a new model through learning experiences based on the lessons drawn from policy transfer.

In this paper, we also evaluate critically whether Seoul can achieve its desired outcome to be a global urban frontier and a policy lender through the lessons transferred from Western cities. For this examination, we present a theoretically informed framework to analyse the processes and outcomes of policy mobilities. From the policy mobilities perspective, we take a critical approach to Seoul’s attempt, which assumes the hierarchical relationship between a policy lender as a leader and a policy borrower as a follower. We argue that the creative city programmes have been transformed ideologically and materially through negotiations and struggles with citizens within the local context. We also maintain that policy outcomes (success or failure) are not simply a product (replication) of policy transfer, but the result (modification or mutation) of the complex politics that are moulded by political bargaining and institutionalised promotion practices.

For this study, we conducted a case study of Seoul, employing both qualitative and quantitative data. We relied on in-depth interviews, archival analysis, site visits, content analysis of the mayor’s speeches and longitudinal data from annual budget reports. The remainder of this article is divided into four sections. First, we critically review the conventional political science literature on policy transfer from the policy mobilities approach. Next, we outline the detailed process of the Seoul city government’s policy transfer on creative city programmes as a policy borrower. In the following section, we scrutinise Seoul’s creative city programmes as mutation and hybridisation, and critically evaluate Seoul’s attempt as a policy lender, as well as the unexpected outcome of Seoul’s creative city policy. In the concluding section, we consider the wider implications of our case study for future research on urban policy mobilities.

2. The Policy Mobilities Approach: Critiques of the Orthodox Policy Transfer Literature

In the policy literature, policy transfer usually refers to

a process in which knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions, etc., in one time and/or place is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements and institutions in another time and/or place (Dolowitz and Marsh, 1996; quoted in Stone, 1999, p. 52).

Hence, policy transfer is the broader concept that includes ideas of diffusion and coercion, as well as the voluntaristic activity of drawing lessons. ‘Lesson-drawing’ (Rose, 1988, 2005), ‘policy bandwagoning’ (Ikenberry, 1990), ‘emulation and harmonisation’ (Bennett, 1991), ‘systematically pinching ideas’ (Schneider and Ingram, 1988) and ‘benchmarking’ (de la Porte et al., 2001) are terms that relate to voluntary transfer, while ‘external inducement’ (Ikenberry, 1990) and ‘direct coercive transfer’ (Dolowitz and Marsh, 1996) refer to coercive transfer (Stone, 1999). Although these terms have different meanings from one another, they share the common assumption that

knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in one political system (past or present) is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political system (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000; quoted in Choi and Kim, 2009, p. 337).

This conventional policy transfer literature attempts to answer why, when and how governments use policy transfer and what consequences it may have. Despite its chaotic conception of policy transfer (Sayer, 1992; cited in McCann, 2011), the literature seeks to theorise how the transfer process operates and who are the actors and institutions involved in the transfers. The literature even attempts to identify the power relations through which adoption occurs and to specify the conditions and mechanisms under which certain policy transfers succeed or fail (Bennett, 1991; Rose, 1988, 2005; Dolowitz and Marsh, 1996; Stone, 1999; Dolowitz, 2003). In particular, Dolowitz (2000) attempts to organise the elements of the policy transfer phenomenon into a coherent model, hoping to develop a model capable of being generalised globally across academic disciplines and issue areas. While not all policy transfer literature has attempted to build a generic model,² it shares the assumption of convergence with the ‘diffusion theory’ and ‘world society models’ (Meyer et al., 1997). The traditional policy transfer literature thus assumes convergence or diffusion of policy. It also presumes the hierarchical relationship between a policy lender and a policy borrower as the one-to-one relationship of a leader and a follower. Although the literature clearly demonstrates the detailed processes and the main elements of policy transfer, it is descriptive rather than theoretical; it is less concerned with the dynamic politics and power relations behind the process of policy transfer.

The emergent policy mobilities approach rejects the apolitical view of policy transfer. The approach critiques the traditional notion of ‘transfer’ itself, as the term falls into a literalist trap (Peck and Theodore, 2001; McCann, 2011). According to this viewpoint, the importation of fully formed rational policies rarely occurs and the mobilisation inevitably changes the character and content of the mobilised objects (policies, models, ideas, etc.) within and between different institutional, economic and political contexts (McCann, 2011; McCann and Ward, 2010; McFarlane, 2010; Peck and Theodore, 2001, 2010a, 2010b; Robinson, 2008, 2011; Ward, 2006; Prince, 2010). The approach focuses more on policy mobilities as the complex, selective and multilateral circulation of policy knowledge rather than on policy transfer as the voluntaristic and natural movement of objective ‘best’ practices led by rational transfer agents. In this view, policy formation and transformation are seen as socially constructed processes, as fields of power (Peck and Theodore, 2010a; Ward, 2006). Hence, the circulation of policy knowledge is structured by embedded institutional legacies and power relations. The phenomenon of policy mobilities is not a simple process of linear replication but is rather associated with increasingly intense forms of institutional layering and embedded power relations (Peck and Theodore, 2010b).

From this policy mobilities perspective, we take a critical stance towards the policy transfer perspective, which is less critical of the assumption of convergence and hierarchical categorisation between a policy borrower and a lender. We do not presume superiority and inferiority among cities and urban policies. Based on this orientation, we argue that the policy outcomes that travelled from elsewhere are forged as complex politico-ideological hybrids derived from negotiations and struggles between advocates and opponents of the policy within the local context. The new programmes that travelled from other places are forged with the existing programmes and thus, spawn mutation and hybridisation as the transformed processes of policy formation and development. Due to these transformed processes, policy success and/or learning is not simply a product of policy transfer, but the result of the complex politics within institutions that are moulded by political bargaining and institutionalised practices.

From this approach, we critically reflect the processes and outcomes of the city government’s policy transfer. To examine how and why the city government pursues a fast circulation of policy knowledge, we scrutinise the city government’s motivations, sources and networks of policy transfer. To examine how the policy is altered and transformed in response to local socioeconomic, political and cultural conditions, we pose a more actor-centred and power-sensitive analytical framework by identifying the advocates and the opponents of the urban policy. In particular, we highlight politicians’ motivation and actions as main drivers of fast policy circulation, as the fast circulation of policy knowledge is generally accelerated through politicians’ strong motivation and prompt action. These political motivations and actions lead to the mutation and hybridisation of the policy because politicians are less interested in replicating and transmitting best practices (or diffusing good policies) but more keen on legitimising their political leadership. To exert and enhance their leadership more widely, politicians are more willing to change the character and content of the policies within their institutional, economic and political contexts, since a new policy creation can gain more public appeal than copying. They also tend to be a successful policy lender by exporting their mutated policy as superior performance to other cities and places. In a word, they actively utilise policy transfer (both as a borrower and a lender) as a policy tool to legitimise and maximise their political leadership, and this utilisation at the local level accelerates fast circulation of policy knowledge at the global scale.

3. Mobilities of Creative City Programs from Western Cities to Seoul

3.1 Articulating Seoul’s Creative City Policy

Seoul’s creative city policy can be categorised into two programmes: promoting creative industries; and creating and implementing a creative city administration. Basically, both programmes aim at making Seoul a leading creative city, but each has separate goals, strategies, agencies and projects. Through the first programme, the city government has pursued an industrial policy that promotes creative industries as the new growth engine in the knowledge-based economy. Through the second programme, the city government has attempted to set up new systems of personnel management, auditing and civil service.

To actualise these programmes, the city government first established the Hundred-day Creative Seoul Project Headquarters, which was a temporary consultative body, and then set up three headquarters: the Urban Competitiveness Headquarters, the Balanced Development Headquarters, and the Seoul Design Headquarters. The government also expanded the Hangang Project Headquarters for the purpose of boosting tourism. Overall, there are three newly established headquarters, seven existing bureaus, one existing office and one existing headquarters involved in Seoul’s creative city programmes. Eight organisations are involved in promoting creative industries: the Cultural Affairs Bureau, the Urban Competitiveness Headquarters, the Industry Bureau, the Balanced Development Headquarters, the Hangang Project Headquarters, the Seoul Design Headquarters, the Cultural Facilities Bureau and the Housing Bureau. The main organisations that set up the creative city administration are the Management and Planning Office, the Customer Satisfaction Bureau, the Audit and Inspection Bureau and the Administration Bureau.

The expenditure on Seoul’s creative city policy has increased every year since 2007, the second year of Mayor Oh’s term, according to Seoul’s performance-based budget. In 2007, the budget was more than 424 trillion won (approximately US$354 million); this had increased to 965 trillion won (approximately US$804 million) by 2010.³

3.2 Why Seoul Attempted Policy Transfer as a Policy Borrower

Beginning in 2006, Seoul began to pursue a creative city policy actively when Oh Se-hoon became the 33rd mayor of Seoul Metropolitan City. The reason that the Seoul mayor has engaged in policy transfer is that the transfer of policies and experiences of Western creative cities was easy to justify as part of his new policy and leadership. The job of Seoul’s mayor is generally regarded in South Korea as a stepping-stone to the presidency of South Korea (Berman and Kim, 2010). As a strong prospective candidate, the mayor used his position to demonstrate vision and leadership. For this, the mayor turned voluntarily to policy transfer as he saw it as the best solution. He believed that successful policy transfer, using the international community’s best practices, could increase electoral appeal and enhance his political leadership; as a result, the mayor was eager to engage in policy transfer. In his 3 July 2006 inaugural address, the mayor redefined Seoul as “an economic hub for the region rich with creativity and vitality”. In his 2007 New Year’s address, the mayor designated 2007 as the “First Year of Seoul Brand Marketing” as a creative city; and in his 2008 New Year’s address, he declared 2008 as the year in which the city of Seoul would be reborn as the “City of Creative Culture”. These messages clearly show that the elected mayor has given clear direction to Seoul’s public policy goal of becoming a global creative city, and that the principal actor involved in the policy transfer is the elected mayor. The following excerpt from a mayoral speech in 2007 shows that the mayor actively promoted a fast policy transfer through the creative city programmes

In order to nurture creative industries that will subsequently give birth to a lucrative growth engine and a powerful brand for our city, the civil servants of the Seoul Metropolitan Government must use their imagination to generate creative ideas and exploit them for practical purposes. That is why I have channelled all of my energies, over the six-month period after my inauguration, into preparing the foundations for a system that I call “Creative City Administration” and into spreading my ideas for the future direction of Seoul throughout my term as mayor (Oh, 2007).

This clearly shows that the mayor stressed the need for engaging in policy transfer through the creative city programmes in order to set new systemic and institutional agendas, to appear to be taking action on problems and to alter the course of existing policies. This attempt to build the new system is clearly related to his political motivation to be a president. For this motivation, he needed to show visible outcomes during his term. Utilising policy transfer was a fast and easy solution to prove his leadership as a prominent presidential candidate during his term.

3.3 From Where and What Is Borrowed

As a policy borrower, Seoul actively engaged in policy transfer from Western creative cities. The mayor wanted to transform Seoul into “a clean and attractive global city”. To this end, he decided to turn to policy transfer from Western creative cities programmes. The design of Seoul’s creative city programme draws on a combination of foreign examples rather than on a single foreign source. This excerpt from the mayor’s first inaugural speech and his study visits illustrates that Seoul was borrowing lessons from western European cities, such as London, Paris and Milan

Seoul must strive to redefine itself as one of the world’s key commercial players competing with the other great cities of the world through the introduction of new ideas and creative innovation. … I dream to one day redefine Seoul as a city full of economic vitality similar to New York; with the rich cultural vivacity of Paris; as distinguished as London; draped in fashionable style like Milan; and, furthermore, a city replete with distinctive symbolic landmarks much like Sydney. Seoul must be armed with its own unique innovative style; it must play a significant role in creating its own unique brand value to openly compete with all the world’s great metropolises. … The ultimate goal I seek, during my term in office, is to redefine Seoul as an “economic hub for the region rich with creativity and vitality” (Oh, 2006).

In promoting creative industries, the model city from which the Seoul city government wanted to draw lessons was London in the UK. The UK government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s (DCMS) policy has become the basis for Seoul’s creative city policy. This is confirmed by the following mayoral speech

Similarly, the world’s major metropolises are very much inclined to use all their available resources in order to nurture a creative industry with which they can create images and brands of their own design. In Britain, a global leader in the design industry, Prime Minister Tony Blair has taken the initiative of nurturing the creative industry and using it as a future growth engine under the banner “Creative Britain” (Oh, 2007).

In particular, the city government borrowed the goals of western European creative city policies, especially the DCMS’s goals, which aimed at boosting the economy and creating jobs in the knowledge-based economy. Seoul shared the same positive goals of growth and competitiveness with DCMS. Seoul attempted to borrow policy content promoting creative industries, but the details of how to define and designate creative industries were quite different.⁴

3.4 How to borrow

Seoul’s borrowing did not involve direct political connections with other cities. Rather, Seoul utilised its formalised national and international networks. Based on these formalised networks, the mayor and his staff drew lessons from Western cities through study visits. Throughout his term in office, the mayor made official visits to many cities, especially European cities. In January 2007, he visited Dubai, Frankfurt, London and Milan in order to learn from their experiences in tourism marketing, design and pro-environmental energy (Seoul Metropolitan Government, 2007b). In late August and early September 2007, he visited Moscow, Beijing and Tokyo as part of a sister-city affiliation programme. With the mayor of Beijing, he signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) of the Exchanges and Co-operation on Tourism between the two cities (Seoul Metropolitan Government, 2007c). In addition, he travelled to eight European cities⁵ in February 2008 (Seoul Metropolitan Government, 2008b) as well as to Sydney in October 2008 (Seoul Metropolitan Government, 2008c) in order to substantiate his idea of Culturenomics. Through study visits to Hong Kong and Singapore, he studied their roles and experiences as financial hubs in Asia (Seoul Metropolitan Government, 2009b). In June 2010, he visited Barcelona and Bilbao in Spain to investigate their public design policy (Seoul Metropolitan Government, 2010b).

4. Seoul’s Creative City Programmes as Mutation and Hybridisation

The analyses of Seoul’s creative city programmes show how borrowed policies or programmes are altered or transformed once placed into a new setting. The European policies, programmes and ideas of creative cities have been modified significantly in Seoul’s political, social, cultural and institutional setting, in which the strong voices of civil society organisations were expressed freely and publicly⁶ and in which uneven development between the Seoul metro region and the rest of country exists (Markusen et al., 1999). The Seoul metro region already has an excessive concentration of domestic talent and high-skilled workers due to its primacy and dominance (Lee, 2009). The mayor did not need to attract talent to Seoul. The mayor’s option to implement a manpower policy that attracts foreign talent was almost impossible due to strong nationalist sentiments⁷ in South Korea.⁸ In this context, the Seoul metro government focused on promoting creative industries rather than nurturing creative workers. In addition, reflecting the local conditions characterised by political democracy with strong opposition parties and active civic groups, the creative city policy was repackaged as a local-serving administration through Seoul’s Creative City Administration. It is thus important to scrutinise Seoul’s creative city policy in terms of two distinct programme categories, in order to reach a better understanding of how the creative city programmes were filtered and reshaped to fit the existing situation in Seoul.

4.1 Promoting Creative Industries

The Seoul metropolitan government has made two concerted efforts to promote creative industries. In 2007, the city government designated six creative industries as the new growth engines: tourism; design and fashion; digital content; conventions; research and development (R&D) in information technology (IT), nanotechnology (NT) and biotechnology (BT); and financial and business services. The government’s expenditures for promoting these industries were 287 889 million won in 2007, 493 033 million won in 2008 and 813 660 million won in 2009.

Along with supporting these six new growth engines, the city government has pursued the Culturenomics strategy in order to enhance Seoul’s competitiveness by supporting cultural industries such as performances, art, movies, drama and animation features since 2008 (Oh, 2008). For this strategy, the Cultural Affairs Bureau plays a crucial role in constructing and operating museums, galleries and community centres; supporting art organisations; holding festivals, such as the Kimchi Festival; and, restoring historical sites and promoting heritage. Almost 230 projects are being pursued by the Cultural Affairs Bureau; the government expenditure for the Culturenomics strategy was 233 293 million won in 2009 (Seoul Metropolitan Government, 2009a).

This Culturenomics strategy, which promotes cultural industries, was not a new attempt under Oh’s leadership but a policy developed by previous city governments. Hence, the funding for this project was quite limited (only 233 293 million won in 2009) and the mayor’s focus was thus on promoting the six growth engines. However, these six industries are not exclusively cultural industries. There are not only digital and IT sectors, but also nanotechnology, biotechnology and financial and business services—sectors that were not included in most Western government definitions of creative city programmes. Unfortunately, the city government has no policy tool to pursue industrial policy under the centralised system⁹ and thus, has focused on constructing physical infrastructure such as the Sangam Digital Media City (DMC),¹⁰ the Han River Renaissance¹¹ and DongDeamun Design Plaza and Park¹² (Seoul Metropolitan Government, 2007a, 2008a, 2009a), as well as promoting the tourism industry. The private sector’s involvement in these construction projects was another main reason that the city government focused on construction of physical infrastructure. According to the Board of Audit and Inspection, the Seoul city government is wasting its budget by issuing favourable contracts to private construction companies for construction projects of creative infrastructure such as the Han River Renaissance project and the Magok Waterfront project (The Hankyoreh, 2011). In particular, the Han River tour ship, water taxi and city-run ship have been under some economic strain and maintaining the operation is considered wasteful of the government budget (The Chosunilbo, 2011).

The Seoul city government attempted to transfer the main goal (boosting the economy), normative stances (growth and competitiveness) and content (promoting creative industries) of the UK’s DCMS programme, but altered the details of implementation and policy development by defining and designating creative industries differently. Thus, the programme required the unique insertion of details about institutions and administrative procedures to apply the original DCMS model in the Seoul context. The city government of Seoul did not replicate institutions from the UK. Rather, it utilised its existing institutions (eight bureaus, one office and one headquarters) and established new institutions (three headquarters). This process led to a different pattern of implementation and policy development in Seoul, and thus to a set of problems such as the neglect of creative workers and the excessive focus on constructing physical infrastructure and boosting tourism to promote creative industries.¹³

4.2 Creating and Implementing the Creative City Administration

To become a leading global creative city, the Seoul metropolitan government has attempted to set new systemic and institutional agendas by introducing a new system of creativity boosting, personnel management and civil service. The government calls this new public management system the “Creative City Administration” and defines it as an administrative process and system that stimulates creativity among civil servants and thus leads to improved administrative services (Oh, 2009). The city government believes that, through implementing the Creative City Administration, it can enhance its international competitiveness and upgrade the quality of life of its citizens. The Creative City Administration aims to introduce a creativity-boosting system, a new personnel management system and a new civil service system.

To boost creativity, the city government is pursuing new projects such as the ‘Oasis for Ten Million Imagination’ and a creativity performance evaluation system by organisation. The main purpose of the Oasis for Ten Million Imagination is to collect innovative and creative ideas directly from citizens regarding city administration and policies. These ideas, collected through the project, have been actualised through its Cyber Civil Policy Management system. Through the creativity performance evaluation system, the city government evaluates all organisations of the city government. The Management and Planning Office is the main organisation for boosting creativity systematically.

To operate the new personnel management system effectively, the city government has introduced a new performance evaluation system, a new auditing system and a new education/reward system as sub-categories and has integrated these systems closely. Within the new evaluation system, a civil servant is evaluated based on his or her performance, creative ideas and auditing. If he or she gets a good score, he or she can get a reward such as a promotion, a bonus, educational opportunities (including both local and overseas), an option to choose a post or division, and so on. Through the new performance evaluation and reward system, the government intends to enhance civil servants’ capabilities and creativity, raise the quality of civil service and thus satisfy the citizens’ needs. Through the new audit system, the city government aims at raising the standard of Seoul’s transparency and improving anti-corruption efforts.

While the Administration Bureau is the main organisation for operating the performance evaluation system, as well as managing rewards, bonuses and in-service training, the Auditing and Inspection Bureau manages ‘integrity index research and auditing support’. To implement the evaluations, rewards and auditing system, the city government restructured its organisational structure from one office, one headquarters and eleven bureaus to one office, five headquarters, and eight bureaus in 2007.¹⁴ It downsized its organisations by consolidating divisions and merging 35 offices in 2007 (Oh, 2008). Moreover, it intended to close inactive administrative district offices and convert them into culture and welfare facilities (Oh, 2008). The city government also made a plan to cut the number of employees by 1300 by 2010 (Oh, 2008) and actually reduced the number of employees by 947 as of June 2010.¹⁵

To set up and operate the new civil service system, the city government operates the Dasan Plaza and Dasan Call Centre.¹⁶ To improve civil administrative services/affairs, the city government operates the Dasan Plaza, which is a one-stop service centre for Seoul citizens. The Dasan Call Centre, which operates 24 hours a day and is managed by the Customer Satisfaction Bureau, answers citizens’ queries regarding Seoul and citizens can use this service simply by dialing 120 (Republic of Korea, 2010). These service programmes have been introduced to modernise and improve public service and to increase its efficiency.

The Seoul metropolitan government’s expenditures on the Creative City Administration have been gradually increasing, from 21 086 million won in 2007 to 25 791 million won in 2008, and 29 729 million won in 2009. In 2010, the year when Mayor Oh Se-hoon began his second term in office, the proposed budget was 40 125 million won, a major increase.

Seoul’s Creative City Administration system is a typical example of policy mutation because it is the creation of a novel programme not inconsistent with foreign examples. The western European creative cities programmes became the starting-point for a series of Seoul’s creative city programmes, which now go beyond simple adaptation with significant modification. The ‘Oasis for Ten Million Imagination’ programme, the creativity performance evaluation system by organisation and the Cyber Civil Policy Management system, which were devised in order to boost creativity in the city administration, are programmes unique to Seoul. The new civil service system, which operates Dasan Plaza and Dasan Call Centre, is also a novel development in Seoul. These programmes and systems are for local-serving administration in the Seoul context. Furthermore, the Seoul creative city programme added major elements of the new public management (NPM) system¹⁷ by introducing a new personnel management system which focused on the downsizing of government organisations and workforce. This development is a significant deviation from the original UK source.

4.3 Unexpected Problems regarding Seoul’s Creative City Policy

Seoul’s creative city policy encountered unexpected operational and administrative problems. The first unexpected problem encountered in the implementation process was increasing debt. During the term of the previous mayor, Seoul’s debt was about 1 trillion won, but after the current mayor’s inauguration, the debt increased rapidly. The debt was 1.15 trillion won in 2006, 1.55 trillion won in 2007, 1.85 trillion won in 2008 and up to 3.25 trillion won in 2009 (Seoul Economy Daily, 2010). This figure gives a red warning sign of growing fiscal deficit. The creative city policy, which focused on physical construction projects such as the DMC and the Han River Renaissance project, significantly contributed to the rapidly increasing debt.

Secondly, unlike the city government’s rhetoric of openness and communication, the Seoul mayor has ironically faced severe criticism about his leadership and administration style. Opposition parties and progressive civic groups argued that the flood damage in the summer of 2011 was substantial “because the second-term mayor spent much of the city’s budget in projects to decorate the city instead of preserving it” (Korea Times, 2011a).¹⁸ In particular, civic groups have criticised the city government’s strict control on the use of Seoul Plaza for assembly purposes. Seoul Plaza has been a symbolic public space for South Korean democracy, but the current local government law limited the use of the plaza only to citizens’ leisure and cultural activities (The Hankyoreh, 2009). Civic groups, such as the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) and Lawyers for a Democratic Society (MINBYUN in Korean), and opposition parties, such as the Democratic Party, the Democratic Labour Party, the Creative Korea Party and the New Progressive Party, launched a campaign to call for amendment of the city’s regulation in 2009 (The Hankyoreh, 2009), criticising the mayor’s leadership as being undemocratic. This city government’s regulation impairs the value of leadership of the creative cities programmes, which are supposed to contribute to openness and inclusiveness.

The recent local election results also show the Seoul citizens’ critical views of Mayor Oh’s creative city policy. During the election campaign, his policy was criticised as being a mere display (window dressing) by civic groups and opposition political parties. Although Mayor Oh was re-elected, he won with only 47.4 per cent of the vote compared with the opposition’s 46.8 per cent. He won outright in only 8 districts out of 25 and his victory was mainly due to the votes in two districts: Seocho-gu (59.07 per cent) and Gangnam-gu (59.94 per cent), which are the richest southern districts in Seoul.¹⁹ These election results indirectly show the Seoul citizens’ view of the Oh government’s creative city policy, which focuses on physical construction and one-off events to boost tourism.

4.4 Seoul’s Policy Transfer as a Policy Lender?

These criticisms have become impediments to the mayor’s plan to achieve prominence as a strong presidential candidate. To ward off criticisms and legitimise his creative city policy, the mayor actively attempted to utilise policy transfer as a policy lender. The city government claims that it has already gained status as a policy lender by illustrating many cases of policy learning from Seoul by other foreign cities. Through press releases, it has advertised that it has successfully exported its creative city programmes to the world. However, unlike the government’s argument, there is little evidence that policy export or policy learning from Seoul has occurred in other foreign cities. Instead, we witness that the city has spent a lot of money to advertise its creative city programmes to other foreign cities. Foreign visitors rarely paid for their trips to Seoul. There are two institutional ways to advertise the creative city programmes to other foreign cities: through training programmes for foreign public officers and through academic exchanges.

There are three institutions that run the training programmes for foreign public officers. First, the Seoul Human Resource Development Centre (SHRDC), which is the main organisation that runs training programmes for foreign public officers, was officially accredited as the Metropolis International Institute Asian Centre in October 2008.²⁰ From 2008 to August 2010, the SHRDC ran 25 programmes and 347 foreign public officers from 62 foreign cities, mostly in Asian countries, went through these training programmes (Table 1). To recruit and invite foreign public officers, the city government first took action by sending official documents to foreign cities.²¹ The city government itself and other supporting agencies such as the Korea International Co-operation Agency (KOICA), the World Bank, Metropolis, Citynet²² and the Chinese Academy of Sciences funded the programmes (Seoul Metropolitan Government, 2008d).

Table 1.

The Seoul Human Resource Development Centre’s training programmes

Classification	Period	City/Country	Number of participants	Course
Partner city	16/09/2008–23/09/2008	Astana, Bangkok, Beijing, Cairo, Colombo, Delhi, Dhaka, Hong Kong, Hunan, Kathmandu, Nairobi, Shanghai, Suva, Ulaanbaatar (14 cities)	23	Seoul e-Government
Partner city	25/09/2008–02/10/2008	Astana, Bangkok, Beijing, Cairo, Colombo, Delhi, Dhaka, Hong Kong, Hunan, Kathmandu, Nairobi, Shanghai, Suva, Ulaanbaatar (14 cities)	23	Urban Environment Policy
Joint	02/11/2008–09/11/2008	Egypt	11	City Centre Redevelopment
Joint	09/10/2008–29/10/2008	Colombia	15	2008 Industrial Development
Joint	25/08/2008–07/09/2008	Iraq	13	Local Administration
Joint	03/11/2008–21/11/2008	Uzbekistan	12	Taxation
Others	10/09/2008–11/09/2008	Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Japan, Mongolia, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vietnam	21	2008 Environment
Others	11/03/2008–12/03/2008	Beijing	13	Transportation I
Others	22/06/2008–29/06/2008	Bangladesh	10	Transportation II
Partner city	28/06/2009–04/07/2009	Ankara, Bangkok, Beijing, Budapest, Guangdong, Jakarta, Jiangsu, Kathmandu, Shangdong, Ulaanbaatar (10 cities)	10	Seoul e-Government I
Partner city	25/10/2009–31/10/2009	Ankara, Astana, Bangkok, Beijing, Budapest, Guangdong, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Jiangsu, Kathmandu, Shangdong, Taipei, Tashkent, Ulaanbaatar (14 cities)	12	Urban Environment Policy I
Partner city	30/08/2009–05/09/2010	Astana, Bangkok, Budapest, Guangdong, Hongkong, Jakarta, Jiangsu, Kathmandu, Shangdong, Taipei, Tashkent, Ulaanbaatar (12 cities)	12	Urban Transportation Policy I
MII Asian Centre	04/10/2009–10/10/2009	Colombo, Dalian, Isfahan, Kathmandu, Kolkata, Manila, Mashhad, Shiraz, Surabaya, Teheran, Wuhan (11 cities)	14	Seoul e-Government II
MII Asian Centre	11/10/2009–18/10/2009	Amman, Colombo, Dalian, Isfahan, Kathmandu, Manila, Mashhad, Shiraz, Surabaya, Teheran, Wuhan (11 cities)	14	Urban Environment Policy II
MII Asian Centre	18/10/2009–24/10/2009	Amman, Colombo, Dalian, Isfahan, Kathmandu, Kolkata, Manila, Mashhad, Shiraz, Surabaya, Teheran, Wuhan (12 cities)	14	Urban Transportation Policy II
Joint	31/03/2009–15/04/2009	Guatemala	15	e-Government I
Joint	10/09/2009–25/09/2009	Indonesia	11	e-Government II
Others	15/06/2009–16/06/2009	Bangkok	10	Cultural Exchange
Partner city	05/05/2010–13/05/2010	Bau-Bau, Dakar, Dar es Salaam, Hanoi, Istanbul, Jakarta, Kathmandu, Mexico City, Minsk, Nairobi, São Paulo, Tashkent, Tianjin, Ulaanbaatar, Zhejiang (15 cities)	15	Seoul e-Government
Partner city	20/06/2010–27/06/2010	Bau-Bau, Dakar, Dar es Salaam, Hanoi, Istanbul, Kathmandu, Mexico City, Minsk, Nairobi, São Paulo, Tashkent, Tianjin, Ulaanbaatar, Warsaw, Zhejiang (15 cities)	15	Urban Environment Policy
Partner city	04/07/2010–11/07/2010	Bau-Bau, Dakar, Dar es Salaam, Hanoi, Kathmandu, Mexico City, Minsk, Nairobi, São Paulo, Tashkent, Tianjin, Ulaanbaatar, Warsaw, Zhejiang (14 cities)	14	Urban Transportation Policy I
MII Asian Centre	05/09/2010–12/09/2010	Unknown	15	Urban Cultural Policy
MII Asian Centre	07/11/2010–14/11/2010	Forthcoming	15	Urban Environment Policy (Climate Change
MII Asian Centre	17/10/2010–24/10/2010	Forthcoming	15	Urban Transportation Policy II
Joint	20/03/2010–28/03/2010	Ukraine (KOICA)	8	Urban Management
Joint	12/04/2010–16/04/2010	Beijing	30	Urban Transportation Policy III
Joint	18/02/2010–11/03/2010	Guatemala (KOICA)	12	2010 e-Government

Source: Seoul Human Resource Development Centre (2011) (see: http://hrd.seoul.go.kr:80/eng/H02TrainingAction.do?method=introduce_select).

Secondly, the newly established Economic Promotion Headquarters (formerly the Urban Competitiveness Headquarters) has also run training programmes for foreign public officers in sister cities and friendly cities. It provided 2 million won to an individual foreign public officer and it provided funding of 35 million won in 2008 and 2009 and 45 million won in 2010 for these programmes (Economic Performance Headquarters, 2009, 2010).

Thirdly, the Dasan Call Centre also runs training programmes. Since 2007, 330 foreigners from 23 countries have visited this centre. As the foreign and local requests for the benchmark kept pouring in, this centre has developed and managed a tour programme since October 2008 (Seoul Metropolitan Government, 2009c). Unlike the other two institutions, this centre has become the successful benchmark for many other public and private organisations.

Through academia, the city government actively advertises its creative city programmes as well. First, it runs and funds the Urban Administration Master’s Programme with Korea University (Seoul Metropolitan Government, 2010c). Secondly, it signed a memorandum of understanding with eight graduate schools of public policy in the US in order to offer a course called “Case Study: Policy Management in Seoul” and to run the Seoul field trip. The city government pays not only for the board and lodging for participating students, but also for the airfare, board and lodging for the professor in charge of the field trip. Thirdly, the government actively promotes its creative city programmes by organising international conferences. It has been organising the Global Metropolitan Forum of Seoul annually since 2007. Guy Sorman, Paul Cheshire, David Throsby, Daniel Pink, Saskia Sassen, Allen Scott, Rolf Jensen and Richard Florida have been invited as keynote speakers to these forums. The city government’s expenditures for these forums were 781 million won in 2008 and 272 million won in 2009. Its budget for the 2010 forum is 470 million won (Office of Planning and Co-ordination, 2009, 2010). The city government also held the 2009 Creative City Administration International Conference with the topic of “Creativity, the Power to Change the World” on 12 August 2009. Through these forums and conferences, the city government has introduced the Seoul Creative City Administration model and promoted its excellence to the world. Moreover, the city government has advertised it as a new model by publicising Berman and Kim’s (2010) study of the programme that was published in the Public Performance and Management Review.

All in all, despite the city’s claim about policy export as a policy lender, there is little evidence to prove it. Rather, there is evidence of the city government’s enormous spending on institutionalised promotion practices.

5. Conclusion: A Global Urban Frontier?

The Seoul case outlines how the creative city programmes have travelled globally and have mutated and morphed in the local context due to the mayor’s political motivation and action, as well as citizens’ criticisms and political opposition. This clearly shows that the policy borrowed from elsewhere cannot be readily transferred or copied; rather, it has been transformed through negotiations and struggles with citizens in the local context. The Seoul case also confirms that the mayor’s political motivation and action have accelerated the circulation of urban policy as both a policy borrower and a policy lender; this has led to the mutation and hybridisation of the policy. This shows the ‘local globalness’ of urban policy-making. In the mutation process, the original creative city programmes have been transformed, ideologically and materially, by Seoul into the process of downsizing government organisations and workforce, limiting the use of public space, physical construction and boosting tourism, while excluding programmes nurturing creative workers. Seoul’s claim to be a policy lender is not a product of other foreign cities’ policy transfer or learning about Seoul’s programmes, but the result of the city government’s promotional practices, including running training programmes for foreign public officers and utilising academia with its huge funding base. In a word, Seoul’s mutated creative city policy has been the result of complex politics moulded by political bargaining and institutionalised practices. Based on these findings, we confirm our critique of the Seoul city government’s view on best practices through policy transfer and on the naïve assumptions of convergence and hierarchical categorisation of a policy lender and a policy borrower in urban policy transfer.

It may be too early to evaluate whether Seoul’s attempt to become a global urban frontier through its modified creative city model, which was partly borrowed from Western cities, has succeeded or failed. Yet, the mayor strongly hopes to make Seoul a global urban frontier by creating a new model through learning experiences based on the lessons drawn from policy transfer. The mayor believes that, through implementing the creative city policy, Seoul has gained recognition around the world (Mayor Oh, 2010). Despite the mayor’s view, Seoul’s creative city programmes are, in many ways, not novel or creative. The programmes nurturing creative industries are no more than tourism-boosting efforts and physical construction, which are far behind similar programmes in Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo. The Creative City Administration programmes are merely a disguise for NPM, which pursues greater cost efficiency for governments by downsizing government organisations and cutting the number of employees based on neo-liberal policy ideas. This creative administration policy based on NPM and the policy on public space use have faced strong resistance from unions, civic groups and opposition parties. This may damage the progress in democracy that Seoul has achieved since 1987. The mayor has become aware of the increasing criticism and tried to answer his critics in his second inaugural speech in 2010 by highlighting three guiding principles: open communication, social unity and future orientation. Unfortunately, the recent move by the mayor as a presidential candidate is against these guiding principles, which now appear to be just rhetoric.²³

Seoul’s dream of becoming a global urban frontier cannot come true if the city still pursues the creative city policy as rhetoric, which relies heavily on NPM, tourism and physical construction strategies. Other Asian cities that pursue global creative city policies, such as Singapore, Shanghai and Beijing, are not any different from Seoul, as their efforts are also based on tourism and physical construction strategies. The role of Seoul is thus to bring a new orientation to the new creative city policy, which can restore the value of openness and democracy and make Korea’s democracy a source of creativity. One way for Seoul to do this is to incorporate democracy and political, social and cultural tolerance as constitutive elements of its identity and image. Seoul has the potential to create a new form of the creative city. As mentioned earlier, the Seoul Plaza is already a symbolic place for democracy in Asia. Seoul, where the number of NGOs has been growing and where organised citizen participation is promoted, is an important incubator of participative democracy in Asia (Kim and Moon, 2003). Under previous mayors’ leadership, Seoul has already gained valuable experiences of political participation, voluntary social service participation and policy participation by NGOs and organised citizens (Kim and Moon, 2003). Engaging citizens is a core element of a more democratic creative city and a pre-condition for invigorating leadership. It is time for Seoul to create a new discourse, policy and strategy for a new creative city based on its history, rather than based on a dream of becoming a global urban frontier.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Ronan Paddison, Tim Bunnell, Young Jun Choi and three anonymous referees for their constructive feedback on earlier drafts.

Notes

Funding Statement

This work was supported by a National Research Foundation of Korea grant funded by the Korean government (NRF-2011-371-H00002).

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