Mayor pitches ‘renaissance’ for tech-savvy Yongin City

Yongin Mayor Lee Sang-il painted the future of a technologically advanced and culturally vibrant city during The Korea Herald Global Business Forum 2024 held at Marina Park in Seoul on Wednesday.

The meeting, attended by business leaders and academics as well as senior government officials, included Polish Ambassador to South Korea Piotr Ostaszewski. Offering congratulatory remarks, the envoy lauded the annual gathering on the global political and business landscape.

Ambitious but prudent, Lee, 62, portrayed a snapshot of how his city, roughly the same size as Seoul with a population of 1.1 million, could potentially be the world’s largest semiconductor base by 2042, a nationally-funded project to win the global battle for chip tech supremacy.

The industrial complex in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, would handle up to one-third of chip production by Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest memory chipmaker, according to Lee.

“It’s more than just a ‘renaissance,’” Lee said. “What I’m looking for is a complete makeover with lasting impacts,” Lee added, referring to his motto that will define his four-year term until June 2026: “Yongin renaissance, the future we craft together.”

Yongin is the first city to have passed an ordinance to set up a comprehensive framework for supporting companies involved in chipmaking. Seeking talent should not be a hurdle either, Lee noted, saying a high school dedicated to teaching chip know-how will open by 2026.

“We’re also working with universities in the province to further enlarge the talent pool. So it’s like building a win-win ecosystem for both specialists and companies that need them to thrive for a long period,” Lee added.

Setting up infrastructure for technology prowess is a pressing priority but is not the only item on the to-do list, according to Lee, a reporter-turned-politician who served as a conservative Saenuri Party lawmaker before taking office.

Being a mayor requires a stronger focus on work than legislating, and his hobbies of listening to music and his interest in painting have served him well, Lee said, recalling his 25 years as a newspaper reporter starting straight out of college.

He was elected to the National Assembly in May 2012. During his four-year term, he sat on the culture committee for nine months through March 2013.

“Advanced infrastructure for culture will be established as well. Life isn’t just about work,” Lee said, stressing making arts centers larger and festivals more prominent is another task in progress.

Meanwhile, Yoo Seong-ho, a professor of forensic medicine at Seoul National University College of Medicine, discussed how to live a life without regrets.

The forensics expert explained that Koreans born today are expected to live much longer on average than their peers born decades ago. Many have to revisit how they want to deal with retirement and the years after leaving work, a long process that requires plans.

Since 2013, the 52-year-old professor has been teaching a class titled “A scientific understanding of death,” one of the most popular electives at SNU.

“We have to think about how we want our end to look. Facing up to death is a start,” he said.