Seoul to hold smart city summit

The Seoul Metropolitan Government along with the Seoul Digital Foundation will hold “Seoul Smart City Summit & Conference 2019” on Tuesday and Wednesday at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza. The event will be attended by smart city-related officials from Tallinn in Estonia, Zurich in Switzerland, and San Francisco in the U.S. as well as various businesses, experts, and citizens.

Roundtable discussions will be held on the first day of the conference with officials and businesses sharing smart city case examples. Tallinn Mayor Mihhail Kõlvart and Zurich mayor Corine Mauch will introduce each city’s example. Zurich not only invests in new technologies but also promotes its citizens’ participation and cooperation through technology. The Tallinn mayor, the third-generation Korean-Estonian who had served as a deputy mayor of the city from 2011 to 2017, is currently chairing the Estonia Taekwondo Association and an active member of the Korean-Estonian community. The Seoul Metropolitan Government, which signed a friend city agreement with Tallinn in October last year, will grant honorary citizenship to Mayor Kõlvart.

Ted Ross, the chief information officer of Los Angeles, will discuss the city’s transition process to a smart city and its preparation for the 2028 Summer Olympics. Mark Chandler, director of the San Francisco mayor’s Office of International Trade and Commerce, will share program strategy regarding not just hardware but digital discussion structure and big data.

On the second day of the event, the Smart Seoul Conference will be held under the theme of redesigning cities with digital innovation. Kyle Farrell, the chair of Block by Block conducting public urban renewal projects with games, will speak at the event. In addition, CEO Park Jae-wook of VCNC who developed highly popular applications – “Between” and “TADA” – will deliver a presentation on IT development and changing mobility ecosystem under the title of “Mobility Innovation and TADA.” In addition, movie critic Yoo Sung-eun and Blue Signal CEO Baek Seung-tae will also host a talk concert, “Smart Cities in Movies.”

“Accumulated municipal administration-related data and technologies, such as IoT and blockchain, will be combined while various events and citizens’ behavior will be datafied to bring changes in the future,” said Lee Won-mok, a smart city policy officer at the Seoul Metropolitan Government.


will@donga.com