Busan City Government: Be fruitful, and multiply! And don’t leave!

Posted in Busan, Korean Demographics, Korean Economy, Korean Translations by James Turnbull on October 14th, 2007

I saw this article on page 2 of the Busan City Government’s weekly “newspaper” the Busan Shibo/부산시보 (warning: automatic lame music) available at the turnstiles at subway stations, but if you are beating yourself up about misplacing your copy then never fear, for a PDF of the article itself is available here. The final policy recommendations mentioned in the article may have been influenced by a local meeting on the issue last month that I discussed here, so, for the few Korean demographics students that are the only people still reading this post by this stage, I recommend you read that post first.

부산시보, 제1289호, 2007.10.10, p.2.

“인구유출 막고，출산 늘리고 …”

부산시，인구감소 분야별 대책 추진 온 힘

부산광역시가 각 분야별 인구감소 대책을 펴는데 온 힘을 쏟고 있다．지난 7월 인구대책위원회를 출범시킨 뒤, 지금까지 마련한 경제, 교육, 문화 등 분야별 대책을 추진하는 것이다．

중점대책은 크게 일자리 창출 및 지역경제 활성화，쾌적한 정주여건 마련， 교육경쟁력 강화，출산·양육에 친화적인 환경 마련，도시매력도 향상，시민의식 제고 등이다．

먼저 출산을 장려하기 위해 `저출산대책 및 출산장려를 위한 지원 조례’를 제정하고，출산축하금 인상，보육시설 확충 및 보육료 지원 등 다양한 지원을 펴고 있다．

일자리 창출을 위해 산업단지를 추가 확보하고 `부산 뉴 잡 플랜’을 시행하며, 각종 컨택센터도 지속적으로 유치하고 있다．

교육 측면에선 지역대학의 경쟁력을 강화하고, 부산 글로벌 빌리지(Busan Global Village)를 조성하며, 부산국제외국어학교를 설립하는 등 외국인을 포함한 교육 내실화 방안을 적극 추진한다．

이와 함께 쾌적한 주거여건을 마련하기 위해 강서·정관 신도시 개발에 박차를 가하고，충무·영도 뉴타운 및 혁신도시를 건설한다．출산을 장려하고 인구유출을 막기 위해서는 사회적 공감대를 서둘러 형성해야 한다고 보고，사회적 분위기를 확산시키는데도 힘을 쏟고 있다．

시는 최근 인구감소 추세가 다소 둔화되고 있고，정관신도시 아파트의 분양과 부산의 국제적 위상 강화 등 도시의 활력이 높아짐에 따라 인구감소 현상도 조금씩 줄어들 것으로 기대하고 있다.

Busan Shibo, No. 1289, Wednesday October 10th 2007, p. 2.

“Stop the flow of people from Busan, raise the birth rate…”

Busan City Council has launched a multi-faceted drive to counteract Busan’s population decrease.

This drive of Busan Metropolitan City’s will be particularly vigorous, and is the result of recommendations of a committee formed in July was formed to deal with this issue, which so far has come up with numerous proposals for the local economy, education system, cultural facilities and so forth.

The main points of these policies include producing more jobs, boosting the local economy, making the Busan living environment pleasanter, making the local education system more attractive, making the environment friendlier to parents to raise their children, increase the city’s charm, and to make people think of themselves as Busan citizens more, and so on.

First, to encourage an increase in the birthrate, the “Law to counter the low birthrate” has been enacted, which amongst other things will increase the congratulatory child support funds given to new parents, expand the number of childcare facilities, and subside kindergarten fees to make them more affordable for parents.

Next, to increase the number of local jobs, industrial areas will set up and the “Busan New Job Plan”will be implemented, which will involve the establishment of various kinds of jobs centers.

In terms of education, local universities will strengthen their competitiveness, a “Busan Global Villlage”will be created, more Busan Foreign language schools will established, and the opinions and concerns of Busan’s increasing non-native population will be given much more consideration than in the past. This will be the most substantial portion of this new drive by the Busan City Council.

Finally, in oder to make Busan a pleasanter city to live in, “new towns” will be built in Gangseo-gu and Jeong-gwan, and these will spur development in neighbouring ChoongMu and Yeong-island. In order to encourage an increase in the birthrate and stem the population flow from Busan, the city thinks Busan citizens need to be aware of the seriousness of the issue and sympathise with the city’s concerns, and so it has to hurridly begin a new campaign of public awareness.

With these measures, Busan City hopes to stem the population flow from Busan a little, and with the sale or lease of Jeong-Gwan Newtown apartments Busan’s international image will hopefully strengthen, and as the city’s dynamic energy increases the rate of population decrease will surely slow.

Seeing as I always provide the link to the original articles that I translate when I can, then it was not unreasonable of a friend of mine to ask me recently why I always feel the need to make readers scroll down through the original Korean before getting to my translation; after all, he only reads through everything because I guilted him into doing so. But I just as reasonably replied that links sometimes die, and there may be mistakes with my translation which people with better ability than me can point out. We were both a bit drunk by that stage though, so I also let it slip that having lots of actual Korean on the blog hopefully gives me an aura of the Korean expert that other blogs lack, but as that would be too honest and patronising to my readers I shouldn’t really reveal it here. My lips are sealed.

Seriously though, in this particular case my wife and I had a horrendous time trying to translate the complete hot air that the article was, and while I think I’ve captured the gist of it, more competent than I Korean speakers may indeed want to confirm for themselves that that waffling crap is what local governments dish up for their citizens here. In fairness though, it sounds a bit better in Korean, but if a picture says a thousands words, then I think this one neatly sums up Busanites’ feelings about the local government’s plans:

Sure, I ‘m not entirely certain that the picture is even of Korea let alone Busan, but put up all the shiny new apartments you want, if laws about maternity leave are not actually enforced, and there’s not adequate and affordable childcare available that parents can actually trust, then 30-something Korean women are just going to give a big “메롱” to exhortations by middle-aged civil servants in their 50s to have more children for the sake of the economy….seriously, they wouldn’t be able to move into the shiny apartments in if they did. While it’s great that governments are appearing to take the Korean birthrate issue seriously, until I see some actual evidence of the ominous sounding “Law to counter the low birthrate” then its just going to sound like the same old lip-service to me, something which Korean officials are unfortunately notorious for.