Seoul has become one of the largest cities in the world. And that daytime traffic makes Seoul's population about a third of the whole population of your country. Even though the civil servants that I work with are very able and very dedicated, the total size of the Seoul municipal government is too small. The knowledge and technical capability on the part of the civil servants is also very inadequate. And to make the matter worse, the system of local government, so far anyway, has not been supported by a kind of institutional framework which upon which it ought to develop.
Local autonomy has to be founded on a much firmer institutional basis.
Give us an example of a particular problem and explain to us how the institutional support is lacking. But I as mayor of the city of Seoul do not have that authority. The mayor has to have the authority to increase his revenue by adding more taxes, for instance, to perform the kind of duty that he is called upon to perform, but I am not authorized to do that either. A mayor has to change regulations, but that freedom is also extremely limited, so that the mayor's freedom of action, elbow room, is too small and limited. So you are in a transition to a more democratic form of local government.