Busan Mayor Jeon Jae-soo, who took office under the banner of "livelihood recovery" and a "future growth strategy" with the launch of the ninth popularly elected local government, is boosting execution capacity by establishing four dedicated task forces just one week into his term. The reorganization is designed to support his first approved directive, the "Busan 100-Day Livelihood Emergency Measures," and is seen as launching a "mobile city administration" that focuses on producing results on individual issues by breaking down the silos of the existing administrative organization.
The city said Sunday that, effective Monday, it will establish a Commercial District Revitalization TF within the Small and Medium Enterprise Support Division, a Tourism Economic Vitality TF within the Tourism Policy Division, a Livelihood Economy Investigation TF within the Special Judicial Police Division, and a North Port Redevelopment Innovation TF within the North Port Redevelopment Promotion Division.
The creation of these task forces is a reorganization that symbolically reflects the mayor's direction for running the administration. The aim is to speed up policy execution by having dedicated organizations, rather than existing departments, concentrate on core issues that citizens strongly feel — such as recovery of local commercial districts, expansion of tourism spending, response to livelihood economy crimes, and North Port redevelopment.
The Commercial District Revitalization TF will take charge of establishing a master plan for revitalizing local commercial districts, as well as designating commercial revitalization zones, autonomous commercial districts, and win-win zones, creating Busan-style long-term secure commercial spaces, and win-win cooperation between large and small retailers. As tasks such as the government's expansion of local commercial district revitalization policy, rising vacancy rates, and management of win-win agreements increase, the TF will comprehensively carry out support for neighborhood commercial districts.
The Tourism Economic Vitality TF will focus on connecting tourism to consumption and local economic recovery. It will prepare a stay-oriented tourism strategy linking cruise, MICE, nighttime tourism, and culinary content so that the increase in foreign tourists leads to sales for local commercial districts. In particular, it plans to expand tourism centered on eastern Busan into western Busan and to improve the tourist accommodation system, including lodging issues that emerged during the recent BTS event. It will also pursue a policy that connects tourism spending with Dongbaekjeon and neighborhood commercial district recovery projects to simultaneously expand tourist inflow and local consumption.
The core of the Livelihood Economy Investigation TF is introducing special judicial police functions to respond to livelihood financial crimes, such as illegal private lending and voice phishing, which have surged recently. It will build a cooperative system with police, prosecutors, and financial supervisory agencies to create a one-stop response system extending beyond crackdowns to counseling, legal support, administrative measures, and investigation. It also plans to build a prevention-focused citizen financial protection model by analyzing damage to vulnerable groups and small business owners in advance.
The North Port Redevelopment Innovation TF will serve as a control tower overseeing the entire North Port redevelopment project. It will comprehensively manage development plans, investment attraction, infrastructure creation, and strategies for linking with the old downtown, and will take charge of consultations with the central government and related agencies. The plan is to nurture North Port as Busan's new growth hub by gathering citizen opinions and identifying private investment models at the same time.
The city explained that it introduced the TF system after concluding that complex issues — such as revitalizing local commercial districts, promoting tourism spending, and strengthening urban competitiveness — cannot be adequately addressed by existing organizations alone. The intent is to concentrate organizational capacity on connecting livelihood recovery policies to visible results early on.
"The change that citizens ordered through the election must be proven not with words but with speedy execution," Jeon said. "From the very start of my term, I will move immediately, listen to voices on the ground, and create a city administration that is judged by results."
