Changwon mayor calls district chiefs to meeting as first act after personnel reshuffle

Changwon Mayor Kang Ki-yoon summoned the heads of the city's five district offices and 55 township and neighborhood offices as his first official act following a senior civil servant reshuffle, calling on them to put field-centered innovation at the heart of city administration.

The city held a communication forum with district mayors and township heads at the city hall civic hall on Monday. The gathering was organized to prevent any administrative gap caused by the personnel changes and to reorient front-line agencies toward on-the-ground engagement and open communication with residents.

At the forum, Kang said district offices and township offices, as the frontmost tier of city government, play a critical role in delivering change that residents can actually feel. "Change that citizens experience starts in the field," he said, urging administrators to open township office spaces as accessible consultation rooms where any resident can walk in comfortably.

Kang particularly pressed administrators to break away from routine, box-ticking approaches to their work. "I ask front-line agency heads to actively encourage their staff to work with creativity and a spirit of challenge," he said, adding that the city would spare no administrative or fiscal support for improvement tasks and new projects identified in the field.

In an open discussion that followed, township heads raised a range of resident concerns gathered from their communities, including proposals for road widening and improvements to public convenience facilities. Kang directed the relevant city departments to review the suggestions actively and move quickly to act on them.

Changwon plans to hold the district and township head forum on a regular basis, using it to collect front-line concerns and work through pressing city administration issues.