Pocheon mayor says 9th elected term will turn residents into 'humanities subjects'

Pocheon held the inaugural meeting and appointment ceremony of its Humanities City Advisory Committee at City Hall on Tuesday, formally launching efforts to build a humanities-centered city under the 9th elected municipal administration.

At the ceremony, 19 newly appointed members received their letters of appointment, bringing the full committee to 21 members, including two ex-officio members.

The committee draws from city council members, specialists in education and culture, civil society representatives and citizen delegates. Members will serve as the steering body for the city's humanities policy over the next two years.

At the regular meeting that followed, members discussed the direction of humanities policy under the 9th elected term. They agreed on the need for an inclusive approach encompassing foreign residents, multicultural communities and migrants, and explored concrete ways to put that vision into practice.

Members also expressed support for the city's policy goal of building a "sustainable humanities city" — one in which citizen-led humanities activities channel public ideas directly into policy — and offered specific proposals for realizing it.

"If the 8th elected term was about laying the groundwork for a humanities city, the 9th is the stage where citizens grow into the subjects of that humanities vision," Mayor Baek Young-hyun said. "We will build a humanities city where happiness in everyday life is something citizens cultivate for themselves."

Building on the new appointments, Pocheon plans to develop local humanities practitioners and draw on the region's diverse cultural and historical assets to pursue policies that make learning a way of life and life itself a form of culture — changes residents can feel in their daily routines.