The district was the only Seoul autonomous district to receive the honor at Thursday's ceremony in Sejong, earning the Minister of Education Award for its slow-learner lifelong education support program.
Seoul's Seongbuk-gu said it received the top prize — the Minister of Education Award — at the 23rd Korea Lifelong Learning Awards ceremony held Thursday at the Government Sejong Convention Center, becoming the only autonomous district in Seoul to win the honor.
The Korea Lifelong Learning Awards, hosted by the Ministry of Education and organized by the National Institute for Lifelong Education, recognizes outstanding individuals and institutions that have practiced lifelong learning in daily life and contributed to spreading a culture of lifelong education.
Seongbuk-gu took the top prize in the specialized lifelong learning project category for its initiative titled "Growing Together at Our Own Pace: Building and Expanding a Lifelong Education Support System for Slow Learners," recognized for its contributions to advancing and broadening lifelong learning.
The district positioned slow learners — those on the boundary between disability and non-disability who had fallen through the gaps of institutional welfare support — as active participants in their own education. In 2022, it became the first local government in the country to enact a related ordinance, formally bringing the issue into the realm of public policy, and built a public-private-academic cooperation framework linking the district office, education support authorities, youth organizations, and local universities and specialist institutions.
Through this framework, Seongbuk-gu established a locally rooted support system connecting everything from identifying eligible individuals to providing tailored education, psychological counseling and professional workforce training. The district was credited with going beyond standalone programs by creating a virtuous cycle in which learning experiences lead to community participation and greater independence, and by sharing its accumulated operational expertise with partner organizations to strengthen the sustainability and scalability of lifelong education for slow learners.
The award carried added significance as it came in the year Seongbuk-gu marks the 20th anniversary of its designation as a lifelong learning city, and on the heels of successfully completing its third-cycle lifelong learning city evaluation and certification.
"This top Minister of Education Award is a precious achievement made together by all the educational institutions, local universities, youth organizations and frontline workers who united their efforts for the growth of slow learners," Seongbuk-gu District Mayor Lee Seung-ro said. "Going forward, we will actively connect Seongbuk-gu's rich university infrastructure and advanced resources such as AI with lifelong learning, to build Seongbuk into a premier lifelong learning city that brightens the lives and futures of all our residents."
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