Reviewing Seoul's Tourism Policy from the Standpoint of Returning Value to Citizens

Seoul's tourism-attraction policy can hold a certain value in terms of increasing foreign visitors, strengthening the city's brand, and raising its global profile. But the ultimate purpose of tourism policy cannot stop at simply increasing visitor numbers or improving the city's image. If a policy draws on public finances and urban infrastructure, its results must ultimately be returned to citizens in the form of a better quality of life, greater economic stability, a stronger local economy, and improved public services.

At present, Seoul's tourism policy emphasizes drawing in visitors and branding the city, while the structure for how the resulting economic gains return to citizens remains insufficiently clear. The number of tourists may rise and sales in certain commercial districts may grow, but if citizens feel little real benefit, the policy can hardly be judged a success in terms of running the city well.

The key metric for a tourism-attraction policy should not be the raw number of visitors, but the net benefit that accrues to citizens. Even if outside spending increases, if those gains concentrate in a handful of commercial districts, landlords, large operators, and platform businesses while citizens are left with congestion, noise, rising rents, higher living costs, and a heavier public-finance burden, then the policy must be seen as a failure of design.

For a tourism policy to work properly, it needs a virtuous cycle like the following.

→ rising outside spending → higher sales for local small businesses and the self-employed → expanded local tax revenue and public-finance capacity → improvements to citizen services such as transit, housing, environment, safety, and welfare → a greater benefit that citizens actually feel

But if the structure citizens actually experience looks like the following, the policy's legitimacy weakens.

→ profits rising mainly for certain districts and a segment of asset holders → growing burdens of congestion, noise, rents, and living costs for citizens → ballooning city spending on promotion, events, and infrastructure → mounting fiscal strain and debt → little real return to citizens

In other words, if the gains concentrate in a particular group while the costs are borne by all citizens, the tourism-attraction policy risks becoming less a public policy than a limited revenue venture that trades on the city's image.

The Oh Se-hoon administration has shown a strong interest in city branding, tourism promotion, and building a symbolic urban image. This direction can contribute, to a degree, to raising Seoul's international profile. But the essence of urban policy lies not in packaging the city to look good, but in making a city where citizens actually live better.

The core challenges Seoul faces today include the burden of housing costs, the struggle for young people to get by, the polarization of the local economy, the real competitiveness of the startup ecosystem, the weight of citizens' living expenses, and problems of transit, environment, and safety. If more tourists and stronger branding do not connect to solving these problems, then criticism of the policy's priorities and of how its gains are distributed is unavoidable.

The criticism of the Oh administration, then, is not opposition to attracting tourists as such. The problem is that the structure for returning the results of tourism to citizens is weak. If the focus is on making Seoul look like a global tourist city, yet the economic gains generated along the way are not adequately returned to citizens' lives — to easing the tax burden, to housing stability, to sustainable income for local small businesses, to opportunities for young people and founders — then this can be judged a limit of the city's management capacity.

If we liken a city to a company, the citizens are the shareholders and the tourists are outside customers. A rise in outside customers can be a good thing, but a company's core metric is not revenue — it is net profit and shareholder value. In the same way, a city's tourism policy should be judged not by visitor counts but by the net benefit that remains with its citizens.

Even as tourist numbers grow, so do the costs of cleaning, policing, transit, facility maintenance, events, promotion, and administration; and if the citizen benefit and improvement to public finances that should exceed those costs are not clear, then tourism policy can become a cost center rather than a revenue venture.

The central question of Seoul's tourism policy, therefore, should be the following.

Presenting visitor numbers and an improved city image as the achievement, without a clear answer to this question, is not enough.

For Seoul's tourism policy to be judged a citizen-centered public policy, the following improvements are needed.

First, the structure for returning tourism revenue to citizens must be made clear. The city must transparently disclose how the added tax revenue and public income from tourism are actually spent on transit, the environment, safety, protecting local commerce, housing stability, and improving citizens' convenience.

Second, there must be mechanisms to reduce the burden on citizens in areas where tourists concentrate. Managing congestion and noise, handling waste, improving the walking environment, supporting residents, and measures to prevent rent spikes must all go hand in hand.

Third, the performance metrics of tourism policy must shift from visitor counts to net citizen benefit. Rather than mere tourist numbers, event scale, and brand exposure, the city should also track benefit per citizen, net income for local small businesses, the rate at which tax revenue is returned, and reductions in daily-life inconvenience.

Fourth, to keep the benefits from concentrating in a few large commercial districts and asset holders, the city should strengthen geographically dispersed tourism and structures that let small businesses take part. The inflow of tourists must translate into the productivity and self-sufficiency of the local economy as a whole.

Fifth, there must be a responsible accounting of the fiscal burden and rising debt that tourism policy creates. The city must clearly show what long-term revenue and citizen benefit will recoup the public costs incurred to attract tourists and brand the city.

Attracting tourists can be a strategy for urban growth. But for it to be judged a successful policy, the rise in outside visitors must lead to a better quality of life for citizens, sustainable growth of the local economy, improved public services, and stronger fiscal health.

The central criticism of the Oh Se-hoon administration's tourism policy is not the fact that it has drawn tourists. The problem is that there is no visible structure for adequately returning the resulting gains to citizens, and that, amid an administration centered on promotion and events, the burdens on citizens' daily lives and on public finances are instead growing heavier.

Seoul must redesign its tourism policy around the net profit left to citizens, not the number of tourists. The owners of the city are its citizens, not its visitors, and the ultimate beneficiaries of public policy must likewise be the citizens.

The trouble with Seoul's tourism-attraction policy is not that it called in tourists, but that, lacking any structure to return the gains of that inflow to citizens, it has tilted toward promotion and events and is drifting in a direction that leaves citizens with nothing but congestion, daily-life burdens, and fiscal strain.

The problem with Seoul's tourism policy is not the attraction of tourists in itself, but the lack of clarity over how the gains from more visitors and stronger branding have been returned as net benefit to citizens. Especially now that Seoul's debt has grown sharply since 2021, tourism policy too must be tested against its return to citizens and its fiscal soundness — not against visitor counts.