Benchmarking requests for Seongdong-gu's youth policy model have continued since the district was designated a second-round Youth-Friendly City by the prime minister last year; the district is sharing its development process and case studies to help spread the policy nationwide.
Seoul's Seongdong-gu has emerged as a national model for youth policy after being designated a Youth-Friendly City by the prime minister in 2025, drawing benchmarking visits from local governments across the country.
The "Youth-Friendly City" designation — conferred by the prime minister under the Framework Act on Youth — is a system aimed at supporting youth development and capacity building while fostering local environments that improve quality of life for young people. The legal basis for the designation was established in 2023, and the second round of designations was carried out in 2025. Seongdong-gu was selected as a second-round Youth-Friendly City in recognition of its policy achievements rooted in the district's distinct local character.
Seongdong-gu has drawn sustained attention from local governments nationwide, particularly for systematically building a youth-friendly city model on the strength of its best-practice youth policies and for charting a new direction for community-centered youth policy.
In response, the district drew up a plan to receive institutional visits and held a youth policy benchmarking meeting on May 15.
The meeting was organized to share the process of developing a youth-friendly city and the experience of implementing related policies, and to explore directions for advancing youth policy suited to each region's characteristics.
Officials from six local governments attended the meeting, which proceeded in three parts: an introduction to Seongdong-gu's Youth-Friendly City progress and best-practice cases, a sharing of policy case studies on youth-friendly city development, and a tour of related facilities.
A question-and-answer session with the visiting local governments allowed participants to exchange experiences from operating youth projects in their respective regions and from the policy implementation process, with discussion also touching on the potential for spreading best practices more widely.
Seongdong-gu plans to accelerate its youth-friendly city development with 1 billion won (about $662,000) in budget support over five years through 2030, the duration of its Youth-Friendly City designation. The district also intends to raise the brand profile of "Youth-Friendly City Seongdong" through branding consultancy and to pursue a range of promotional projects alongside that effort.
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