Five residents — representing children, teenagers, young adults, the middle-aged and the elderly — will present Ryu with an appointment certificate

Ryu Sam-young, mayor-elect of Dongjak-gu. [Provided by the transition committee]
Ryu Sam-young, mayor-elect of Dongjak-gu. [Provided by the transition committee]

The transition committee for the 9th directly elected Dongjak-gu district mayor announced Monday that the inauguration ceremony for mayor-elect Ryu Sam-young will be held Wednesday at 2 p.m. in the grand hall on the fourth floor of the Dongjak-gu Office.

The highlight of the ceremony will be a "residents' appointment ritual," modeled after President Lee Jae Myung's national appointment ceremony. Five residents of Dongjak-gu — one each representing children, teenagers, young adults, the middle-aged and the elderly — will present Ryu with an official appointment certificate on behalf of the district's citizens.

At President Lee's national appointment ceremony, held at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul on Aug. 15 last year, 80 public representatives presented him with a "certificate of light."

President Lee is scheduled to send a congratulatory message to the inauguration. He recruited Ryu as the Democratic Party of Korea's third talent acquisition in December 2023, when he was serving as party leader. At the time, Lee said that under the then-Yoon Suk Yeol administration, there had been attempts to pull the police away from the public and toward those in power, and that it was not easy for a police civil servant to resist such moves. He described Ryu, a former senior superintendent, as "the central figure who stood up against this administration's attempts to control the police."

The theme of a district mayor welcomed by residents runs throughout the event. KBS announcer Jo Chung-hyeon, a Dongjak-gu resident and graduate of Chung-Ang University in the district, will emcee the ceremony. In a segment titled "What we hope for from our new district mayor," co-hosted by Jo and Ryu, the mayor-elect will open wish cards submitted in advance by attendees and respond to them in an open exchange.

Among the roughly 700 guests invited to the ceremony are about 90 heads of redevelopment associations, signaling Ryu's intent to move quickly on redevelopment projects in the district.

The inauguration ceremony will be livestreamed on the Dongjak-gu Office's official YouTube channel.


cook@heraldcorp.com