Lee takes on national role after serving as party leader's local autonomy adviser and Seoul district mayors' council chair
Three-term district mayor with experience across local assembly, metropolitan assembly and local government expected to serve as bridge between regions and central party
Seoul's Seongbuk-gu District Mayor Lee Seung-ro has been elected to lead the Democratic Party of Korea's National Basic Local Government Leaders Council.
The council is a consultative body made up of mayors, county chiefs and district mayors affiliated with the Democratic Party. It works to strengthen policy cooperation among local governments and to relay key local issues and policy priorities to the central party.
Lee was appointed special adviser on local autonomy to the Democratic Party leader in January this year. Since then, he has channeled the experiences and on-the-ground challenges of local governments into the central party's policymaking process. From July, he has also served as chair of the ninth directly elected term's Seoul Metropolitan District Mayors' Council, coordinating shared issues across Seoul's 25 autonomous districts. He also serves as co-chair of the National Association of Mayors, County Chiefs and District Mayors of Korea.
Lee is regarded as a local autonomy specialist who has served at every level — local assembly, metropolitan assembly and local government. He served as a member of the second and third Seongbuk-gu Council and of the ninth Seoul Metropolitan Council, and held posts including secretary-general of the Democratic Party's Seoul chapter and deputy secretary-general of the central party. He has also led inter-local government consultative bodies, including as chair of the Northeast Four Districts Administrative Council, working to resolve shared regional issues and broaden policy cooperation.
As district mayor of Seongbuk-gu, Lee has pursued a field-first approach guided by the principle that "the answers lie on the ground" — listening directly to residents and translating their voices into policy. As a result, Seongbuk-gu received an SA rating, the highest grade, for four consecutive years in the 2026 evaluation of campaign pledge fulfillment and information disclosure among eighth directly elected term local government heads nationwide. The district was also recognized as an outstanding institution in local government innovation and proactive administration assessments.
Lee plans to hold regular communication sessions with local government heads across the country, sharing regional issues and policy priorities and spreading successful local policies and achievements more widely. He also intends to gather local government views on systemic and fiscal challenges that individual local governments cannot resolve alone — including issues of decentralization, balanced regional development and residents' livelihoods — and to work closely with the central party on those matters.
"Local autonomy is where democracy operates closest to people's lives," Lee said. "The conditions differ from region to region, but local governments share the same goal: improving the lives of residents." He added that he would "listen fully to the on-the-ground stories of local government heads across the country," sharing policies that have delivered results in each region and working collectively on problems too difficult for any single region to solve alone.
"It matters that voices from the field translate into central policy, and that policy in turn changes residents' lives," Lee said. "Drawing on my experience of finding answers on the ground through meetings with residents in Seongbuk, I will faithfully serve as a bridge between local governments and the central party."
seouldream01@heraldcorp.com
