Military city Gyeryong undergoes revamp with green initiatives

An underground garage below two apartment buildings reserved for service people and their families in Sindoan District in Gyeryong recently replaced its fluorescent ceiling lights with motion-sensitive LED lights to conserve power and increase efficiency. Courtesy of Gyeryong City Office

Joint headquarters for Korea's Army, Navy, Air Force support city's carbon neutralization policy

By Ko Dong-hwan

RFID food waste collecting bins are beached outside the apartment buildings reserved for service people and their families in Sindoan District in Gyeryong. Courtesy of Gyeryong City Office

GYERYONG, South Chungcheong ― Sindoan District, a small northern part of the city of Gyeryong, has one of the country's most unique backgrounds. With approximately 8,500 residents, the population almost entirely consists of soldiers on duty at Gyeryongdae ― the joint headquarters for the country's Army, Navy and Air Force ― and their families. With Gyeryongdae situated inside the district, Sindoan is its own little community, with public schools for children, supermarkets, churches and outdoor golf courses. The district is also surrounded by a series of high mountains, a grand snow-covered rocky backdrop for locals in late December and a feature that gives the military base a geographical advantage as a shield against airstrikes.

The neighborhood was recently equipped with some new features to benefit the local residents ― but not military hardware worthy of the region's significance, like flak cannons or patrol tanks. Rather, the features are for supporting the community's environmental regulations and contributing to the country's carbon-free push.

Over 100 street lights around a group of apartment buildings reserved for soldiers' dwellings and thousands of fluorescent ceiling lights in a large public underground garage below the buildings have been replaced with LED lighting to save electricity. The new lights in the garage are motion-sensitive, raising efficiency as well.

The area, which contains almost 2,000 households, also had smart food waste collecting bins installed. When a patron uses a RFID (radio-frequency identification) card to discard waste in the bins, the machine automatically weighs the waste and charges a fee. The fee is added to the resident's monthly utility bill. The system replaced the method in which all residents from a building were charged the same amount to share equally the building's entire food waste treatment fees. It disregarded how much waste each household generated, raising an inconvenience for some residents. The latest system has already been employed by most district offices in Seoul. It is just starting to expand throughout South Chungcheong Province.

Gyeryong Mayor Lee Eung-woo speaks during an interview with The Korea Times in December 2022. Courtesy of Gyeryong City Office

The revamp was achieved after the city government, last July, won a bid raised by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety to allocate a special fund to 16 local governments nationwide with the best ongoing or planned practices for carbon neutralization. With the ministry's grant of 280 million won ($230,000) and the city's 140 million won, the city completed installing the infrastructural improvements last year. Because the renovation projects were being done on state-owned land, city mayor Lee Eung-woo and Gyeryongdae's Service Support Division chief had agreed on applying for the bid and jointly coordinating the projects.

Mayor Lee contributes Gyeryong's winning bid to Sindoan's dominantly young population with an eco-friendly mindset. The district, accounting for 20 percent of the city's entire population of 44,000, has a mean age of 28.7 years old. It is noted for possessing "a high level of environmental ethics, strong communal mindset and vibrant community participation on- and offline," according to the city government. One of the catchphrases the city government had used when applying for the bid was that when some of the district's soldiers are called out of the city to settle elsewhere, the military neighborhood's green initiative can be promoted there simultaneously, effectively spreading the movement.

"Including Sindoan, the whole city is populated with retired soldiers and military reserves with an average age of around 40, which is very young," the mayor told The Korea Times in his office. "They don't usually care for prejudices or double standards for what's usually conceived obnoxious in other cities like an incineration plant or a waste recycling facility. Gyeryong is definitely a small city but has a very 'woke' community."

The city plans to introduce a new waste recycling facility by the end of this year and a new incineration plant by the end of 2025 ― thanks to local supporters. The city's latest features, meanwhile, are expected to cut the city's overall power usage by up to 45 percent, or 28,000 kW, and 37 percent of its overall food waste as well as 12 million won in the city budget for treating over 237,000 tons of food waste every year. The figures may not mean much to a major metropolitan area but they do to a municipality with 375 public workers ― the tiniest government among the country's 226 local governments above the district level ― and with an annual budget of less than 312 billion won, ranking 223rd.

One of the visitors to the 2022 Gyeryong World Military Culture EXPO held last October tries out a sniper rifle as a soldier guides her through. Courtesy of Gyeryong City Office

'K-military'

Last October, Gyeryong held the country's first kind of international exposition. Some 300 international guests from the U.S., the U.K., Vietnam, Malaysia, Mongolia, Thailand, France and Indonesia were here for the 2022 Gyeryong World Military Culture EXPO held under the theme of "K-Military," where military marching bands and 69 weapons systems from participating countries were exhibited for 17 days to 1.7 million visitors from Korea and abroad. The event was the first international event after the city hosted it as a domestic event for 12 years running since 2007 until COVID-19 brought the expo to a stop in 2020.

As much as he is ambitious about the city's green initiative, the mayor is also proud of how a small city like Gyeryong could pull off a major international event like this. He was especially content with how hygienically the expo's public washrooms for patrons were maintained.

"Military culture is the city's thing, like a brand, and we have know-how on how to present a military event for the public like no other," Lee said. "This year, we managed to invite Korean War veterans from across the world to show our city's appreciation for them. As a small city mayor, it's a tremendous honor."

Graduating from Korea Military Academy, Lee was a soldier for 30 years. Coming to Gyeryongdae in 1992 when he was promoted to the rank of major, he piloted helicopters for more than 3,000 recorded hours, a skill he claims he still retains. But somewhere along the way, he started dreaming about becoming the city's mayor. That's why he left Gyeryongdae two years earlier than his peers to pursue a political career. He went headlong into running for mayor in 2014 but was knocked out of the running, as well as then again when he ran for the second time in 2018. He finally won the majority last June in the local elections.

"It's been only six months," the former serviceman said. "My strength is my feet. I'll use them for the remaining term to make the city happy. I don't know about you, but my source of happiness comes from my citizens."