A bird’s-eye view at the Parque Cuscataln site in San Salvador Centro, El Salvador / Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Government
Seoul has selected four overseas cities to receive transfers of the capital’s urban policies under its 2026 Seoul ODA Challenge, the city’s official development assistance program for developing-country municipalities.
The selected cities and projects are San Salvador Centro in El Salvador and Banda Aceh in Indonesia, both for an outdoor library program; Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan for a community fitness program; and Bangkok in Thailand for pedestrian crosswalk design consulting.
The Seoul ODA Challenge, launched in 2024, draws on the city’s policy expertise — built across fields including transportation, smart city systems and water infrastructure — to help cities in developing countries address urban challenges.
Since 2006, Seoul has run 128 ODA projects with 87 cities and organizations across 49 countries.
This year marks the first introduction of a “Project Track” for soft-infrastructure initiatives, expanding beyond the program’s traditional hard-infrastructure consulting focus.
The outdoor library and fitness programs were drawn directly from Seoul’s top-rated citizen policies of 2025.
The two outdoor library cities aim to open their facilities by October, with local officials to be invited to Seoul for hands-on training by the end of June. Bangkok — a sister city of Seoul since 1996, marking their 30th anniversary this year — will receive consulting support to develop two pilot crosswalk designs near Taksin Hospital and Na Luang School.
“Through the ODA Challenge, Seoul will support developing cities in solving urban problems and contribute to improving the quality of life for people around the world,” said a city official.
This article was published with the assistance of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.