Seongdong District in Seoul has been operating an 'illegal banner management system' since mid-April. The system collects data in real time when public officials enter the political party, installation period, location, and other details using their mobile phones. This allows for the automatic identification of banners that exceed the allowable period or violate the quantity limit.
This system was developed by Assistant Deputy Director Kang Jin-kyu, 42, belonging to the urban planning and urban maintenance team of Seongdong District. He self-studied the program development methods for three months and noted that the expense was only 60,000 won.
◇ Public officials face difficulties in managing illegal banners that are hard to detect without resident input
The initiative for Assistant Deputy Director Kang to develop the program came after the revised 'Outdoor Advertisement Act' was enacted in January last year. According to this law, each political party can hang up to two banners in one administrative district and must voluntarily remove them after 15 days. Banners cannot be placed in children's protection zones or in areas that jeopardize pedestrian and vehicle safety. The date the banner was hung and the contact information of the person posting it must also be indicated on the banner. Furthermore, banners that have exceeded the posting period or violated regulations can be removed by local governments. Prior to this, each political party could hang banners along roads without restrictions, which negatively affected the urban landscape.
However, officials from local governments responsible for managing banners faced challenges in adhering to this law. It is indeed difficult to know exactly when, where, and how many banners have been hung. In Seongdong District alone, it is reported that an average of over 240 political party banners are installed on 21 major arterial roads each month. A spokesperson for Seongdong District noted, “We could only understand the situation by going to the site one by one each time a complaint was received about removing a banner.”
In this situation, Assistant Deputy Director Kang stepped up. His major was Chinese language and literature. Although he was not familiar with IT and did not know how to code at all, he gained courage upon hearing that programs can be developed without writing a line of code these days. His job involves cracking down on illegal flyers, but he decided he needed to develop a program when he saw that his fellow public officials were struggling with managing illegal banners.
Assistant Deputy Director Kang decided to use 'Bubble.io' as a 'no code' programming tool and self-studied through online courses. The entire process from making the decision to develop, attending online courses, and creating the program took exactly three months. The expense for using Bubble.io was only $40 (about 60,000 won). The program created in this way is available for free without any additional costs.
◇ “Learn to use it in 30 minutes and input data in 1 minute for automatic management”
The 'real-time management system for political party banners' developed by Assistant Deputy Director Kang allows public officials to register the banner's location, party name, and posting period on-site using their smartphones, which are then quickly organized into databases for management. The input takes less than a minute. It is said that learning how to use the system takes only about 30 minutes.
This system displays the locations where banners are hung on a map of Seongdong District. It also informs the posting deadline and number of postings within the administrative district, as well as whether the area is a children's protection zone. This allows public officials to easily identify which banners need to be removed.
Regarding this system, Assistant Deputy Director Kang said, “It’s not perfect, and it’s implemented simply enough to be functional in practice,” adding that he is currently in the process of upgrading it based on feedback from the staff in charge of banners.
Assistant Deputy Director Hwang Sang-gil, 34, who is in charge of posting and removing banners, said, “Since each political party does not report to local governments and typically does not voluntarily remove banners once the posting period has passed, the new system helps us address banners that violate the regulations before complaints come in, benefiting the residents.”