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The Seoul Metropolitan Government said it had held, on Dec. 16, its “2010 Employee Foreign-Language Speech Contest” for staff members of the main office and local government offices.

Seoul City has been running foreign-language programs for its employees as part of its agenda to foster world-leading public servants in line with its belief that globally competitive human resources are crucial to success. Seoul City has been offering foreign-language tests and making continuous efforts to develop the foreign linguistic capabilities of its employees.

The 2010 Employee Foreign-Language Speech Contest is part of such efforts. This annual contest, first launched in 2008, is held on the basis of those public servants who volunteer to take part in the contest.

This year, a total of 35 teams had applied to take part in the speech contest. Of the total, 16 teams were selected to participate in the competition. Of these, 10 represented the English language, three Japanese and the other three Chinese. The contest included a role-playing segment and a speech recital.

Seoul City said that the contest served as a fun event for Seoulites as it called for the contestants to give their all through four speech topics: Seoul vision, Seoul publicity, public communication, and love of the family. Seoul City highlighted that such topics allowed the contestants to share their sweet and personal stories and also the universal challenges thrown up by everyday life.

• English Category
  – “A Story of Hope for People Just like You and Me” was an uplifting story of personal experience by Ok-hee, a high-school student, who with her grandmother lives a tough life but finds hope with the help of the Citizens’ Center.
  -“Will You Marry Me?” is the story of a man who is hesitant about getting married, due to the very real challenges of married life, yet who tries to persuade a woman to marry him.
• Japanese Category
  – The celebrated sights of Seoul as depicted in movies can be found in the films “Bungee Jumping of Their Own” and “Scandal.”
• Chinese Category
  – “Beautiful Seoul, Let’s Greet Chinese Tourists with a Warm Heart!” was full of creativity and interesting ideas as it explored how the Chinese feel about Seoul. It also addressed the areas that Seoul City had to improve in order to make the city more pleasant for Chinese visitors.

Seoul City said the event had unified the public servants of the main Seoul government office and local offices and had also served as a foreign language festival. It stressed that its foreign-language program will play a big role in fostering world-class public servants who will act as leaders in this era of globalization.