UIRYEONG — Uiryeong County in South Gyeongsang Province will launch a program in 2027 to process its farm specialties into packaged foods, including turning mangae rice cake, a local specialty, into ice cream. The county said on the 15th that it reviewed the new initiatives and the direction of its major pending projects at a briefing on 2027 key operations held on the 13th.
Among the new initiatives is a farm-produce branding campaign called "A Spoonful of Uiryeong." The program aims to improve consumer access by developing local farm specialties into processed foods such as juices, bakery items and desserts. Watermelon will be made into juice, rice into castella sponge cake and mangae rice cake into ice cream. The county plans to work with beverage, bakery and dessert brands to carry out the plan.
The product lineup will also be broadened. Beyond juices and desserts, the range will expand to boxed meals and meal kits. Packaging will carry QR codes with information on the county's main tourist sites and festivals. Diversifying consumption of farm specialties from raw produce sales to processed foods will widen points of contact with consumers and encourage visitors who try local foods to make purchases, the county said.
For young residents, the county will create the "Uiryeong Youth Rich Spot," a shared space for young adults and their families. It will also run a job-interview support program to ease the burden on young job seekers and a mentoring program called "Uiryeong Youth Mate" for young adults settling in the area.
Everyday-life measures include a workplace lunch program that covers 20% of dining-out lunch costs for employees at participating small and midsize companies. The county will also run a pilot rural transport service that uses artificial intelligence to adjust vehicle dispatch and routes according to demand.
Safety and health measures include a project to improve nighttime visibility on main roads, called "Uiryeong, Bright at Night," and a combined dental and traditional Korean medicine outreach service for areas with limited access to medical care. In tourism, the county will expand its list of nine scenic spots, develop Sotbawi Park as a landmark, promote forest ecotourism on Mount Hanu and develop Sinpo Forest as a forest-culture tourism resource.
The county will also change how it runs policy. It will introduce a performance-verification pilot system under which new policies are first run on a small scale and expanded only after their effects are confirmed. In 2027, it plans to select about five projects and run them on a trial basis for three to six months.
The county also reviewed progress and implementation plans for pending projects, including linking the North-South Line 6 expressway to Uiryeong and building a new Uiryeong interchange, attracting the South Gyeongsang Province Human Resources Development Institute, drawing companies to the Burim General Industrial Complex and building 100 units of rental apartments for young adults tied to local jobs.
"We need to look at Uiryeong's resources from a new perspective and develop even small ideas into policies that become the region's competitiveness," County Mayor Oh Tae-wan said. "We will carefully verify the effectiveness of new initiatives and push ahead with major pending projects at speed to deliver results that residents can feel."