The City Council chamber at Jersey City Hall had just emptied of one delegation. A Philippine congresswoman and her party had left minutes earlier, and City staff were setting out extra chairs for the next guests, who had flown in from Seoul.

When the Gangnam District Council delegation — Chair Jae-jin Lee and Council Members Jong-won Lee and Hee-ok Yeom — sat down on Friday, October 9, a signed resolution was already on the table: the Korea Desk resolution, adopted by the Jersey City Municipal Council 9–0. Councilman-at-Large Rolando R. Lavarro Jr., who sponsored it, held it up for them to see.

The meeting ran about forty minutes. Very little of it was ceremony.

Overseas trips by local councils draw the same question every year: what did they see, and what did they bring home? The Gangnam delegation’s U.S. schedule was dense. The day before, it met the New York City Council and the New York City Board of Elections. On Friday it stopped in Bergen County and met New Jersey State Senator Gordon Johnson before reaching Jersey City. Next is Florida, with the North Miami Beach City Council and Moishe Mana, founder of Mana Contemporary.

What set the Jersey City stop apart was who sat across the table. Not one councilman, but Kristel Mejia-Asqui, the Mayor’s Deputy Chief of Staff and Acting Director of the Office of Cultural Affairs, and Mira Prinz-Arey, Executive Director of the Jersey City Economic Development Corporation. One office holds the City’s culture portfolio; the other holds its business programs and its money. A delegation that came to talk about culture found the economic development chief at the table. That decided where the conversation would go.

The Korea Desk opened October 1 as a twelve-month pilot. It gives immigrant business owners in-language intake and navigation, connecting them to assistance Jersey City, the JCEDC, and Hudson County already fund. It is funded through nonprofit public-interest media.

The numbers explain why. According to the American Community Survey, 45.7 percent of Jersey City residents, roughly 138,000 people, speak a language other than English at home, and 41.3 percent are foreign-born, nearly double the State rate. Permits and programs run in English, office by office. The programs exist. Owners fall away on the road to them.

Lavarro drew on more than a decade on the Council. Partnerships between cities, he told the delegation, last only when someone on the ground carries them. He introduced Prinz-Arey as the Korea Desk’s working partner at the City. The resolution starts in Korean and leaves the door open to other language communities.

From Gangnam’s side of the table, the resolution reads differently. It answers, in an official City document, the first question any Korean company or institution asks about doing business in Jersey City: where do we start?

Festivals were part of the delegation’s American itinerary, and Gangnam takes them seriously. Midway through the meeting, the delegation played footage of the Gangnam Festival, held each October over three days and, by the delegation’s count, drawing 300,000 people.

“We were benchmarking the Thanksgiving parade in New York City,” a council member explained. “Like the Macy’s parade.”

The response from the City side came quickly. “We need to do one of those here.” A festival modeled on New York was now being pitched back across the Hudson, from the city known for the best view of Manhattan.

The delegation made the invitation on the spot. “We’ll make a bigger and better festival next year,” one member said. “Hopefully you can make it.”

Then Chair Jae-jin Lee went a step further. When Liberty State Park came up, he said: “The environment here is good to do a festival. The park is very big. I want to do a festival here in Jersey City.” It was more specific than a courtesy.

“We want to bring that festival to you,” the Gangnam side said. The City’s answer was a street. “I want that going down Christopher Columbus Drive.”

Jersey City already treats festivals as economic policy. During this summer’s World Cup it staged fan events at four sites across the city, and City officials said local businesses and tourism saw a clear lift. The Fourth of July and the downtown waterfront Jazz Fest came up in the same breath.

Where the conversation landed fits in one sentence. What Jersey City needs is not a festival that ends after three days, but a platform that weaves culture and business together and can be cultivated here year after year. Someone comes for a performance and meets a brand. The brand looks for a storefront. The owner finds the City programs that help pay for it.

The Korea Desk calls that last step business activation: Korean brands and businesses that meet Jersey City at a festival walk in the following week and are connected to sites, permits, and the programs they qualify for. The City showed interest, and drew a clear line. A large-scale event would go through its own review first. City Hall knows the distance between interest and commitment, and it measured it out loud.

On culture, the two governments run on different models. Jersey City was the first municipality in New Jersey to create an Arts and Culture Trust Fund, paid for through property taxes. Just over $1 million a year funds programming, operations, and arts education at more than 100 organizations, plus ten individual artist fellowships through the Jersey City Arts Council. A City study from 2021–2022 found that people attending cultural events in Jersey City spend nearly four times the State average.

Gangnam described its own approach plainly. “Gangnam doesn’t have independent funding for the artists, but we do a lot of institutions. We have a symphony orchestra, the Gangnam Symphony Orchestra. And hopefully we can perform here.” The orchestra has traveled before, performing with about 80 musicians in Riverside, California, a sister city.

One side grows an ecosystem through a fund. The other builds flagship institutions. The ideas on the table sat between the two: a Gangnam Symphony performance in Jersey City, artist residency exchange using spaces such as Mana Contemporary, which has more than 100 studios in Jersey City, and a joint program linking artists, brands, businesses, and education.

“We’re always looking to establish partnerships and opportunities for mutual benefit,” the City side said. “Cultural and economic.”

At one point the conversation turned personal. Lavarro spoke about the late Councilman Michael Yun. They had served on the Council at the same time — Lavarro its first Filipino American member, Yun its first Korean American.

When a powerful typhoon struck the Philippines, Yun took him to a Korean-language radio station in the New York area to appeal for donations. About a month later, Yun came back with a check for $100,000. Yun died during the pandemic. At City Hall, his name still comes up.

A resolution does not pass 9–0 out of nowhere. Someone usually built the trust first.

As the meeting wrapped up, Council Member Jong-won Lee said, “Jersey City is very special for me,” and promised to email the K-pop clips. From the City side came the reply that they would go straight home to a niece and a daughter.

Setting out a few more chairs is easy. Keeping the seats filled after the guests leave is the hard part.

Gangnam Festival materials are headed to the City’s Office of Cultural Affairs. What shape a platform for culture and business in Jersey City will take is not yet decided. But the week after any festival, a Korean business owner now has a place to walk into — written into a City Council resolution.

Gangnam’s festival lasts three days. A front door stays open.

Highlights

9–0 Jersey City Municipal Council vote recognizing the Korea Desk

45.7% Share of Jersey City residents who speak a language other than English at home, about 138,000 people (ACS)

$1M+ Annual Jersey City Arts and Culture Trust Fund, the first of its kind in New Jersey

Disclosure: KORISE/Mom&I publisher Sylvia Kim is Founder and Executive Director of KCED Foundation Inc., which operates the Korea Desk. She arranged the visit and attended the meeting.