Under the directorship of Jo Dae-su, DSU’s CommunityFocused Industry-Academic Cooperation Leading University (LINC+) Fostering Project Team is launching the Continuing Mind (Ium) Project jointly with the Buk-gu District Office of Busan City.

The Ium Project is aimed at leading a successful local urban regen- eration by linking the professional competences of DSU students' cultural contents planning, design, and development to urban regeneration pilot projects promoted by the Buk-gu District Office of Busan City. As part of these projects, last year Busan City and the Buk-gu District Office closed the Gupo Dog(meat) Market which had been in operation for nearly 60 years, and are conducting “Gupo, an Animal-friendly City” maintenance projects in its stead. In addition, in the same year the DSU LINC+ project team conducted a “Find New Faces in Buk-gu” project through Living Lab and delivered the results to the Buk-gu District Office. Also, more recently, the Buk-gu Character Development Project, which is promoted by the Buk-gu District Office and the DSU LINC+ Project Group, was initiated at the request of the Buk-gu District Office to upgrade the results of last year's Living Lab, and it will be promoted with DSU “Class Selling.”®

Dongseo University's Class Selling is a representative industry-academic cooperation program of DSU that improves students' practicaskills by reorganizing the industry-school curriculum in response to immediate local and corporate demands. Class Selling, which means to sell courses, is a form of on-demand program that opens courses as per requested by local companies, which guides students in collaboration with the supervisor, and additionally sells the results obtained through its classes to consumers.

Under the advisership of Professor Lee Seung-hee, the Buk-Gu District Companion Animal-Friendly City Character Development Project specifically, will develop characters that are differentiated from other regions through: character renewal work, character appli- cation type development, character emoticon development, character story development, character goods design development, and character guideline production. It is expected that the characters developed in this way will become the new face of Buk-gu District, and, in so doing, will help the area to establish itself as a mecca of a pet-friendly city that escapes from the past image of the Gupo Dog(meat) Market.

“The Class Selling agreement signed with the Buk-gu District Office in Busan is very meaningful, especially in the fact that it nurtures local talent,” said LINC+ Head Jo. “Through Class Selling classes in 2021, I fully anticipate that the Gupo area will help promote local public policy and vitalize the local economy by developing creative characters that express the characteristics of the region.”