Twenty Korean mayors will learn about local government this week in East Lansing and Lansing.

The event, called “Transforming Civic Society and Government in the 21st Century,” is hosted by MSU’s Center for Advanced Study of International Development and the College of Social Science.

Irene Shim, program coordinator, said the group of mayors will spend today learning how the local governments of East Lansing and Lansing work.

“Korea has a very centralized government and they have been trying to decentralize,” Shim said. “We are training one-fifth of the mayor population in Korea.”

Peter Plastrik, author and former chief deputy of the state Department of Commerce, said Korea’s mayors have a lot of power, especially in larger cities.

“It is not like East Lansing, which has a city manager model,” he said. “But more like Lansing where the mayor is elected and has a lot of executive power.

“In Seoul the vice mayor was the former president of the country.”

The program is being split into two parts, with 20 mayors attending the first session this week, and about 24 mayors attending the second session, which is slated for June 9-15.

The group will meet at the Kellogg Center today, where it will have presentations on partnerships, local economic development and from Rex LaMore, who serves as the director of the Community Economic Development Program.

The group will then have a presentation about East Lansing’s local government and managing public organizations from Plastrik and East Lansing City Manager Ted Staton.

Staton, who plans to use real examples, said he will speak about reinventing government.

“I am going to speak about how to be more oriented in customer service,” he said. “Anytime we can share experience with local government with people from totally different environments, then we benefit and they benefit.”

Staton said the city has done programs like this one with other foreign officials, and it proves to be advantageous for both parties.

“These types of programs are especially helpful where there is an emerging democracy,” he said. “And we have 250 years of experience to share with people.”

Plastrik, author of “The Reinventor’s Fieldbook,” said he will speak with the mayors about how to get the government to perform effectively.

“For the last 20 years there has been a growing revolution of thinking on how to organize government to perform better,” he said. “The old bureaucratic model was inefficient.”

Plastrik said Korea had a dictatorship model and is interested in changing to a democratic government.

This afternoon the group will travel to Lansing, where it will meet with Mayor David Hollister and other Lansing officials.

The mayors will spend the week attending presentations on local government, and on Tuesday they will be speaking with representatives from MSU.

“One of the missions of the university is international outreach,” Shim said. “As a unit we are out there as a full front to fulfill MSU’s mission.”