What Will Remain After the Festival? WYD's Impact on Youth and Seoul

The 2027 World Youth Day (WYD) in Seoul will conclude on August 8, 2027. However, the assessment of the event's success will begin the following day. What relationships, cultures, and ecological practices will remain after hundreds of thousands of young people have attended? When the festival empowers youth to engage with their local communities rather than just generating temporary tourism, it becomes a pivotal moment.
  The official theme song for the Seoul WYD is "Confidite, Ego Vici Mundum," composed by Kim Ji-yoon (Francisco). Translated, it means "Take courage, I have conquered the world." The competition held in 2025 attracted 140 entries from South Korea and 294 from abroad. The selected song conveys the message of the event's theme scripture through music.
 
The theme song will serve as a shared memory connecting participants from different linguistic backgrounds. If the song is sung repeatedly during the event and continues to be performed in parishes and youth groups worldwide afterward, it will become a cultural legacy of the Seoul gathering. The WYD choir and orchestra, formed in January 2026, are also preparing significant liturgical music. It is essential to ensure accessibility in translations, arrangements, and sheet music for youth from various countries and with disabilities to sing together.
  In August 2026, the organizing committee will host a Catholic cultural fair around the Deoksugung Stone Wall Path. This event will feature "Dasoni-gil," which introduces religious orders and faith groups, a "Vocation Café" for dialogue between youth and religious figures, and a "Reconciliation Park" for confessions, sharing the values of faith, culture, and hospitality with the public.
 
The Myeongdong Cathedral Gallery 1898 will open an experiential WYD promotional center titled "Did You Come? I Will Go! - The Pilgrimage Has Already Begun." This initiative is designed to engage visitors in responding to hospitality rather than merely presenting information about the event. To ensure that such events are not confined to spaces for believers, it is crucial to consider accessibility for non-believers, individuals of different faiths, foreigners, and people with disabilities, while also creating a forum for citizens to ask questions and express critiques.
  The Onsum Campaign's global tree-planting initiative began with the question, "How will we respond to the carbon footprint left by long-distance flights?" Pilgrims and youth groups from various countries will plant trees suitable for their local environments and share photos, species, locations, dates, and reflections on the online platform Padlet. This data will be displayed on a map, showcasing participation from around the world.
 
The organizing committee is collaborating with the Laudato Si’ Movement (LSM), a Catholic environmental network, to distribute posters and participation guides to various countries. In South Korea, tree planting has been taking place biannually at the Sky Park in Sangam World Cup Park since April 2025, in partnership with the Korea Forest Service and Seoul City. The goal is to plant 300 trees per session, totaling 1,800 trees by 2027. The plan aims to connect domestic activities with global planting records to create an ecological legacy that endures beyond the event.
  While tree planting can contribute to carbon absorption and ecological restoration, simply planting trees does not immediately offset the carbon generated by air travel. To assess effectiveness, it is necessary to calculate participants' travel distances and emissions by transportation mode, as well as monitor species survival rates, growth periods, land suitability, and post-planting care over the long term. The carbon absorption rates of young trees differ from those of mature trees.
 
Planting inappropriate species or doing so without permission and neglecting their care can burden the ecosystem. If the organizing committee uses the term "offsetting," it must disclose the calculation methods, target amounts, and verification entities. Otherwise, it is more accurate to acknowledge the environmental impact of travel rather than claim to eliminate all aviation emissions, framing it as a practice of expanding carbon sinks and ecological repentance. The campaign's credibility will be measured by the number of trees that survive years later, not just the points on a map.
  The city of Seoul views WYD as an opportunity to expand tourism and enhance its urban brand. Young visitors experiencing K-pop, Korean cuisine, traditional culture, and urban spaces are likely to return in the long term. However, if success is only measured by projections like "1 million" attendees or "2 trillion won" in revenue, the public costs, traffic congestion, waste, and inconveniences for local residents will be overlooked. It is essential to disclose costs and benefits before and after the event using the same criteria, ensuring that benefits do not concentrate solely on specific tourism sectors or central areas.
 
The social legacy of the event will also be reflected in how citizens of different religions and cultures welcome young pilgrims. It is necessary to adequately explain the reasons for using public spaces for religious events, guarantee citizens' rights to mobility and rest, and listen to the opinions of local merchants and residents from the planning stages. Hospitality is not just a virtue expected of visitors; it is also an attitude that the event organizers must demonstrate to the community.
 
For cultural and ecological initiatives to become a legacy, there must be entities, budgets, and spaces to continue after the event concludes. Follow-up tasks include monitoring the survival status of planted trees and updating the online map, maintaining the international network of volunteers and pilgrims, and supporting youth who met at the diocesan gatherings to continue their faith and service in their communities.
 
When connections are made between homestay families and overseas pilgrims, domestic and international volunteers trained together, youth exchanges initiated in dioceses, and ecological practices left throughout the city, the six-day event will become part of a larger process. It is essential to ask whether youth ministry has empowered young people with real decision-making authority beyond just mobilizing them for event preparation and whether there will be spaces for their voices within the church after the event.
 
The impact of WYD in conveying hope to youth cannot be evaluated solely by the crowds at the closing mass or tourism revenue. It is about whether a community forms for lonely youth after the event, whether those who experienced service work to change their local areas, and whether citizens begin to view their neighbors anew, transcending religious and cultural differences. What must remain in Seoul after the Pope departs is not just the traces of a grand event but the individuals who will begin the next pilgrimage.