Pocheon Mayor Kim Jong-cheon Steps Forward to Resolve 'Regional Issues'

Pocheon City (Mayor Kim Jong-cheon) submitted a proposal to the President's Secretariat on the 7th, requesting a meeting to discuss comprehensive government measures to address the city's top regional issues: damage from military firing ranges and residents' conflicts stemming from a coal-fired power plant group energy business.

The key content of the proposal addresses military firing range damage. Pocheon is home to approximately 50 square kilometers of firing ranges, including the Rodriguez Range, the world's largest U.S. military comprehensive firing range, and the Seungjin Range, the largest in East Asia for ROK Armed Forces.

Due to continuous firing drills day and night, residents suffer from psychological panic states as well as damage to homes and public facilities, livestock miscarriages, and depleted uranium shells falling on farmland and 105mm bombs landing on homes. Residents are living out their lives under the threat of death. Currently, the Firing Range Countermeasures Committee has been staging protests at the firing range entrance for over 600 days to raise awareness of citizens' desperate reality.

Regarding problems from coal-fired power plant group energy business construction, Pocheon City is located in the central Korean peninsula and is surrounded by mountains, forming a basin-shaped terrain where fine dust has a weak tendency to disperse to other areas, resulting in high concentrations of air pollutants.

Despite various statistics and media reports identifying the region as having the highest fine dust concentration nationwide, two combined power plants (LNG) have recently been built, producing 2,410MW of electricity.

Furthermore, a group energy supply facility in the Jangja General Industrial Complex in Shinbuk-myeon, Pocheon City, using bituminous coal as fuel to produce 550t/h capacity of heat and 169.9MW capacity of electricity is 72% complete. Upon completion of construction in August 2018, commercial operations are scheduled to commence. Additionally, the bituminous coal used as fuel is transported from Incheon Port through the Seoul metropolitan area.

Accordingly, the city strongly requested the central government to change the fuel source from bituminous coal to liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Since his inauguration on April 13, Mayor Kim Jong-cheon of Pocheon has been making multifaceted efforts on all fronts to resolve pending issues, including visits to Gyeonggi Province and the National Assembly.