Kim Moon-soo: "Administrative City Policy Will Prove Mistaken"

Kim Moon-soo, governor-elect of Gyeonggi Province, said on the 28th that "the idea of developing local areas by moving government departments is nonsense" and "it will be proven in the future that the administrative city relocation is a misguided policy."

Appearing on Peace Broadcasting's "Open World Today, with Jang Seong-min" that morning, Kim made these remarks and said, "The way to achieve balanced development of local areas is to create many good companies or turn beautiful places like the South Coast into tourist complexes," adding that "however, the administrative capital relocation does not help local development and only wastes administrative efficiency and national strength."

He continued, "The logic that restricting the Seoul metropolitan area leads to local development is also quite flawed," arguing that "balanced development is our goal, but for our nation to surpass China's Beijing and Shanghai and Japan's Tokyo and become the central power of Northeast Asia, we must lead policy centered on national competitiveness."

Regarding the controversy over his proposed "Greater Capital" theory, he said, "Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Incheon have already formed cooperative bodies to address issues of transportation, environment, water sources, and so on," and "the Greater Capital theory is about more substantially strengthening what we are already doing."

Regarding new town construction, Kim said, "For 15 years since we built Bundang and Ilsan New Town, we have not created a single high-quality city, producing only isolated apartments without roads, parks, or schools," pointing out that "we plan to create internationally eco-friendly high-quality cities with both production and residential functions to replace Gangnam in the future."