Hwaseong City Selects Sookgok 1-ri, Maesong-myeon as Final Candidate Site for Comprehensive Funeral Facilities

Hwaseong City has selected Sookgok 1-ri in Maesong-myeon as the final candidate site for the "Hwaseong City Joint Comprehensive Funeral Facilities (tentative name)" being jointly promoted with nine neighboring local governments in Gyeonggi Province (Siheung, Ansan, Bucheon, Gwacheon, Uiwang, Gunpo, Pyeongtaek, Gwangmyeong, and Ansan).

On May 10, Hwaseong City and seven other cities including Siheung signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the establishment of the "(tentative name) Hwaseong City Joint Comprehensive Funeral Facilities," and subsequently Gwangmyeong City and Ansan City expressed their intention to participate, with ten cities now jointly promoting the construction of the joint comprehensive funeral facilities.

The Hwaseong Comprehensive Funeral Facilities Construction Promotion Committee held its ninth meeting on the 8th, evaluating feasibility studies and other assessments for two candidate sites previously selected as priority candidates in July: Gungpyeong 2-ri in Seosin-myeon and Sookgok 1-ri in Maesong-myeon.

Sookgok 1-ri in Maesong-myeon, selected as the final candidate site, was chosen in this meeting due to advantages including its high accessibility to other local governments and areas within Hwaseong City, being adjacent to the West Coast Expressway, National Route 39, and Provincial Route 313.

Contrary to initial expectations that the joint comprehensive funeral facilities promoted by Hwaseong City would suffer from low applications due to being perceived as an undesirable facility, six villages competitively submitted proposals for the project, which has been covered by various domestic and international media outlets as a case study of overcoming NIMBY phenomenon.

The "(tentative name) Hwaseong City Joint Comprehensive Funeral Facilities," to be jointly used by ten local governments in Gyeonggi Province, is being planned on approximately 300,000 square meters of land with facilities including around 10 crematoriums, funeral halls, columbaria, natural burial sites, and parks and rest areas where local residents can visit comfortably. The project is being promoted with a target completion date of 2018.

Mayor Chae In-seok of Hwaseong City stated, "Funeral facilities are critically insufficient nationwide, leading to cases where people pay high costs and hold four-day funerals, making funeral services a social issue. When the joint comprehensive funeral facilities are completed, citizens of our city and the nine surrounding cities will be relieved of the time and economic inconvenience caused by traveling to distant cremation facilities, and we expect to be able to address the increasingly growing demand for cremation," he said.