Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung was acquitted at the retrial sentencing hearing held on the morning of the 16th at the Suwon High Court in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon-si, Gyeonggi Province. He came out smiling brightly while greeting his supporters. [Image source=Yonhap News]
[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Eun-young] Park Soo-young, a member of the People Power Party, has once again targeted Lee Jae-myung, Governor of Gyeonggi Province. He pointed out that during his term, Lee used 25.6 billion KRW for publicity expenses, nearly double the amount spent by his predecessor Nam Kyung-pil in the two years before his retirement.
According to the National Assembly's Public Administration and Security Committee member Park Soo-young's analysis of Gyeonggi Province's audit data, from July 2018, when Governor Lee Jae-myung began his term, to August 2020, a period of 2 years and 1 month, 25.646 billion KRW was spent on publicity. This amount is nearly twice the 14 billion KRW spent during the previous 6th local government’s two years (2016-2017).
In particular, looking at the publicity content from 2019 to August 2020, 3.617 billion KRW was spent on promoting the 'Gyeonggi local currency,' accounting for about 19% of the total expenditure of 19.27 billion KRW during the same period.
Additionally, about 25% of the total expenditure, 4.71 billion KRW, was used to promote 'basic income,' meaning Governor Lee spent approximately 8.33 billion KRW on promoting these two major policies. This accounts for 43% of the total expenditure.
Park criticized that compared to the publicity for 'local currency' and 'basic income,' the publicity expenses spent on disaster response campaigns and COVID-19 recovery were significantly smaller.
In the first eight months of this year, only 1.23 billion KRW was spent on disaster response campaigns and COVID-19 recovery publicity, which is just 16% of the total 7.73 billion KRW spent during the same period.
Furthermore, it was revealed that Governor Lee recently spent about 100 million KRW on advertising basic income in the US magazine Time, causing controversy. According to Park’s analysis, Governor Lee also spent 115 million KRW last April on promoting provincial administration on the European TV channel 'Euronews.'
Park said, "He invested 43.1% of the expenditure on promoting two policies: local currency and basic income," and criticized, "Is using Gyeonggi residents' taxes for personal policy promotion the fairness that Governor Lee claims?"
Meanwhile, Park, who formerly served as the Deputy Governor of Gyeonggi Province, has previously engaged in verbal disputes with Governor Lee over local currency. On the 17th of last month, Park criticized Lee, who had condemned the Korea Institute of Public Finance’s report stating that 'local currency has adverse effects,' calling him a 'rare populist.'
In response, Governor Lee said, "The People Power Party, which adopted the more progressive basic income as its primary policy but created a counterfeit basic income that only pays lower-income earners, is a rare fraudulent group," and added, "The corrupt conservative DNA of hypocrisy and betrayal of the people seems to be unhidden," firing back.
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