Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport to Reinitiate Seosan Airport Project After Preliminary Feasibility Study Rejection

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced on the 15th that it will proceed with a re-planning project to secure the feasibility of the Seosan Airport project.

The Seosan Airport project involves constructing civil aviation facilities such as a passenger terminal by utilizing the runway and other facilities of the Seosan military airfield to provide air transportation convenience for the West Coast area of Chungnam Province. The project scale is approximately 53.2 billion KRW.

Location map of Seosan Airport.

However, at the Fiscal Project Evaluation Committee of the Ministry of Economy and Finance held on the 9th, it was decided that the project lacked feasibility based on the preliminary feasibility study results. The B/C (Benefit-Cost ratio) and AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) scores for the project were 0.81 and 0.456, respectively. A B/C ratio below 1 is considered economically unfeasible.

Accordingly, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport held a cooperation meeting with Chungcheongnam-do, chaired by the Director of Airport Policy, to discuss the promotion plan for the Seosan Airport project and decided to commission a re-planning study. Through this study, they plan to analyze the preliminary feasibility study results in detail and supplement the project plan to secure feasibility.

In particular, to secure economic feasibility, they will review the necessity and scale of each airport facility reflected in the project plan and consider ways to reduce project costs.

Lee Sang-il, Director of Airport Policy at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, stated, “The Ministry’s commitment to advancing the Seosan Airport project remains unchanged, but since the existing project plan did not pass the preliminary feasibility study, we plan to promptly proceed with the project plan supplementation process to secure feasibility.”