"Local Relocated Public Institutions Still Conduct Business Evaluations in Seoul"

Joincheol Jo "Original Intent Undermined... Budget Waste Must Be Reduced"

Assemblyman Join Chul

It has been revealed that public institutions relocated to provincial areas are still conducting project evaluations in Seoul.

Jo In-cheol, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea (Gwangju Seo-gu Gap), analyzed the project evaluation status of four public institutions under the Ministry of Science and ICT and found that most project evaluations have been conducted in Seoul rather than at their headquarters.

To alleviate overpopulation in the metropolitan area and promote balanced regional development, the following institutions were relocated to provincial areas: the Korea Radio Promotion Association (Naju, 2014), the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (Jincheon, 2015), the Korea Intelligent Information Society Promotion Agency (Daegu, 2015), and the Korea Internet & Security Agency (Naju, 2017).

However, these four institutions conducted 3,263 out of 4,372 project evaluations (74.6%) in Seoul from 2020 to the first half of this year. It was also confirmed that the Korea Internet & Security Agency and the Korea Radio Promotion Association did not conduct a single project evaluation at their headquarters over the past three years (2021?2023).

Despite recording deficits in the 3 billion KRW range in 2022 and 2023, the Korea Radio Promotion Association operates a 500-pyeong office in Mapo with a monthly rent of 28 million KRW. In particular, project evaluations are held at luxury hotels such as the Glad Hotel and Olympic Parktel, raising concerns about budget waste.

Rep. Jo emphasized, “It undermines the original purpose of relocating public institutions to provincial areas when they still conduct project evaluations in Seoul, wasting unnecessary costs. Project evaluations should be conducted at their headquarters, and online evaluation methods should be introduced to reduce budget waste.”