"We can't repair it due to lack of budget," city tells citizens' complaints
Simple circuit breaker issue found after inspection by city and experts
In Gwangju, the lighting in a soundproof tunnel had been off for several months, causing inconvenience to citizens, yet the Gwangju city government neglected the issue.
According to the Gwangju City General Construction Headquarters on the 8th, since October last year, 20 lights in the Usan Soundproof Tunnel on Mujin-daero in Gwangju (towards Gwangju Women's University, length 290m) had been turned off.
All the lights were off until December, and from January this year until recently, some of the lights remained off. This section is the busiest area for vehicle traffic in Gwangju. There are three entrances and exits in total?one before entering the soundproof tunnel, one inside, and one after exiting?causing congestion due to the cars entering and leaving.
However, with the tunnel lights not turned on, drivers had difficulty securing visibility, increasing the risk of accidents. Despite multiple complaints from citizens, maintenance was delayed due to reasons such as "budget was not allocated."
Recently, the headquarters belatedly inspected the site with experts and found that the circuit breaker, commonly called the "dokkaebi-jip," had been tripped. After resetting the breaker, all the lights were confirmed to be functioning normally since the day before. Criticism is pouring in against the Gwangju city government for ignoring citizen inconvenience without recognizing the breaker issue, which could have been self-checked.
A representative from the Gwangju City General Construction Headquarters apologized, saying, "We could not take action earlier due to lack of maintenance budget. We called in experts for inspection and found a problem with the breaker. We had not checked it properly until now."
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