Andong City Council Member Yeo Juhee Urges Legal Stipulation of Andong as Special City Hall Site and Enactment of Fiscal Safeguards
Debate over the administrative integration of North Gyeongsang Province and Daegu is once again entering rough waters. If the justification for integration is "balance," a fundamental question is now being raised in the northern region over where and how that balance will be inscribed.
Andong City Council member Yeo Juhee directly targeted the special act on administrative integration of Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province that has been introduced in the National Assembly, during her 5-minute free speech at the first plenary session of the 264th extraordinary session of the Andong City Council on the 6th. She argued that unless the location of the integrated special city hall is clearly stipulated by law as Andong, the status of the northern region will inevitably be structurally weakened.
She took issue with the phrase in the bill referring to a "special zone in the former site of the North Gyeongsang Provincial Government." The approach of leaving only the designation of a special zone open without finalizing the location of the government building, she said, implies the possibility that administrative authority and symbolic status after integration could tilt toward the southern region. She warned that this could be read as a signal that the administrative axis of the north, which has been formed over several decades, is being shaken.
Financial issues were also put on the table. With the exclusion of special provisions for equal distribution of property tax that would apply to the special city, even the minimum defensive mechanism that the northern area could count on has disappeared, she said. As integration proceeds, fiscal concentration will only accelerate, and without institutional safeguards to buffer this, the outcome is all too predictable, she criticized.
Assemblymember Yeo made the conditions clear. She stated that unless three preconditions are met, integration will struggle to gain persuasive power: first, the installation of the integrated special city hall in Andong must be firmly stipulated by law; second, the administrative and fiscal authority of the northern region must be concretely guaranteed; and third, sufficient public debate must be conducted to secure consensus among residents.
The weight of her remarks extended to history and symbolism. She stressed that the central administrative role North Gyeongsang Province has carried out from Andong is not merely a matter of geography, but one of accumulated functions and networks. She warned that the moment a new framework is built while excluding this, the integration could lose momentum from the very start.
Administrative integration is a massive structural overhaul, but its success or failure ultimately comes down to the issue of trust as it is felt in the region. This is because a single line in a statute or a single item of fiscal special treatment can shape the course of the next several decades. What the northern region is demanding is not special favors, but the codification of promises. If an answer to that demand is not prepared, the integration debate is highly likely to keep circling back to the same point.
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