DP raises further doubts about Yangpyeong highway project

“Have we all not heard of the ‘Kim Keon-hee road’ by now?” DP leader Lee Jae-myeong said. Yangpyeong County residents launched a campaign Monday demanding that the government go ahead with the highway project and politicians to stop politicizing.

Yangpyeong County residents urging the government to move foward with the development of a highway connecting to Seoul in front of the county office in Gyeonggi on Monday. The county residents demanded that the political parties stop turning the issue politically. [YONHAP]

The Democratic Party (DP) on Monday raised further suspicions regarding the Yangpyeong highway project, accusing the government and the rival People Power Party (PPP) of shielding first lady Kim Keon-hee and her interests.

Residents of Yangpyeong County, Gyeonggi, are responding that the project should proceed regardless of the political controversy over the highway's route.

“Have we all not heard of the ‘Kim Keon-hee road’ by now?” DP leader Lee Jae-myeong said during the party’s leadership meeting on Monday. “I have witnessed so many government corruption scandals, but this is the first time that a massive national project has been changed unexpectedly without any explanation.”

Lee claimed that “the change of the road's endpoint to Gangsang-myeon would massively raise the price of land equivalent to five soccer fields owned by the president’s in-laws and allow them to enjoy huge profits,” adding the highway's new route “is a typical case of corruption involving a president’s relative.”

He also criticized Land Minister Won Hee-ryong for trying to hide the corruption by scrapping the entire project.

“One should not run the country in such a reckless manner, as if it was a joke,” Lee said.

The DP leader demanded that President Yoon reverse the land minister’s decision to scrap the project.

“The decision to scrap the project in order to pass on the responsibility [to the DP] and to hide the scandal should be scrapped,” Lee demanded. “Don’t add another list of promises that the president has broken and end the chaos by announcing of pushing ahead with the initial plan.”

The presidential office said it will stay out of the controversy.

“The Land Ministry should take care of the problem,” the presidential office said Sunday.

President Yoon Suk Yeol on Monday left for Lithuania to attend the two-day NATO summit.

Yangpyeong County residents launched a campaign Monday demanding that the government go ahead with the highway project.

About 400 gathered in front of the Yangpyeong County office where they rallied with picket signs that read, “Highway in, politics out!” and “Only 20 minutes to Jamsil with the highway! At the present rate, in 20 years!”

“Regardless of party, turning this issue into a political controversy should end,” said Jang Myung-woo, who co-heads a newly launched committee to push for the project's resumption.

“The Seoul-Yangpyeong highway is a project that 125,000 county residents have long waited for, and we ask that the government withdraw its plan to cancel it.”

The issue has blown up last week and has become the biggest political issue that rivals even the Fukushima nuclear power plant political dispute.

Since emerging just last week, the political brouhaha surrounding the highway has come to rival even that surrounding the Fukushima wastewater.

Not long after the DP accused the government of changing the development plan to help boost the value of properties owned by the first lady and her family, Land Minister Won said he will scrap the plan if fake news instigated by the DP continues.

“Unless first lady Kim [Keon-hee] moves or sells off the real estate where her ancestral graves are located, the DP’s ‘fruit fly’ agitation will never stop,” Won said Thursday while visiting the PPP at the National Assembly. “That is why I am removing the very cause [to the rumor].”

The PPP has argued that the altered plan will not raise the value of properties owned by the first lady.

It also claimed that the DP itself first requested the changes to the highway development plan two years ago.

The PPP further alleged that the DP requested the new endpoint be an intersection, near property the wife of the former Prime Minister Kim Boo-gyeom consequently purchased in May 2021.

Similar allegations were raised regarding changes in road development in Sejong, where routes were changed so that they passed through land owned by former DP leader and prime minister Lee Hae-chan.

The PPP accused Lee of changing the development of the road in a way that quadrupled the value of his property.

BY LEE HO-JEONG, JEON ICK-JIN [lee.hojeong@joongang.co.kr]