Stop populist projects designed just for votes

The fiasco of the 2023 World Scout Jamboree at Saemangeum exposed many challenges for the country from complacent management and poor preparations.

The fiasco of the 2023 World Scout Jamboree at Saemangeum, North Jeolla — the reclaimed land on the west coast — exposed many challenges for the country from complacent management and poor preparations. The authorities must first find out what was behind such laid-back operation of an international event. They must look into the blind push for massive projects to get votes by the central and local governments. The event has unveiled the contradiction of investing an astronomical amount of money to develop the reclaimed tidal flat yet ignoring the main event.

A lawmaker from the People Power Party claimed that a whopping 11-trillion-won ($8.3-billion) budget was spent on building infrastructure related to the Jamboree, including 800 billion won to construct an airport after exempting it from the mandatory preliminary feasibility study in the Moon Jae-in administration. A highway connecting Saemangeum and Jeonju in the province costs 1.9 trillion won, the east-to-west and south-to-north roads 780 billion won, and a new port 3.2 trillion won, for instance. After the province designated the tidal flat as the camp site for the event, the central government allowed the provincial government to use 215 billion won after changing the purpose of the land from tourism and leisure to farming.

As past governments, conservative or liberal, pushed the development of the reclaimed land to get votes from local residents, few tried to put the brakes on it. In its 2018 report, the local government admitted that it needed a justification to accelerate the development of the area by building an international airport and other infrastructures. But after the Jamboree ended in failure, politicians began to talk about cancelling the construction of the airport which has not even started. Despite the chronic deficit in 11 local airports and a shutdown, nine airports are being built across the country.

You can hardly blame local governments for trying to develop their regions with funding from the central government. But no one takes responsibility after politicians and heads of local governments leave their office. Such cases are abundant. We need a legal mechanism to ensure a strict feasibility review and block local governments from pushing ambitious projects whenever their head changes.

Over the Jamboree mess, former President Moon Jae-in apologized as the head of state in 2017, when North Jeolla won the bid for hosting the event. But he added that the event ended in national shame, holding the current administration accountable for the debacle. But it is not the time to point fingers at each other. If politicians do so, they will confront a public outrage.