Editor’s Note
This article reports on serious allegations made by civic groups and a political party in Jinju, South Korea, regarding the city’s land purchase for a KAI facility. The claims center on the potential misuse of public funds. We present this as a developing local story.
Allegations have surfaced that Jinju City paid at least 13.5 billion won in taxpayer money during the process of purchasing land for the KAI (Korea Aerospace Industries) Rotary-Wing Flight Center, leading local civic groups and a political party to report the Jinju Mayor to the police.
Nineteen civic groups and political parties, including Jinju Participatory Solidarity, Jinju Women’s Association, Jinju City Administration Monitoring Group, and the Green Party, held a press conference at the Jinju City Hall briefing room on the 20th. They claimed, “The price for the additional expansion site was set more than three times higher than the price for the flight center site within the existing industrial complex. The private developer bought the original site for 30,000 won per square meter and resold it to Jinju City for 570,000 won.”
They criticized, “The structural problem that allowed only the development cost of the specific zone where the rotary-wing flight center would be located to be calculated separately, rather than the total development cost of the entire industrial complex, enabled price inflation.” They added, “Despite requests for information disclosure, Jinju City is withholding the data on the grounds of infringing the interests of the contracting party.”
Previously, Jinju City received an ‘institutional warning’ from the Gyeongsangnam-do audit last November regarding the process of KAI’s rotary-wing flight center moving in.
According to the Gyeongsangnam-do audit results, it was revealed that Jinju City, as the industrial complex management agency, granted occupancy qualifications even though it could not directly acquire industrial land. It also allowed a flight center, which is not a manufacturing business according to the industrial complex’s basic management plan, to be established. Furthermore, the purchase price included costs for handling complaints, compensation, and construction expenses.
However, Jinju City has not responded to citizens’ demands for verification regarding the basis for calculating the development cost and the details of the contract, citing concerns over “infringement of business secrets.”
The civic groups pointed out, “The attitude of hiding a public project involving hundreds of billions of won in taxpayer money behind a private company’s ‘trade secrets’ and refusing even verification is a declaration of abandoning publicness. This is a case where a local government has neglected its role as a manager of citizens’ assets.”
They defined it as “an act of breach of trust where the local government, which should manage and supervise citizens’ assets, instead guaranteed the profit structure of the private developer.” They reported the Jinju Mayor to the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crime Investigation Division of the Gyeongnam Provincial Police Agency on charges of violating the Local Autonomy Act, Local Finance Act, Act on the Agglomeration of Industrial Complexes and Establishment of Factories, and the Public Property and Commodity Management Act.
Meanwhile, in December 2024, Jinju City held a completion ceremony for the KAI Rotary-Wing Flight Center at the Gasan General Industrial Complex in Ibanseong-myeon, Jinju, promoting it as “Korea’s only dedicated flight facility for rotary-wing aircraft.”
Rotary-wing aircraft are aircraft capable of vertical take-off and landing using the force of rotating wings and rotors, including helicopters, drones, and future urban air mobility (UAM) vehicles.