President Lee’s Daejeon–South Chungcheong Merger Card… Do You Think He’ll Get Any “Fun” Out of It?

[Choice Times=Soo-Young Park, Lawmaker of the People Power Party]

It is being reported that President Lee Jae-myung has expressed his intention to merge Daejeon and South Chungcheong Province. With the local elections scheduled for next June, this appears to be an attempt to imitate former President Roh Moo-hyun, who, after winning a general election on the Sejong City relocation issue, remarked that he had “gotten some fun out of it.” The aide who proposed this idea deserves criticism. This is an entirely different issue from Sejong City.

(1) Strong resident opposition is likely…
The ruling party, as the majority party, may be able to push through a special merger law at lightning speed, but local public sentiment opposing the merger will not be easy to overcome. If Daejeon and South Chungcheong are merged, whether it is Daejeon, South Chungcheong, or both, a regional name would have to disappear. Regional names carry deep historical meaning, so strong resistance from residents is inevitable.

Would someone whose family has lived for generations in Boryeong, South Chungcheong, easily accept suddenly becoming a resident of “Daejeon Boryeong”? Or would citizens proud of being residents of Daejeon Metropolitan City be happy to suddenly become residents of “Daejeon, South Chungcheong Province (a general city), Noeun 1-dong”?

(2) Does this solve overcrowding in the Seoul metropolitan area?
It is claimed that merging Daejeon and South Chungcheong would help resolve overcrowding in the capital region, but this ignores a basic fact. The capital region is not overcrowded because Daejeon and South Chungcheong are separate. Overcrowding occurs because education, jobs, and culture are concentrated in the capital region. It is not something that can be resolved through the physical merger of Daejeon and South Chungcheong.

(3) Infrastructure must come first, not physical integration…
Legal or physical integration does not automatically produce real integration. Integration requires infrastructure linking Daejeon, South Chungcheong, and North Chungcheong.

More than ten years have passed since calls for a Busan–Ulsan–Gyeongnam (BU·UL·GYEONG) megacity began, yet it has still not materialized. One should consider why. As long as it takes more than two hours to travel from Busan to Jinju, a megacity remains nothing more than fictional fantasy.

In any case, I believe this issue raised by President Lee Jae-myung will bring more losses than gains. There is a precedent: during the Lee Myung-bak administration in 2010, multiple city and county mergers were attempted. Aside from the merger of Masan, Changwon, and Jinhae into Changwon City, the efforts failed due to resident opposition, resulting in significant political setbacks.

#RegionalMerger #LocalBacklash #PoliticalRisk