First executive meeting held at Suncheon office, streamed live on YouTube
Min Hyeong-bae, mayor of the South Jeolla-Gwangju Integrated Special City, convened his first executive meeting at the eastern branch office in Suncheon on Wednesday — the first since the merger of Gwangju and South Jeolla Province — calling for the swift development of a semiconductor industrial complex as the new city works to get off the ground.
The meeting was held at the Nacheon Hall of the eastern branch office in Suncheon's Sindae district, with about 60 senior civil servants at the director-general level in attendance.
The city livestreamed the entire proceedings on its official YouTube channel, "Jeonnam Gwangju TV," to ensure transparency and keep citizens informed.
Min said he would continue rotating executive meetings among the city's three offices — in Gwangju, Muan and Suncheon — to uphold the spirit of integration, and pledged to maintain the open-meeting policy going forward.
In his opening remarks, Min said, "Having raised the historic sail of South Korea's first integrated special city, every step we take will become a new milestone for local autonomy in this country." He urged city officials to lead the way in building "a special city where South Jeolla-Gwangju grows overwhelmingly and all citizens prosper together."
The meeting's main agenda covered five issues tied to securing the region's future growth and public safety: support for the semiconductor cluster, a major transformation of the Yeosu petrochemical industry, a push to designate Yeosu as an employment crisis zone, a strategy for securing national budget funding in 2027, and summer natural disaster preparedness.
On semiconductors — which officials described as enjoying their biggest boom since the nation's founding — Min said AI-driven demand was outpacing supply, and that South Korea risked falling behind China, Taiwan and Japan if it failed to export chips in time. He said that made it urgent to build the semiconductor industrial complex without delay.
Min said that at a public-private joint review meeting at Cheong Wa Dae on Monday, "a final decision was made to build a semiconductor fab on the site of the Gwangju military airport, and we immediately formed a semiconductor industry task force." He added that "with the government and businesses moving in step, we absolutely cannot afford to let administrative unpreparedness on our part derail the project," and ordered officials to press ahead with urgency.
He added that all departments should mount an all-out effort to build the semiconductor industry ecosystem, covering power supply, water supply, site acquisition, talent development and residential infrastructure.
The meeting also addressed in depth the economic challenges facing the eastern part of the new city, where the petrochemical and steel industries have been in a prolonged slump.
Min directed officials to move quickly on designating Yeosu as an employment crisis zone and to develop a range of measures to inject new vitality into the eastern regional economy.
"The success of the integrated special city hinges on the rapid stabilization of the organization and on citizens actually feeling the benefits of integration," Min said. He called on all public officials to work as one to quickly stabilize the administrative framework and "prove through policy results that people's lives have genuinely improved."
parkds@heraldcorp.com
