Pohang Mayor Park Yong-seon (right) visits the Ministry of Planning and Budget at Government Complex Sejong on Monday to request government budget allocations for the city's major pending projects. [Pohang City]
Pohang Mayor Park Yong-seon (right) visits the Ministry of Planning and Budget at Government Complex Sejong on Monday to request government budget allocations for the city's major pending projects. [Pohang City]

Pohang, in North Gyeongsang Province, is marshaling its resources to secure national government funding for five priority projects, including the Yeongil Bay Crossing Bridge.

Pohang Mayor Park Yong-seon visited the Ministry of Planning and Budget at Government Complex Sejong on Monday, meeting successively with Budget Director General Park Chang-hwan and Vice Minister Jo Yong-beom to urge the government to reflect the city's key pending projects in its budget, the city said Tuesday.

The five priority projects are the construction of the Pohang Yeongil Bay Crossing Bridge, the development of a national marine ecological park on the Homi Peninsula, the operation of an electric vehicle battery resource-circulation cluster, the scale-up of beamlines at the fourth-generation synchrotron radiation accelerator, and the establishment of a food-tech robot testing and certification center.

Park highlighted Pohang's standing as a core hub for national strategic industries — including secondary batteries and hydrogen — and as a research and development city home to a fourth-generation synchrotron radiation accelerator, stressing the necessity and urgency of each project.

He also explained the projects' alignment with national policy and their ripple effects on the local economy, arguing they are essential tasks directly tied to strengthening national industrial competitiveness beyond the regional level.

"Pohang's key pending projects are not merely local undertakings — they are a national imperative underpinning South Korea's industrial competitiveness and future growth engines," Park said. "We will rally every resource at our disposal and do everything we can to secure national funding until the government budget is finalized."


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