A fighter jet of the 1st Fighter Wing prepares for takeoff at Gwangju Military Airport. [Yonhap]
A fighter jet of the 1st Fighter Wing prepares for takeoff at Gwangju Military Airport. [Yonhap]

The government has decided to build a semiconductor fabrication facility — commonly known as a fab — on land originally set aside for the relocation of an ammunition depot at Gwangju Military Airport, pushing a long-sought community goal back to square one.

According to the South Jeolla Province-Gwangju integrated special city, the ammunition depot in Mareuk-dong, Seo-gu, near the military airport has been designated a military facility protection zone for more than 50 years, restricting development and the exercise of property rights by nearby residents.

Residents have long demanded the depot be moved, and the Ministry of National Defense had agreed to relocate it to a safety zone within the military airport grounds.

The ministry's plan was to first move the ammunition depot onto the airport site, then relocate it again when the entire military airport was eventually moved.

But with the military airport area now designated as the site for a semiconductor industrial complex — and an early ground-breaking for the fab planned on the very land where the depot was to go — the relocation plan has been scrapped.

The basic approach has been to move the ammunition depot together with the military airport.

The military airport relocation project, however, remains at the candidate-site selection stage, making it difficult to predict when a site will be confirmed and a new airport built.

Under the current roadmap — which calls for transferring the airport's functions to other bases and clearing the existing site by 2028 before breaking ground on the semiconductor fab — the Mareuk-dong ammunition depot will remain where it is.

If the relocation, decided in response to residents' longstanding demands, is delayed again or halted entirely, community complaints are likely to resurface.

Options under discussion include continuing to use the Mareuk-dong depot on a temporary basis, dispersing munitions to other military bases, or establishing a separate interim facility.

"If the government proceeds as planned, moving the ammunition depot to the military airport site will no longer be feasible," an official from the South Jeolla Province-Gwangju integrated city said. "The Ministry of National Defense will need to work out a solution — whether that means keeping the depot in place temporarily or relocating part of it."


sij@heraldcorp.com