People Power Party lawmaker Lee In-sun. [Provided by Lee In-sun's office]
People Power Party lawmaker Lee In-sun. [Provided by Lee In-sun's office]

People Power Party lawmaker Lee In-sun, who represents Daegu's Suseong-eul district, strongly criticized the government for leaving the entire 332.4 billion won ($245 million) in Public Fund Management Fund loans out of the budget — money considered essential seed funding for the Daegu military airport relocation project.

Speaking Monday at the National Assembly's Budget and Accounts Special Committee review of economic ministries for the 2027 budget, Lee said the omission amounted to "discrimination that the 5 million residents of Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province can never accept as fair," and criticized the government's passive stance.

The Daegu military airport relocation project is estimated to cost about 23 trillion won in total. It is being pursued under a "donation-for-transfer" arrangement, in which the city builds a new military airport and donates it to the state in exchange for receiving the existing military airport site.

With the real estate market slump expected to complicate the project, Daegu requested 332.4 billion won in loans and interest support from the central government for land compensation and other costs. The request went unmet in the 2025 and 2026 budget proposals and has again been left out of the 2027 proposal.

Lee said the government had ignored the request even though the National Assembly had adopted a supplementary opinion calling on it to devise support measures for the Daegu-North Gyeongsang integrated new airport. "The government is actively providing support for Gwangju while forcing Daegu to stick to the outdated donation-for-transfer principle," Lee said, raising the issue of regional discrimination.

Lee urged the central government and public institutions to take active steps, saying residents who have long suffered property rights violations due to military facilities "must no longer be ignored."


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