[Editorial] Local government's waste for its festivals must be prevented

Now is a grave time for us all when many leading business firms, once representative of Korea and its corporations, are now finding themselves at the cross-road of staying alive or going into bankruptcy. Defying such a stark reality, there are unending series of festivals organized by local governments on and before October, which is designated as the country's month of culture. The festivals competitively featured by the local governments are by and large promotional events to highlight their `accomplishments.'

The festivals such as `Citizens' Day Celebrations' or cultural events for varied purposes look in name sound and plausible, but they are in reality nothing more than gatherings for spending binge. Some events required enormous budget appropriations, but they are severely criticized because they were superficial, lacking any substantive contents.

For example, Seoul City organized what it dubbed as ``The Media City for Seoul 2000,'' the event is expected to last for two months from Sept. 2 at the Seoul City's Art Museum. Seoulites' response was marginal. Instead, they showed hostile reactions against the event. Already outdated media equipments were displayed as up-to-date high-tech machinery. The event was also ill-prepared. Seoulites hardly find any interest in seeing the gallery sites by paying an expensive admission fees. Seoul decided to extend the display for 15 days more. The losses from the event amounting to some 2 billion won appear unavoidable. In addition, Seoul City organized `Seoulites' Week' during the last week that required banning of traffics. The event required enormous spending; yet, it contributed to nothing but only caused great inconvenience for the citizens.

The situation in other local governments is not much different from Seoul City. Pusan City stages varied festivals and celebrations almost through the year around. Subsequent to Pusan Film Festival last week and `Jagalchi' Festival or `fisheries wholesale market' festivities, the city features now `Festival for My Love of Pusan.' It will host `Asian Week, 2000' from Thursday. The event will be participated by 11 cities from 9 countries. For that matter, Inchon City's Global Dancing Festival and `International Car Race' organized by Changwon City of South Kyongsang Province were all the same recorded the red.

Granted, we need festivals. Also we realize that such cultural issues as the preservation of regionally unique culture, the creation of feelings of mutual sharedness among regional residents as well as satisfaction of the need for cultural life, require considerations more than mere profit calculations.

However, all the regional festivities and events since the inception of local autonomy in 1995 invariably lacked their uniqueness and distinguishing features. Heads of local autonomy such as city mayors and provincial governors contrived all-alike, similar festival programs in the name of promoting the sale of their tourist goods. But, this was in fact to disguise their ulterior motive for the next election campaigns. For example, the nation-wide beauty contests for varied categories of women number over 80. Although there were some exceptional cases of success like `Butterfly Festival' in Hampyong, South Cholla Province, most of the regional festivals are sheer cases of budget wastes.

Such a waste by the local government's outpouring of specifically motivated promotional festivals will only aggravate its already worsened self-sustaining fiscal outlays. This is naturally translated into the regional residents' distrust and dissatisfaction against the heads of their local government.

For this reason, the government is giving a serious consideration to an introduction of a new system to recall their elected local heads of government. Now is the time for residents of all localities to keep a vigilant eye on their elected local heads to prevent their wasteful budget appropriations and to pass their judgment on them. The power of grass-roots has already demonstrated splendidly in the case of their protest against the so-called `love hotel' or Korean version of motels for `sexual promenade.'