Showcase Industrial Cities to Be Selected Within Year

It is expected that one or two industrial cities led by the private sector will be selected as showcase examples within the year.

Saemangeum in North Jolla Province and Haenam and Youngam in South Jolla are powerful candidates since they are exemplary industrial cities for tourism and leisure.

The Ministry of Construction and Transportation (MCT) said that it will prepare an enactment proposal for a special law for private complex city development, including the character of the cities, development plans, and various supporting plans, and submit it to the National Assembly on September 21 after a public hearing and government consultation.

However, the proposal will be difficult to implement in reality since the economic arena has been indifferent and the existence of different opinions among related government departments.

According to the special law, industrial cities will be developed into four categories: industrial trade, knowledge, tourism-leisure, and innovation in provinces except the metropolitan area and South Chungcheong Province.

Industrial cities can be developed by a single company or a consortium of several companies. And private and local government organizations can collaborate on the development.

Those involved with industrial cities can benefit from all kinds of favors.

The Ministry of Construction and Transportation allowed participants in industrial cities to establish schools and hospitals directly and first.

In addition, special-purpose high schools, independent private schools, and foreign educational institutions are available in these industrial cities.

A Social Overhead Capital (SOC) cost invested in industrial cities is excluded from the application of the limitation of the total amount of investment, and the amount of money for establishing industrial cities will be also exempt from the loan limits of financial institutions.

Regarding the expropriation of land, when a company purchases more than 50 percent of land by mutual consent, the company will be able to expropriate the rest by force. Also, when companies ask their government to carry out land expropriation by proxy, they will have to accept this as long as there is no special reason not to do so.

“There will be an investment effect of 18 trillion won, together with an employment effect of 29,000 people when we foster one industrial city with its 5,000,000 pyong layout in a local area,” said Seo Jong-Dae, chief of the New City Planning Department of the MCT.

Meanwhile, Yoo Jae-Joon, chief of the Industrial City Taskforce Team of the Federation of Korean Industries, who had first suggested the establishment of industrial cities last October, said, “There will be few enterprises that will invest in industrial cities if we do this according to the government’s plans. I know that some companies are interested in only tourism and leisure cities.”

Kwang-Hyun Kim kkh@donga.com