The government told the National Assembly yesterday it will move 10 major state-run organizations including Korea Electric Power Corporation and Korea Land Corporation to provincial cities not in the metropolitan and South Chungcheong regions, and excluding Daejeon and Jeju.

The Construction and Transportation Minister told the Assembly construction committee the 10 organizations are the corporations of electric power, land, housing, highway, gas, oil, agricultural and rural infrastructure, agricultural and fishery marketing, resources, and tourism.

According to previous government research, the housing corporation favored South Chungcheong, the land and highway corporations chose North Chungcheong, and the gas corporation picked Incheon as their preferred future locations.

Busan and South Gyeongsang were the most unpopular locations with none of the 10 corporations including them in the four regions they favored.

The electric power corporation did not choose a particular region as it was found to be the most "wanted" corporation by the provincial cities, with Busan, Daegu, Gwangju, Gangwon, North Chungcheong, North and South Jeolla and North Gyeongsang all wanting it.

The government finally decided to settle the disposition of the corporations itself, instead of leaving the decision to consultations between corporations and cities.

"The government will consider each city's regional and industrial characteristics, and each corporation's functional characteristics carefully to decide which corporation matches which city the best," said Construction Minister Choo Byung-jik.

"The government also plans to move employees of the corporations as a group instead of splitting them up, since moving them together would help to create good living conditions efficiently and will also help develop the regions effectively with connections between industry and education," he added.

After the plan is completed, the government expects from 10 to 15 state-run organizations to be set up in each metropolitan and provincial city with 2,000 to 3,000 public workers.

President Roh Moo-hyun has been pushing the plan to move public corporations along with the relocation of 12 of 18 ministries to the new administrative city to be built in South Chungcheong Province as part of his balanced national development project.

Plans were formulated after the president's original decision to move the nation's capital out of Seoul was struck down by the Constitutional Court last October.

(hayney@heraldm.com)

By Shin Hae-in 