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The presidential Transition Committee on Thursday unveiled a plan to divide the country into five economic and two special zones where different strategic industries will be fostered. The plan envisages two or three large cities or provinces to form an economic zone in pursuit of balanced development between the provinces and the Seoul metropolitan area. To make this happen, the central government will ease various regulations and give the regions infrastructure support in railways, airports and ports.
The plan is to group 16 large cities and provinces into five economic zones -- a central metropolitan zone (Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi Province), a Chungcheong zone (Daejeon and the Chungcheong provinces), a Jeolla zone (Gwangju and Jeolla provinces), a Daegu-North Gyeongsang zone (Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province) and a southeastern zone (Busan, Ulsan and South Gyeongsang Province) -- plus two special zones for Gangwon Province and Jeju Island.
Each zone will be managed by a headquarters with planning, coordination and financial supervisory authority and will get receive subsidies from central government for management of various projects and coordination of policies and programs with cities and provinces under its jurisdiction. This will create separate local economic municipalities.
The committee is thinking of making the central metropolitan zone a hub of international finance and state-of-the-art industries. The Jeolla zone would link the Saemangeum project with tourist, leisure and corporate cities on the southwestern coast, such as Gwangyang and Yeosu. The Chungcheong zone would become a science-technology-education-R&D-bio belt. The Daegu-North Gyeongsang zone would become an energy, electronic and textile industries hub, the southeastern zone a shipbuilding-machinery-maritime-cultural industrial area; the Gangwon zone a tourist and medical hub; and the Jeju zone a tourism hub.
Meanwhile, the committee said construction of the Jeolla regional section of the KTX bullet train line will be completed by 2012, a year earlier than previously scheduled, to galvanize the economy in this part of the country, and to start construction of a new international airport in the southeast, either in Milyang, South Gyeongsang Province or in Busan, as early as 2009. New third-generation ports will be built in Saemangeum, Gwangyang and Busan, together with highways linking the economic zones and highway belts around large cities.
The committee would drastically ease regulations that hamper the development of these economic zones, including the stringent building-to-land ratio set for factories and the ban on factories in water resource conservation areas. It envisages an easy one-stop procedure for those who want to build factories in restricted areas.
Park Hyong-joon, a member of the transition team¡¯s planning and coordination subcommittee, said, "To improve the nation's global competitiveness, it is crucial to transcend the limits of the current administrative areas and seek vast, coordinated economic policies that join all regions." Park said the new government is not considering a wholesale overhaul of the innovative cities pushed by the Roh Moo-hyun administration ¡°considering that building the innovative cities and the relocation of public agencies are already underway."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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