‘Korean society needs people who can speak as labor rights advocates, but I believe there are important things that the mainstream can also do.’ 

“There’s one restriction after another for regional governments in Korea,” said the 56-year-old leader of the most populous province in the country. “It’s devastating.”
Kim, a three-term Grand National Party lawmaker, currently heads the metropolitan region that is home to 27 cities surrounding the capital Seoul. About 22 million people, about 46 percent of the country’s total population, live in the Seoul-Gyeonggi metropolitan area. Kim was elected governor of the province in general elections a year ago. New satellite towns are continuously on the rise in his province.
“I fly over the Gyeonggi area and look down from the chopper, and I think this is a very big piece of good, rich land. Comparing it with the desert of Dubai, it really is,” Kim said. “But while a quarter of the world’s cranes are now in Dubai building the best skyscrapers in the world, Gyeonggi has to deal with questions like ‘why are you building another satellite city out there?'”
Kim said the country’s administration is still centered around the policies of the central government. It’s embarrassing, he said, to speak of regional governments in Korea because there are so many barriers to what local governments can do themselves.
“I fight every day to change this situation. Just now [the interview took place on July 2], I came back from meeting with lawmakers, pleading with them to let us build a factory or a college campus on the site what a U.S. Army base is going to vacate,” he said. “Sometimes we fight, sometimes we hold protests or seek legislative measures, if there’s an opportunity. But we don’t get much in return.”
One of his proud achievements is the new discount transfer fare system between Seoul and Gyeonggi’s public transportation lines, into which he poured 100 billion won ($109 million). Kim is currently concentrating on enhancing the water quality of Lake Paldang, which supplies drinking water for an estimated 23 million Koreans.
He plans to lower overall housing costs by providing more housing units for the public. When his plans are completed, 11 giant residential districts filled with apartment complexes will be built in Gyeonggi.
“This should not be seen as a mere competition between the metropolis and the non-metropolitan areas,” he said, acknowledging ongoing arguments that development should not be centered only in the region around Seoul. “In order to prevent [Korea] from falling behind the competition in northeast Asia, we need to create a bigger merger for bigger development.”
Kim is proposing the creation of an exclusive economic zone stretching along the coastal area facing the Yellow Sea, which will include Seoul, Incheon, Gyeonggi and North and South Jeolla provinces, and will reach across to Shandong and Shanghai in China. He said the coastal belt would then attract more factories, leisure facilities and colleges.