Jeonnam Governor Kim Young-rok Promises Special Support for Flood Damage Recovery at Hampyeong Expo Park

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Yoon Jamin] While Hampyeong Expo Park in Jeonnam was struggling with flood recovery due to enormous costs, Jeonnam Governor Kim Young-rok’s generous support turned the situation into an opportunity.

According to Hampyeong County on the 21st, Governor Kim promised to provide a special support of 1 billion KRW in provincial funds for the restoration of Hampyeong Expo Park during a meeting with Lee Sang-ik, the mayor of Hampyeong County, the day before.

With this decision, Hampyeong County secured additional provincial funds amounting to about 40% of the flood recovery cost (2.7 billion KRW from the county budget).

This special support was made after Mayor Lee explained the regional recovery plan related to the recent heavy rain damage and requested financial support from the provincial government for the restoration of the Expo Park.

In particular, he actively emphasized that the originally planned national government support was all changed to self-recovery funds by the county, which seems to have led to Governor Kim’s decision.

Mayor Lee said, “The special disaster area support fund was far from enough even to restore private facilities, so we couldn’t even think about restoring the park, but this time the governor made a big decision for the county and its residents.”

The county plans to invest a total of 27.1 billion KRW in recovery projects, including the provincial funds received this time, 15 billion KRW in national funds already secured, and 400 million KRW in special grants, to fully restore the flood-damaged areas including the Expo Park.

In particular, the Cultural Relics Exhibition Hall, which suffered the greatest damage among the Expo Park’s auxiliary facilities, will begin reconstruction early next year by raising the ground about 1 meter to prevent future flooding.

Governor Kim said, “Although the financial situation is difficult, Hampyeong Expo Park is a key regional facility and one of Jeonnam’s major tourist resources, so we made a difficult decision to support it. I hope this provincial fund support will help not only with simple damage recovery but also with enhancing the prestige of Hampyeong Expo Park.”

Famous as the venue for the Butterfly Festival, Hampyeong Expo Park suffered flood damage amounting to about 1.56 billion KRW as most auxiliary facilities within the park were submerged during the recent heavy rains.

In particular, the Cultural Relics Exhibition Hall, which was very popular for displaying household items from the 1960s and 70s, suffered damage exceeding 1 billion KRW as about 2,600 out of 20,018 exhibited items were submerged and discarded.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.