Lee Jae-myung: "Eradicate Membership-Only Operation of Public Golf Courses... Suppress Unilateral Fee Increases"

Golf Population Reaches 5 Million... Fees Increased by 19% Over the Past 2 Years
Proposed Improvements Including Thorough Inspections

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Ju-yeon] On the 8th, Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic Party of Korea's presidential candidate, announced the 42nd small but certain happiness (So-hwak-haeng) pledge, a plan to "normalize the operation of public golf courses."

[Image source=Yonhap News]

On that day, Candidate Lee said on Facebook, "We will normalize the operation method of public golf courses to match the era of 5 million golf population."

As a measure for this, he pledged to eradicate the membership-based operation of public golf courses.

The plan is to strengthen supervision under the organic cooperation of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and local governments to ensure that each regulation, such as the prohibition of recruiting members for public golf courses and the prohibition of providing priority use rights and sales, as stipulated in the "Act on the Installation and Use of Sports Facilities" amendment passed by the National Assembly plenary session on December 31 last year, is well observed in the field.

In addition, through follow-up measures such as revising the enforcement ordinance, the plan is to strengthen management to suppress unilateral fee increases and maintain appropriate levels by introducing a public golf course operation screening system.

According to an investigation by the Democratic Party's election campaign committee, the total amount of tax reductions granted to all public golf courses in 2021 exceeded 700 billion won.

Candidate Lee emphasized, "Raising fees by 19% over the past two years, taking advantage of the surge in users after COVID-19, is nothing short of tyranny," and added, "As benefits have been guaranteed for the public to use conveniently and comfortably, from now on, we will thoroughly inspect and correct to ensure proper operation."

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