62% of Gyeonggi Residents Participating in Public Debate Say "Urban Military Airport Should Be Relocated to Remote Area"

Gyeonggi Provincial Government Gwanggyo New Office Building

[Asia Economy (Suwon) = Reporter Lee Young-gyu] Sixty-two percent of Gyeonggi Province residents participating in the Public Deliberation Promotion Group expressed the opinion that "urban military airports should be relocated to remote areas, and development profits should be concentrated and invested in the newly relocated areas."

On the 20th, after conducting two rounds of deliberative discussions on resolving the issue of military airports within urban areas with 97 residents participating in the Public Deliberation Group, a survey was conducted on three options. As a result, 61.9% proposed the alternative of "relocating to remote areas to reduce overall social damage and concentrating development profits from existing airport areas into the newly relocated areas and residents."

Additionally, 23.7% of the residents supported "maintaining the military airport in the existing area while strengthening compensation for damages, as complete resolution of noise damage issues in the relocated area would be difficult."

The remaining 14.4% chose "promoting closure and consolidation of military airports to eliminate damage caused by changes in defense conditions and military airports."

Compared to the survey conducted before the deliberative discussion, support for the "military airport relocation" option increased by 5.5 percentage points from 56.4%, while "maintaining the existing area" decreased by 8.0 percentage points from 31.7%. The "closure and consolidation" option rose by 2.5 percentage points from 11.9%.

When considering factors for relocating military airports to remote areas (multiple responses allowed), the residents cited ▲appropriateness of location from a defense and security perspective (50.5%) ▲acceptance by residents of the relocated area (47.4%) ▲impact on residents' lives (44.3%) ▲regional economic effectiveness (25.8%), among others.

The Public Deliberation Promotion Group delivered a policy recommendation letter containing these results to Governor Kim Dong-yeon and posted it on the Gyeonggi Province website.

The province plans to share these policy recommendation results with the Ministry of National Defense and city/county governments and consult with related agencies to improve the issue of military airports within urban areas.

Earlier, the province selected "How to resolve the issue of military airports within urban areas" as the first agenda of the resident-participation social problem-solving project called the "Public Deliberation Project," conducting expert workshops and deliberative discussions.

Before the deliberative discussions, about 100 residents were selected as the Public Deliberation Group from four regions?Gyeongbu area, Eastern area, Northern area, and West Coast area?considering gender, population distribution, and age.

Meanwhile, 87.6% of the residents participating in the group evaluated the overall operation of the public deliberation process as fair.

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