Seoul Metro Explains "Did Not Favor LG Uplus with Work Orders"

Seoul Metro (President Baek Ho) clarified that recent media reports claiming that LG Uplus has almost monopolized the corporation's telecommunications business over the past six years are not true.

On the afternoon of the 26th, the corporation released a statement explaining that since 2017, there have been a total of 11 contracts related to information and communication with LG Uplus: 10 for production, purchase, and installation of goods, and 1 for telecommunications service subscription. Among these, the 10 production, purchase, and installation contracts were for projects such as upgrading outdated CCTV systems or upgrading old train wireless systems, and these contracts were made through the Public Procurement Service.

Additionally, regarding the telecommunications service subscription project (1 case), the corporation announced that it was put out for open bidding among the three major telecommunications companies, but LG Uplus was the only bidder in all three rounds.

The corporation also denied reports claiming that it sought evaluation committee members favorable to LG Uplus. According to the recruitment results for preliminary evaluators of the telecommunications control system, out of 110 applicants, 25 (22.7%) were deemed suitable and 85 (77.3%) unsuitable, falling short of the regulation requiring at least three times the minimum number of evaluators (27 people). To secure additional preliminary evaluators from the university sector, recruitment documents were sent to five institutions other than universities. Ultimately, 27 preliminary evaluators were confirmed. Among these 27, nine proposal evaluation committee members are randomly selected from each bidding company, so the corporation cannot intervene in the selection of favorable evaluators.

Regarding the composition of the proposal evaluation committee, the corporation stated: ▲ Number of evaluators: composed of 9 external experts ▲ Qualifications of evaluators: public officials, railway operators, university professors (associate professor or higher), Korea Railroad Research Institute, Korea Electric Power Corporation with expertise in the relevant evaluation field (if there is a shortage of candidates, a technical advisory personnel pool is utilized).

Furthermore, in response to reports that the corporation lost fairness by outsourcing only quantitative evaluation to the Public Procurement Service while conducting qualitative evaluation internally, the corporation said that regarding the "Smart Control" project bidding, it was informed that the Public Procurement Service lacks a pool of experts to conduct the evaluation, so it is appropriate for the corporation to conduct the qualitative evaluation itself.

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