Hong Cheol-ho "Gimpo's Incorporation into Seoul Has Been Advocated Since the Local Elections"

With the upcoming general election next year, the 'Mega Seoul' plan has rapidly emerged as a political issue, and Hong Cheol-ho, the People Power Party's Gimpo-eul district committee chairman who proposed this idea, emphasized that he has been consistently making related proposals to the party since last year's local elections.

On the 1st, Chairman Hong said on MBC's 'Kim Jong-bae's Focus' program, "Mayor of Gimpo and I have been thoroughly studying the Han River Renaissance, including this issue, since the last local elections," adding, "We prepared and explained it extensively to the party leadership, sometimes even appealing to them, and now it seems that the result is that the entire nation is paying attention to it."

Former Assemblyman Hong Cheol-ho.

Some in the political sphere have pointed out that the ruling party might have hastily pulled out the 'Mega Seoul' card ahead of the general election, but Chairman Hong stated that he has been making related proposals to the party since last year.

He said, "It's hard to specify exactly when to the party leadership, but since I was always the Deputy Head of Strategic Planning and was within our party, I have been discussing metropolitan area issues with everyone I met, including transportation problems, which I pondered a lot during my time as Deputy Head of Strategic Planning." Chairman Hong was appointed as the party's Deputy Head of Strategic Planning in March last year but stepped down when the party shifted to a non-standing emergency committee system.

In response to the host's question, "Didn't the party leadership start seriously reviewing the Mega Seoul card from last April?" he emphasized, "Since the leadership keeps changing (that's why), the previous leadership also reviewed related matters and handed them over to the current leadership."

He also stressed that public opinion in Gimpo regarding incorporation into Seoul is not unfavorable. Chairman Hong said, "On September 10th, I gathered about 2,500 citizens at a gymnasium and conducted an on-site survey during an educational session, and out of 1,750 respondents, 84% supported incorporation into Seoul. I explained this to the party leadership."

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