The Donga has an interesting piece on a survey of local government officials. Among the findings, they noted that most local officials were not happy with the results of the previous administration’s ‘balanced regional developement’ policies:
More than half of local government heads flunked former President Roh Moo-hyun’s drive for so-called “balanced national development” policy. 53.7 percent of those surveyed said their locality received no contribution from his policy, while 26.6 percent said they did.
That is a pretty high number. I would like to have seen the regional breakdown on that. I suspect that the results fromYeongnam and the capital region pushed that number up.
This might have also contributed to the low popularity of Roh’s policies among elected officials:
[In the 2006 local elections] the conservative Grand National Party (GNP) swept six of seven mayoral races in major cities representing 23 million of South Korea’s 48 million people. They also won six of nine provincial races and took approximately 160 of 230 seats up for grabs county governors, major city borough chiefs and smaller city mayors. To cap their victory, the GNP also took the bulk of 3,621 local council seats, ensuring a strong ‘farm club’ for future elections.
So that was not exactly an unbiased group assessing the results of Roh’s development plans.
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2 Comments
Don’t you think the dispositive factor is that the officials involved appear all to have been resident in the Republic of Seoul?
Opps.
I cut-n-pasted the wrong bit. It shall be corrected (which does not violate the Martian code of blogging honor since the mistake is noted in your comment).