Lee apologies for administrative town plan reversal

President Lee Myung-bak on Friday apologized for social conflict and confusion caused by his government`s decision to call off a plan to move parts of the government out of Seoul to a new administrative town now under construction in central Korea, according to Yonhap News.

In a nationally televised town hall meeting, Lee vowed to risk political losses, saying he is convinced a reversal of the Sejong City project will be beneficial to the nation and the people.

Lee also stressed that he is opposed to the division of government, and that Sejong City -- if built as an administrative town as planned -- will be a disaster.

"I am somewhat ashamed, and I regret it when I think of it now," the president said in the live television program, referring to his pledge during the 2007 presidential campaign to hold fast to the Sejong administrative town plan.

"I feel sorry to the nation and the people of Chungcheong Province for causing such confusion, even though revising the plan will benefit them," he said.

The Lee administration recently launched a government-private committee to draw up an alternative plan for Sejong by January through public hearings and other consensus-building procedures.

Initiated by former President Roh Moo-hyun as an election campaign pledge in 2002, the Sejong City project calls for moving nine ministries and four government agencies to Sejong in South Chungcheong Province, about 160km south of Seoul. There were 18 ministries under Roh`s administration, which were merged into 15 by the incumbent Lee government.

The National Assembly passed a special bill on the construction of Sejong City in 2005, with the then opposition Grand National Party voting for the bill in a "political gesture" so as not to lose support from the neutral Chungcheong region. Sejong was derived from the name of a Joseon Dynasty king who invented the Korean alphabet.

Since its inauguration in early 2008, however, the Lee administration has been looking to downsize the relocation project, calling a regional division of the government "inefficient."

The president said he could have avoided the confusion or the blame if he had simply turned a blind eye to the issue, which he said will not affect him or his government, but his successors.

"But I ask myself if I should let the country suffer just so I can be little more comfortable politically," Lee said.

"There is no country in the world that divides its capital," he added, noting Germany was the only exception, but that the country`s former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has recently acknowledged it was a failure and said Korea must not make the same mistake.

Lee said the most serious problem facing Sejong City was that it would significantly undermine the efficiency of the government while doing little or nothing to help develop the region.