South Gyeongnam governor orders creation of advanced-industry task force

South Gyeongsang Province Governor Park Wan-su has ordered the creation of an "advanced-industry task force" to ensure large-scale corporate investment projects move forward on schedule. The initiative aims to accelerate administrative support and infrastructure development so that investment commitments translate into actual ground-breaking and operations.

Park chaired the first expanded senior-staff meeting since the launch of the ninth elected provincial administration on Monday, directing officials to follow through on major corporate investments and turn them into tangible economic gains for the region. At the meeting, he instructed officials to form the task force — centered on the administrative vice governor and the head of the industry bureau — to track the progress of individual investment projects.

"Even when a company decides to invest, the investment may be difficult to execute if the industrial infrastructure needed on the ground is not built in time," Park said. Key projects flagged for oversight include Hanwha's Changwon aerospace, defense and AI center and data center; Hyundai Motor Group's auto-parts manufacturing cluster; and Samsung Heavy Industries' shipbuilding and offshore-plant investment in Geoje.

Park also called for a coordinated response to the central government's plan to develop a "South Coast Aerospace Belt." He asked officials to formally propose to the government the establishment of a civilian joint research institute in Sacheon and an aerospace industry promotion agency, and to pursue policy consultations with major conglomerates. In connection with the Korea AeroSpace Administration's low-earth-orbit satellite communications network plan, he also directed officials to prepare measures to support the participation of partner companies within the province.

The meeting also laid out the governing direction for the ninth elected provincial administration. Park unveiled "A Great Leap Forward for South Gyeongnam Together with Its People" as the new provincial slogan, and instructed each department and bureau to draw up a four-year vision and implementation roadmap by function, to be announced in conjunction with the core policy agenda set by the policy planning office.

The province also agreed to pursue reform tasks for its administration, organizational structure and affiliated agencies in stages. Key issues identified include personnel bottlenecks at affiliated agencies, improvements to performance and compensation systems, internal promotion structures at the main office, and inefficient meeting culture. Alongside this, Park asked officials to assess the economic impact of the resident lifestyle support payments distributed in the first half of the year, and to spare no effort on disaster prevention and safety management, with a focus on areas hit by monsoon-season heavy rain.

"We must not stop at gathering opinions from the field — we need to develop improvement measures that can actually be applied," Park said, calling for reform proposals to be released in sequence.