Muan community demands core administrative functions for Namak new town headquarters

"Core institutional functions — planning and budgeting, personnel and organization, auditing and accounting — must come to the Muan office."

The Muan-gun community, embroiled in a dispute over the location of the main government headquarters, has sent an open letter to South Jeolla-Gwangju Special City Mayor Min Hyeong-bae demanding stronger administrative powers for the Muan office.

The "Muan Confirmation Civic-Government Joint Task Force for the Main Headquarters of the South Jeolla-Gwangju Integrated Special City" distributed the open letter addressed to Mayor Min on Wednesday.

The task force urged Min to place a central coordinating department — one that would serve as a control tower overseeing the integrated city's organization and administration — at the Muan office. It said Min's responses at a town hall meeting on Thursday regarding the operational direction of the Gwangju, Muan and eastern offices had "brought disappointment to all residents of South Jeolla Province."

The group said Min appeared to take it for granted that the benefits of integration — including the military airport relocation, the promotion of advanced industries such as semiconductors and AI, and the placement of core authority at the Gwangju office — would be concentrated in Gwangju.

The task force said its demand was not for all institutional functions to be concentrated at the Muan office, but rather "a legitimate call to ensure that Namak new town in Muan can maintain at least a minimum standing as the historic administrative center of South Jeolla Province."

The task force, which opened last month, is co-chaired by Muan County Governor Kim San and Muan County Prosperity Association President Park Mun-jae.

The group is expected to pursue a strategy linking its demands to the planned relocation of the Gwangju military airport to Muan.

Civil servant unions in South Jeolla Province also held a rally at the Muan office Wednesday, urging a balanced distribution of organizational functions across the region.

The South Jeolla Provincial Office Civil Servants Union and the South Jeolla Provincial Office Open Civil Servants Union said an office stripped of authority would be left as an empty shell, and that the city's future and the region's fate would hinge on who holds power over planning, budgeting, personnel and organization.

The two unions said they conveyed at a meeting Tuesday their position that key institutional departments must be distributed equitably between the South Jeolla and Gwangju sides, and that the administrative vice mayor acknowledged the need and said the matter was under comprehensive review.

The unions said they would wait to see how the plan takes shape and had put on hold a planned head-shaving ceremony by the two union chairs.