President Lee says privatizing key infrastructure 'ultimately burdens the public'

President Lee Jae Myung said Thursday that "privatizing key infrastructure ultimately increases the burden on the public," adding that his administration is taking institutional and policy steps to block the privatization of railways, electricity, water, airports and ports, as promised.

Lee shared a news report on X, formerly Twitter, about the government's plan to consolidate five state-owned power generation companies and merge the Korea National Oil Corporation with the Korea Gas Corporation, among measures to reduce the total number of public institutions by 109, and wrote the remarks alongside it.

Earlier that day, the government announced it would merge the five power generation subsidiaries of Korea Electric Power Corporation into a single entity tentatively named Korea Power Generation.

The five companies were established in April 2001 under the Kim Dae-jung administration as part of a restructuring of the electricity industry, when the power generation division of Korea Electric Power Corporation was spun off alongside Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power.

The ultimate goal at the time was privatization, with "efficiency through competition" cited as the rationale.

However, privatization was effectively shelved afterward, and with the push for efficiency through competition having fallen through, calls persisted for consolidating the power companies to at least achieve economies of scale.

Last year, Lee questioned why the companies had been split up in the first place, signaling that a merger was worth reviewing.