Incheon vehicle plate agency selection faces legality questions

The legality of the process used to select agencies authorized to issue vehicle registration plates in Incheon is stirring controversy.

On Wednesday, Cho Sung-min, an Incheon city council member, said, "The entity holding the selection authority and the legal basis for establishing the review board are unclear in this recruitment process, and the entire procedure needs to be reviewed."

Cho held a press conference that day in the briefing room at Incheon City Hall, raising questions about the legal basis for the selection process and the manner in which selection authority was exercised.

Incheon issued a call for applications on April 14, accepted submissions from May 13-14, held a review board evaluation on May 21, and announced the final selection results on May 29.

The first issue Cho raised was the legal basis for establishing the Agency Designation Review Committee, which took part in selecting the plate-issuing operators.

The recruitment process reportedly selected operators by tallying review board members' evaluation scores and ranking them from highest to lowest.

Citing Article 130, Paragraph 1 of the Local Autonomy Act, among other provisions, Cho said local government review boards and committees must be established based on laws or ordinances.

However, Cho said he examined the Motor Vehicle Management Act and its subordinate regulations, as well as Incheon's ordinances, rules, directives and regulations, but could not find any legal basis for establishing the committee.

Cho said, "The committee was not included in Incheon's list of operating committees or its rules on administrative authority delegation, and when I inquired with the city, I was told it was based on a 'mayoral directive.'"

He went on to say, "A directive cannot serve as a law or ordinance." He argued that the committee was formed based on an internal approval document — a mayoral directive — and its evaluation determined a five-year operating right. The legal legitimacy of that process must therefore be examined.

The second issue is who actually exercised the selection authority.

According to Cho, an Incheon ordinance on delegating administrative affairs assigns district mayors the authority to designate license plate-issuing agencies under Article 20 of the Motor Vehicle Management Act. The ordinance also stipulates that delegated affairs must be carried out in the name of the party to whom they are delegated.

Yet Cho said the city carried out the entire process — from the recruitment notice and review board evaluation to the announcement and notification of results — under the mayor's name.

Cho said unless a separate revocation of delegation or reclamation of authority can be confirmed, the circumstances and legal basis under which Incheon directly exercised the authority must be examined.

Particularly, Cho did not characterize the controversy simply as an issue over the selection of a specific company. He framed it as a matter of whether the administrative agency's exercise of authority and its procedures were lawful.

He said he could agree with the policy intent of integrating and consolidating the recruitment process. However, he said the city should have first amended its ordinances or adjusted the scope of delegation to establish a proper legal basis before doing so.

Questions were also raised about whether the selected companies genuinely competed against each other.

Oh Se-young, head of Car World Motors, said what matters is not whether the two selected companies are separate legal entities on paper, but whether they actually competed as independent operators.

He said family ties between the representatives, their shareholding structures, and relationships involving collateral and shared business premises should be taken into account.

However, the mere existence of family, shareholding or collateral ties does not automatically make participation in or selection through the recruitment process illegal. Still, further verification is needed on whether restrictions or disqualification standards for related parties existed at the time of recruitment and how such relationships were reviewed during the evaluation process.

Cho said this matter is not about demanding the selection or elimination of a specific company. Rather, he said, it is about confirming whether the administration acted in accordance with the authority and procedures set out by law.

He also called on Incheon to disclose the legal basis for establishing the review board, as well as the circumstances and legal grounds for directly exercising delegated authority. He further demanded that the city conduct a fresh legal review of the entire selection process and report the results to the council.