Lawmaker Lee attends opening of Yeongcheon racecourse park, outlines development vision

People Power Party lawmaker Lee Man-hee, who chairs the National Assembly's Health and Welfare Committee and represents the Yeongcheon-Cheongdo constituency, attended the opening ceremony of Let's Run Park Yeongcheon in North Gyeongsang Province on Sunday.

The ceremony drew a large crowd of officials and local residents, including Yeongcheon Mayor Kim Byeong-sam, Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Food Policy Director Park Jeong-hu and Korea Racing Authority President Woo Hee-jong.

The Yeongcheon racecourse park was selected as the site for a new racetrack in 2009 but remained stalled for years due to a series of obstacles.

After entering the National Assembly in 2016, Lee served for an extended period on the agriculture and fisheries committee — which oversees the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the Korea Racing Authority — leading his party's side on the panel, and made reviving the Yeongcheon project a central priority of his legislative agenda.

His sustained efforts, coordinated with North Gyeongsang Province, bore fruit in 2018, when the parties signed a phased development agreement and the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs approved a revised project plan, putting the Yeongcheon racecourse development back on track.

Full construction began in September 2022, and four years later the park opened this month as South Korea's fourth racecourse park.

With the opening complete, Lee is pushing for the swift launch of a second-phase project — planned at 120 billion won ($89.1 million) — on the remaining 792,000-square-meter site, as well as the relocation of the Korea Racing Authority's headquarters to Yeongcheon. He is in close consultation with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, the Korea Racing Authority, North Gyeongsang Province and Yeongcheon city to advance both goals.

"What matters now is building a virtuous cycle in which the horse industry and the tourism and leisure sectors grow together around Let's Run Park Yeongcheon, generating local jobs and income," Lee said. "We will pool every resource as one team with North Gyeongsang Province and Yeongcheon city to bring the Korea Racing Authority headquarters here and establish Yeongcheon as the undisputed center of South Korea's horse industry."