Park Heong-joon fires back at Jeon Jae-soo over Pompidou, La Scala cancellations

Former Busan Mayor Park Heong-joon issued a statement Wednesday sharply criticizing Mayor Jeon Jae-soo after Jeon announced he would not proceed with plans to establish a Busan branch of the Centre Pompidou or invite La Scala to perform at the opening of the Busan Opera House. The People Power Party's Busan chapter and Nam-gu local lawmakers also joined in the criticism.

"There is no future for Busan in reversals," Park said, taking direct aim at the current mayor. He described the decision as "a political temptation to manufacture the appearance of change by scrapping the previous administration's projects and finding relevance in tearing down what has already been built."

Park said the strategy of his eighth elected-term city administration had been to build world-class cultural content that would turn Busan into a destination tourists would want to return to. "One of the core pillars of that strategy was securing the Pompidou branch and forging a partnership with La Scala," he said.

Park pushed back on the stated rationale for the cancellations, saying the site earmarked for the Pompidou branch was not a forest but already-developed vacant land. He added that the La Scala collaboration had been designed alongside conductor Chung Myung-whun to develop the opera house into a world-class performance venue. "A substantial amount of sponsorship funding had also been raised, laying the groundwork to ease the fiscal burden," he said.

Park noted that when he took office in 2021, he had not reversed policies of his predecessor Oh Geo-don — including the Dongbaekjeon local currency program — for political reasons. "I believed that scrapping something simply because a previous mayor had pursued it was not governance in the interest of citizens," he said.

The People Power Party's Busan chapter also issued a statement, criticizing Jeon for "abandoning the opportunity to connect world-class cultural assets to Busan and breaking a promise to its citizens." People Power Party city and district council members from Nam-gu called on the mayor to "reconsider the cancellation decision and publicly disclose the specific grounds and review findings behind the decision to halt the projects."

Democratic Party of Korea council member Nam Myeong-suk offered a contrasting view, welcoming the decision as "an opportunity to reflect on where and how citizens' tax money should be spent." She added that "this principle should be applied not just this time, but across all cultural and arts policies the city of Busan pursues."