South Gyeongsang Province recommends Sancheong-gun for rural basic income pilot

South Gyeongsang Province announced Wednesday that it has recommended Sancheong-gun for the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs' additional round of applications for its 2027 rural basic income pilot project, selecting one county out of nine applicants in the province.

The province said it formed an evaluation committee composed primarily of outside experts, who assessed policy necessity, the appropriateness of project plans, potential for regional revitalization and linkages with related policies. Population decline indexes, whether relevant ordinances had been enacted, and the population share by town and township were also factored into the evaluation.

The province said it limited its recommendation to one county because recommending all nine would place too heavy a burden on local finances. Project costs are split evenly between the central and local governments. Expanding the program to all 10 counties in the province, including Namhae-gun, would require more than 190 billion won ($142 million) annually in local funding. The funding arrangement for Sancheong-gun's project is set to shift to a 50-25-25 split among the central government, the province and the county, respectively.

In the existing pilot area of Namhae-gun, the population grew by 1,736 — from 39,296 in September last year, before the county was selected, to 41,032 at the end of September this year. However, the province noted that the population has been declining since July, and that the growth in the number of newly registered franchise businesses — which had risen by 163 compared with before the project — has also slowed recently.

The Democratic Party of Korea and the Progressive Party pushed back in response. The Democratic Party's South Gyeongsang chapter, in a statement issued Wednesday, cited a past instance in which 328.8 billion won in resident support payments was disbursed entirely from provincial funds ahead of local elections, and questioned the basis for limiting the recommendation to a single county on fiscal grounds this time. The chapter urged the province to disclose its selection criteria and the reasoning behind its fiscal assessment, and to draw up measures for the eight counties that were not selected.

The Progressive Party's South Gyeongsang chapter also held a press conference at the provincial government building Wednesday, criticizing the province's internal screening process for blocking local governments from participating in the application. On claims that the agricultural budget had shrunk following the Namhae-gun pilot, the party rebuffed the argument, saying it misleadingly portrayed basic income as eating into the budget without accounting for overall budget growth.

Meanwhile, South Gyeongsang Province plans to petition the central government and the National Assembly to raise the national funding ratio from the current 50 percent to at least 80 percent, so that more rural areas can take part in the program. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs accepted applications through Tuesday, and will conduct document and presentation reviews from Wednesday through Nov. 16 before announcing the final selection results on Nov. 19.