SUWON — A Gyeonggi Provincial Council member criticized the provincial government on the 7th for inadequate briefings on its supplementary budget bill and for scaling back a project before the council had voted on it.
Choi Kyu-jin of the Democratic Party of Korea, who represents Goyang District 4 and sits on the council's Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee, raised the objections during a review of the province's second supplementary budget bill for 2026.
In a procedural statement, Choi said the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau had been inconsistent in how it briefed the committee in advance. "One division said it would explain the supplementary budget bill, so I understood I would be briefed only on that division's budget," he said. "But on the day, they brought the entire list of projects for the bureau."
"I decided it would be difficult to explain other divisions' projects in detail, so I asked for a briefing on that division's budget only, and that is in fact all I was briefed on," he said. Choi said that after another member of the budget settlement committee ran into a similar situation and raised the issue, divisions other than the one that had already reported belatedly tried to arrange briefing schedules.
Choi called this "a disregard for the standing committee that conducts the preliminary review of the budget bill." He added that it was "inappropriate to submit a budget bill without sufficient explanation and then seek to have it reviewed."
In the main questioning, he focused on how the budget for the 18th DMZ International Documentary Film Festival had been reduced and the event scaled back. In the supplementary budget bill, the province cut provincial funding for the festival to 2.447 billion won from 3.1 billion won, citing spending restructuring in response to a fiscal emergency. The reduction of 653 million won amounts to about 21.1%.
"The festival opens before the provincial council has finished its final review and vote, yet the event is already being scaled back on the basis of the proposed cut," Choi said. He said the province had "in effect treated the 2.447 billion won, which has not yet been confirmed, as a settled budget rather than the 3.1 billion won the council approved."
He also said both the provincial government and the festival organizers had ample time after the previous work report to explain the reasons for the cut and the changes to the program, but gave the council no separate briefing. "In effect, they cut the program first on the assumption that the council would approve the reduction exactly as submitted," he said, asking whether the province intended to keep submitting "blind" reduction plans without prior explanation.
The director general of the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau agreed that the advance briefing on the budget bill and the process of adjusting the program had fallen short, and said the bureau would strengthen prior communication with the provincial council to prevent a recurrence.
"Even if a budget adjustment is unavoidable, the procedure must be followed," Choi said. "Explaining the matter fully to the standing committee with jurisdiction and consulting it before scaling back a project is a basic principle between the council and the executive branch."
