SUWON — A petition calling for Gyeonggi Province Governor Choo Mi-ae to resign passed 10,000 signatures four days after it was posted. The petitioner accused Choo of taking an overly pessimistic view of the province's finances and pushing through excessive budget cuts, while the province countered that the claims distort the facts and that it has almost no additional fiscal capacity to draw on.
According to the Gyeonggi Province petition website, the petition titled "We petition for the resignation of Governor Choo Mi-ae" had drawn 16,531 signatures as of 8:30 p.m. on the 14th. Posted on the 11th of this month, the petition surpassed on the 14th the 10,000-signature threshold that requires an official response from the province. Choo must now respond to the petition within 30 days.
The petitioner argued that Choo made an arbitrary assessment of the province's fiscal condition and imposed excessive austerity. "According to the Democratic Party's fiscal soundness task force, a comprehensive review of various indicators and the fiscal structure found that Gyeonggi Province's finances cannot be declared an immediate crisis," the petitioner said. "Even so, Governor Choo Mi-ae pushed through a fiscal emergency declaration based solely on subjective judgment, saying 'at this rate we go bankrupt.'"
The petition also took issue with the province's 546.5 billion won ($394 million) in spending cuts made while drawing up a supplementary budget. It criticized as inconsistent the decision to sign a lease on an apartment with a deposit of more than 1.2 billion won as the governor's official residence while trimming budgets for programs including postpartum care subsidies. "After declaring a fiscal emergency and cutting even civil servants' incentives by more than half, the governor signed a lease on a roughly 1,670-square-foot (155-square-meter) apartment with a deposit of more than 1.2 billion won for use as an official residence occupied by one person," the petitioner said, calling for Choo to step down.
Choo declared a fiscal emergency on the 5th of last month. The province says its fiscal room narrowed sharply after it issued 943 billion won in local bonds last year and pulled 558.8 billion won from various funds into its general account and other accounts.
The province rejected the petitioner's claims as a distortion of the facts. "The essential livelihood budget for Gyeonggi Province for 2026, drawn up last year, reflected only nine months of spending, and with various funds and internal resources already largely drawn down, there is almost no additional fiscal capacity left," provincial spokesperson Hong Eun-kwang said. "We express deep regret at the distortion of facts, as if the ninth elected provincial administration deliberately cut a livelihood budget that had been properly drawn up." The province did not issue a separate statement on the controversy over the official residence.
