Uijeongbu Light Rail Leaves City With 172.1 Billion Won Burden, Civic Group Says Council Approval Was Missing

The civic group that exposed ordinance violations in Uijeongbu’s troubled light-rail accounting is now asking a more pointed question: how did the city come to shoulder a bill of about 172.1 billion won?

At a news conference on the morning of the 3rd, the Uijeongbu Light Rail Residents’ Audit Request Civic Group demanded the disclosure of whether the city council had approved the agreement and whether the city properly challenged that issue in later litigation. “The audit result is not the end, but the starting point for identifying responsibility,” the group said.

Uijeongbu signed an agreement with a private operator in 2006 to build and run the light rail system. The agreement said the city would pay the operator’s remaining investment and other costs if the project ended. The line opened in 2012, but ridership fell short of expectations and losses accumulated. The private operator went bankrupt five years later, in 2017. Uijeongbu subsequently paid about 172.1 billion won in termination-related payments and litigation costs.

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The audit result is not the end, but the starting point for identifying responsibility.

The civic group argues that the city made a commitment placing a major burden on its finances without obtaining prior council approval. It says members checked explanations from city officials and council agenda materials but found no relevant record. At the time, the law required local governments to secure advance council consent before assuming debt outside the budget.

The group also wants to know whether the city argued in the payment lawsuit that an agreement signed without council approval was legally valid. Publicly available rulings discuss whether the operator’s bankruptcy triggered payment and whether the amount was appropriate, but do not show that the approval issue was contested. The group is calling for the release of court filings and internal legal reviews, followed by an assessment from outside experts. A residents’ audit filed by 243 people also found that 200 billion won raised in 2019 to continue operations, along with money deposited with the court, had been mixed into the city’s general accounts rather than handled through a dedicated light-rail account. Gyeonggi province issued a warning for violating the ordinance, but declined to examine the 172.1 billion won because the court ruling had concluded the matter.

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Past illegality and responsibility must be clearly settled under the law, and citizens’ assets must be recovered.