» Four residents of South Chungcheong Province announce their hunger strike in front of the Yeongi County Office Building to protest the Lee administration’s plan to amend or renege on the Sejong City Development Plan, Nov. 9.

Residents and civic organizations, who are urging the South Korean government to implement the original Sejong City Development Plan, plan to launch a boycott campaign against conservative newspapers that are endorsing the plan’s revision at a rally in Seoul.

In addition, members of the former Roh Moo-hyun government are saying they intend to join the campaign and will be traveling to Yeongi County, the designated location for Sejong City, or the second administrative city, on Nov.17. Members of the former government set the balanced national development policy that included the special law for the development Sejong City.

A Yeongi County committee of local residents that has been created in an effort to save the original plan will be holding a rally Tuesday. Representatives of civic organizations and political parties of Chungcheong Province are expected to attend. Around 1000 residents of Yeongi County are prepared to cut their hair at the rally and plan to turn it in together with their ID cards to the government in a symbol of their determination to defend the administrative city plan.

A representative from the Chungcheong Region Emergency Committee Against Changes to the Administrative City Plan says, “We are determined to boycott the press that makes it their business to distort the news and justify the nullification of the second administrative city plan.”

The Chosun Ilbo, Chung-Ang Ilbo, Dong-a Ilbo, Maeil Business Newspaper, Hanguk Economic Daily, and Munhwa Ilbo are on the boycott list.

Meanwhile, it has been reported members of the former administration who drove the plan for the administrative city will be joining the fight, including former Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan and former Prime Minister Han Myung-sook, former Chief of Staff Moon Jae-in, former Minister for Construction and Transportation Choo Byung-jik, former Minister of Construction and Transportation Lee Yong-Sup, and Choi Byung-sun and Suh Ui-Taek, former chairs of the Committee to Save the Administrative City. They will be holding an emergency meeting at the Yongi County Office in order to discuss strategies for saving the second administrative city.

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