Court rules on rail project

[Anchor]

Citizens of Yongin City, Gyeonggi Province, who filed a lawsuit claiming that a large amount of tax was wasted on the light rail project, have won at the Supreme Court as well.

The Supreme Court ruled that the then mayor of Yongin, who was the policy maker, and the demand forecasting agency must jointly compensate over 20 billion won.

A precedent has been established that if taxes are wasted on an unviable project, those responsible must be held accountable.

Reporter Kim Tae-hoon reports.

[Report]

The Yongin light rail project, which began in 1996 with the aim of revitalizing tourism and implementing an innovative public transportation model.

It was completed in 2010, but was left in a state of suspended operation for a while.

This was due to legal disputes with the project’s developer, and the city of Yongin only managed to open the light rail in 2013 after paying over 800 billion won.

However, even that saw only about 5% of the predicted demand, leading to astronomical deficits.

In response, the citizens of Yongin filed a resident lawsuit claiming that taxes were wasted on a flawed project, seeking 1 trillion won in damages from former and current mayors of Yongin.

After 12 years of litigation, the Supreme Court recognized the responsibility of then-mayor Lee Jeong-moon and the Korea Transport Institute, and confirmed that they must jointly compensate over 21.4 billion won.

This is the first ruling in which residents have won against a local government regarding a private investment project since the introduction of the resident lawsuit system in 2005.

[Ahn Hong-taek/Co-representative of Yongin Light Rail Citizens’ Lawsuit Group: "I'm truly grateful that the residents’ 13 years of effort were not in vain... I hope this sets an important precedent that prevents local governments from carelessly inflating projections and misallocating budgets."]

However, the Supreme Court determined that it should be cautious in holding individual researchers responsible for the services conducted.

It also instructed to re-examine whether there were clear illegal acts in their actions and sent the case back to the Seoul High Court.

This is KBS News, Kim Tae-hoon.