韩国拟将金融监管机构迁往世宗，国策银行地方迁移争议升温

A plan for the second round of relocating central government agencies out of Seoul, including the Financial Services Commission and the Personal Information Protection Commission, will go before the Cabinet on the 25th, sources said. Officials say the Lee Jae-myung administration's push is strong enough that some central agencies could move as early as within this year or around year-end.
A government official said on the 23rd that "the agenda for relocating administrative bodies, including the FSC, is set to be tabled at the Cabinet meeting on the 25th," adding that "the specific details have not been passed down."
The Ministry of the Interior and Safety is leading the relocation of government agencies, while the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport is handling public institutions. Among administrative bodies, the FSC, the Personal Information Protection Commission and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family have been named as relocation candidates. A senior government official said the Presidential Office's stance is firm enough that the FSC and others will have no choice but to move to Sejong, adding that public institutions could be announced on a different timeline from government ministries and that the details could still change depending on public opinion.
As the relocation plan gains momentum, the ministries' unease is deepening. For the FSC, relocation is better than being split into a finance ministry and a separate financial supervisory commission, but there are concerns that regulatory expertise and crisis response could weaken. In fact, 91.6% of financial firms' headquarters and 72.7% of listed companies' headquarters are concentrated in the greater Seoul area. Leaving Seoul under these conditions could make smooth communication with the market more difficult.
Public institutions are pushing back hard. The labor union of the Financial Supervisory Service will hold a news conference in front of the Presidential Office on the 24th, jointly with the union of the Korea Deposit Insurance Corporation, opposing the relocation. The unions stressed that relocation would cause the financial safety net to collapse and raise concerns about wider harm to financial consumers, and that they would block the move.
That is not all. The unions of the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, the Korea Teachers' Credit Union and the Korea Inclusive Finance Agency also plan to hold a news conference in front of the Presidential Office on the 25th, urging a halt to the relocation attempt.
Among them, the Korea Inclusive Finance Agency union, in an opinion paper on the second-round public institution relocation submitted earlier to the Land Ministry, offered a counterproposal to keep the agency's headquarters in Seoul while expanding its 50 integrated inclusive-finance support centers nationwide. The union's position is that the effect on the agency's functions and public services should be analyzed before deciding what to relocate and where. The union also argues that the funding needed for relocation must be examined closely.
The Korea Financial Industry Union is also preparing a strike option. The union plans to launch a general strike on the 4th of next month if the government pushes ahead with announcing the relocation of state-run banks such as the Korea Development Bank, the Industrial Bank of Korea and the Export-Import Bank of Korea. In a vote on industrial action held on the 12th, 96.1% of members voted in favor. The union criticized the plan, saying the government is trying to relocate institutions unilaterally without weighing that each has a different founding purpose, legal character, funding and business function, and that this approach is a rushed relocation that undermines the institutions' functions and public role rather than balanced national development.