Jecheon city to make up for poor festival accounting with taxpayer money

[SCREEN CAPTURE]

The city of Jecheon in North Chungcheong is planning to cover the huge financial losses due to poor accounting at the Jecheon International Music & Film Festival with taxpayer money, according to local reports.

The city of Jecheon will spend 522 million won ($398,000) in reserve funds to compensate for losses incurred during the 18th Jecheon International Music & Film Festival last August, according to the city government on Thursday.

The staff of the film festival secretariat was underpaid 57 million won, and 465 million won worth of unpaid business expenses from last year still remain.

“We decided to spend the reserve funds first to relieve damages to private businesses from the unpaid bills and expenses,” said a Jecheon city government official.

The city government dismissed executive director Cho Seong-woo and secretariat chief Jang Ji-hoon in December last year to take responsibility for the poor management of the film festival.

The city of Jecheon will begin research to re-establish the overall direction of the operation of the festival in May. In the worst case scenario, the film festival may be abolished, but the city government will focus on finding an effective way to continue the festival, according to local reports.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]