The South Korean government will put aside an initial budget of over US$150,000 for a Vietnamese village development project in North Gyeongsang Province, southeastern South Korea in 2024, a South Korean lawmaker announced on Monday.

The project, which is constructing a Vietnamese village in the province’s Bonghwa County, will be funded by the central government next year, with an initial fund of 200 million won (US$150,300), the Vietnam News Agency cited parliamentarian Park Hyeong Soo as telling the media.

Accordingly, a Vietnamese-Korean historical-cultural experience center and a road leading to Baekdudaegan National Arboretum, which have been built by local authorities for the project, will be put in the list of national funding recipients.

The project to develop a Vietnamese village in Bonghwa was firstly introduced as a local project, but local authorities have been making great efforts to lobby for it to be converted and expanded into a national project, according to the lawmaker.

The inclusion of the project in the 2024 government’s budget plan will pave the way for its transformation into a national project in the near future. 

The authorities of both the province and county are working closely with the central government to amend the project’s components to match it to the national scale, and will seek more funding to make up for the budget shortfall, if any, Park said.

In the context that the 2024 budget draft of the South Korean government has the lowest increase rate in the past nearly 20 years, the national funding for the project is a very encouraging move, the parliamentarian commented.

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