By Jungdo Kim, Director, ARC Center
During the regular session of the Jeju Provincial Council last Friday, an unexpected remark was made during the provincial government questioning. The statement came in response to a question about follow-up measures for the failed bid regarding the Chuja offshore wind power project. The question centered on how the province analyzed the cause of the bidding failure and how it planned to improve the system moving forward. In his response, Governor Wi Seong-gon cited the profit-sharing requirements with residents and the power grid connection issue as the primary causes of the failure. He stated that the condition requiring over 130 billion KRW annually in profit sharing and the grid connection design to the main island of Jeju were the main obstacles, announcing plans to revise these two conditions.
However, this analysis completely contradicts the diagnosis of civil society, which has consistently pointed out the fundamental problems of the project. For the Governor’s diagnosis to be persuasive, it must first be confirmed what Korea Midland Power (KOMIPO), the sole participating bidder, actually concluded. KOMIPO participated in the first stage of the bidding by agreeing to the conditions of sharing over 130 billion KRW in profits and connecting to the Jeju main island grid. Yet, they abruptly withdrew from the bid at the stage of submitting documents for the second-phase evaluation.
Not a single bidding condition changed between the first and second stages. Furthermore, it was confirmed that an internal meeting was held at KOMIPO in November 2025 to review the economic feasibility of the Chuja offshore wind project, resulting in a specific conclusion. Although the media and civil society requested information disclosure through every possible avenue, the results have remained strictly confidential. This sparked suspicions that external factors other than economic viability might have been at play, though these questions faded over time.
Yet, Governor Wi Seong-gon concludes that the cause of the failure was the unreasonableness of the bidding terms themselves. Interestingly, another entity used this exact same logic: Equinor, the company at the center of the controversy over the Chuja offshore wind development. When Equinor opted out of the bid in protest of the conditions, civil society at the time evaluated it as a fortunate outcome that prevented the outflow of Jeju’s offshore wind profits and halted the regression of the public wind power policy. This clearly demonstrates how massive conflicts and issues had already accumulated within the Equinor-driven project.
Under circumstances where KOMIPO’s internal reasons for abandoning the project remain undisclosed, it is truly baffling that the Governor would step forward with a diagnosis echoing the exact same logic as the private developer that triggered the conflict. For civil society, which has long tracked and protested this issue, it is a statement that is simply unacceptable. In particular, the implications of this remark regarding the grand principle of public-led wind power development are deeply concerning.
Jeju’s wind is a public resource for its residents, and the obligation to manage it publicly is stipulated in the Jeju Special Act. The Wind Resource Sharing Fund was established in accordance with the spirit of this Special Act, ensuring that the entire provincial community can enjoy the revenues generated from utilizing the natural environment. The core purpose of the fund, as specified in the ordinance, is to use the profits from wind power development to promote renewable energy deployment, achieve regional energy independence, and enhance the energy welfare of the residents.
Of course, this is not to say there is no room for improvement in the fund’s management. Passive contribution payments by private power companies and public corporations, low execution rates in the energy welfare sector, and the practice of diverting the fund to cover projects that should be handled by the general account have been consistently pointed out. Reasonable alternatives have also been proposed, such as actively investing the fund in energy efficiency projects like housing improvements or fact-finding surveys on the energy poor.
While such institutional refinements may be necessary, it is highly problematic for the Governor to advance a logic that attempts to neutralize the fund itself. Governor Wi Seong-gon is proposing direct project investment through public offerings to residents instead of utilizing the fund. However, how can receiving dividends through direct investment be considered the social return of profits derived from a shared resource?
Profit distribution through investment is merely a benefit returning only to specific individuals or regions that provided the capital. Jeju’s wind is not the exclusive property of a particular village, but a resource belonging to all residents. Granting business rights—which carry the nature of a patent—to natural resources and evenly returning a portion of those profits to the entire provincial community is the backbone of this system. Shaking this foundation and neutralizing the grand premise of the public management of wind resources can only be described as a farce born from a lack of understanding of the historical context behind the sharing of Jeju’s wind resources.
What the provincial administration needs right now is not to shake the foundation of the sharing fund, but to make it function properly. It must reflect on the essence of why the Chuja offshore wind power project was engulfed in intense controversy from the start, and why civil society strongly criticized the revised public-led wind development plan and demanded its withdrawal. Why did the debate over the Public-Led Wind Power Development 2.0 Plan devolve into chaos, and why did civil society push back so fiercely? If the administration attempts to force changes to the plan based on a superficial diagnosis, it will only follow the same doomed path of facing rough seas once again.
The prerequisites for the true success of offshore wind power are its public nature and public interest. If it loses these and is swayed solely by the logic of capital and development, the path ahead will inevitably be fraught with thorns. We live in an era where even the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warns that the 1.5-degree target is in jeopardy, and only extreme efforts can hold the line at 1.8 degrees. We absolutely do not wish to see any delay in the deployment of renewable energy needed to overcome the climate crisis.
We merely express concern because we have already experienced the painful reality that projects lacking a foundation in the public interest inevitably breed social conflict and, consequently, delay the pace of the energy transition. What is needed now is the responsible leadership of the provincial administration—leadership that takes this experience to heart and boldly guides a just renewable energy transition. I sincerely hope that Jeju will advance along the proper path of wind resource publicization through deep deliberation, not hasty judgments.
This article was originally published in JejuSori on September 8, 2026.