Seoul Pays 1 Million Won to 883 Recipients of 'COVID-19 Rapid Youth Allowance'

[Asia Economy Reporter Jo In-kyung] On the 13th, the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced that it had early disbursed the 'Rapid Youth Allowance' to 892 young people who lost short-term jobs such as part-time work due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic.

The Rapid Youth Allowance is a program that supports 500,000 KRW per person per month for two months (March and April) to those who were laid off or involuntarily resigned due to a decrease in customers, business deterioration, or closure of workplaces since January 20, when the first COVID-19 case was confirmed this year.

As a result of the application recruitment from the 9th to the 17th of last month, a total of 1,155 people applied. Through three rounds of document verification and qualitative evaluation by external judges, the allowance for March was paid to 892 people: 70 in the first round, 267 in the second, and 555 in the third. Among the 263 who were not selected, most had either participated in other support programs simultaneously, failed to submit related documents, exceeded income limits, or failed the qualitative evaluation.

Among them, excluding 9 people who found jobs midway or participated in overlapping programs, 883 people also received the Rapid Youth Allowance for April. The city explained that it promptly executed a budget of 887.5 million KRW for this project.

Among the reasons for resignation of the 892 recipients of the Rapid Youth Allowance, the most common was 'decrease in workplace income,' accounting for 55.3% (493 people) of the total. This was followed by 'event cancellations' at 26.5% (236 people) and 'business suspension' at 18.3% (163 people). This indicates that due to COVID-19, workplace income sharply declined, leading to an increase in event and performance cancellations or business closures.

Meanwhile, separate from the Rapid Youth Allowance application, the Seoul Metropolitan Government recruited the first round of participants for the '2020 Seoul Youth Allowance' main project from the 30th of last month to the 6th of this month, with a total of 26,779 applicants.

Compared to last year's first recruitment, where 13,944 people applied over 15 days, this is a 3.6-fold increase. This project, with a budget of 90 billion KRW this year, supports unemployed youth aged 19 to 34 residing in Seoul who graduated more than two years ago and whose income is below 150% of the median income, by providing 500,000 KRW per month for up to six months for job seeking and social participation activities.

Kim Young-kyung, head of the Seoul Youth Bureau, emphasized, "We will ensure the smooth execution of support for 30,000 youth this year so that it can effectively help the livelihoods of workplaces and the lives of young people, and we will also strengthen communication with the field."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.