"950 Million Won Taxpayer Money for 20,000 Won Communication Fee Support...Lacking Justification and Practicality"

[Asia Economy Reporter Koo Chae-eun] Kim Young-sik, a member of the People Power Party (Gyeongbuk Gumi-eul), criticized the ruling party and government’s policy of providing 20,000 KRW nationwide telecommunications subsidies as a policy lacking both justification and practicality.

According to Kim Young-sik’s office on the 4th, the administrative costs required to provide 20,000 KRW telecommunications support to all citizens aged youth and above amount to 946 million KRW. Kim Young-sik stated, “In addition to the government’s administrative costs, it has been confirmed that the three mobile carriers SKT, KT, LGU+, and dozens of budget phone companies each require additional development costs ranging from several million to tens of millions of KRW to build billing systems aligned with the government’s supplementary budget proposal.”

Kim emphasized, “I will thoroughly clarify during the budget review process why the government is investing effort in this populist project that lacks both justification and practicality.”

Furthermore, Kim Young-sik analyzed, “The government uses ‘digital informatization level of vulnerable groups’ as a performance indicator for telecommunications support, but this does not at all align with the purpose of universal distribution of telecommunications subsidies. It appears that this issue arose because the government initially allocated the budget for vulnerable groups but forcibly expanded the scope to all citizens during the ruling party-government consultation process.”

Kim Young-sik stressed, “This situation, where a universal welfare budget is included in a selective welfare budget account, is unacceptable. It is only natural to withdraw this budget allocation, which ignores even the minimum principles of budget formulation in favor of party interests.”

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