People Power Party "Will Block Korean New Deal"... Government Policy Monitoring Special Committee 'First Step'

Joo Ho-young: "Criticism of 'Trash Jobs' Even Within the Ruling Coalition"
Lee Jong-bae: "Taxpayer Money Spent on Partisan Logic and Populism"
Lee Young: "Purpose and Subject of the Project Are Unclear"

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Chun-han] On the 5th, the People Power Party held the first meeting of the Special Committee for Government Policy Monitoring and targeted the Moon Jae-in administration's Korean New Deal policy.

Joo Ho-young, the floor leader, stated at the first meeting of the special committee held at the National Assembly on the same day, "The Moon Jae-in administration's failure in state affairs is too numerous to count one by one," adding, "Recently, they have announced a policy called the Korean New Deal project, which is utterly deficient and expected to fail in many aspects. We have formed this special committee to focus on monitoring and checking this part intensively."

Joo Ho-young said, "The New Deal budget for next year is allocated at over 21 trillion won. The government claims to create 360,000 new jobs, but if you look closely, these are just short-term part-time jobs to boost government performance," and pointed out, "Even within the ruling coalition, there are criticisms calling these 'trash jobs.'"

Joo Ho-young added, "During his candidacy, President Moon boasted that with the 22 trillion won budget poured into the riverbed by the Lee Myung-bak administration's Four Major Rivers Project, he could create one million jobs with an annual salary of 22 million won each. What is the reality now? Isn't it tight even to create one-time short-term jobs barely paying the minimum wage?"

Joo Ho-young said, "I hope the special committee will do its best to reveal the true nature of the Korean New Deal policy, which is nothing but a shiny but hollow apricot, and to amend or block it," adding, "We will do our utmost to present proper alternatives and criticize and check the wrong policies of this administration."

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Lee Jong-bae, chairman of the Policy Committee, said, "A large budget was allocated for the Korean New Deal in the third supplementary budget, and the project to create 100,000 digital jobs is underway. The results are very poor," adding, "The non-face-to-face digital youth jobs failed to meet the initially assigned recruitment quota, and about 43% of those hired quit within less than two months. This is the result of the government’s obsession with job statistics, leading to the proliferation of wasteful fake jobs funded by taxpayers’ money."

Lee said, "The New Deal Fund is also a typical irresponsible political move by the government, which has less than two years left but is creating a five-year government-controlled fund," adding, "The New Deal design shown by the government so far is nothing more than enforcing factional logic and investing public funds in populism."

Lee Young, the special committee chairman, said, "It has been almost six months since President Moon first mentioned the Korean New Deal, but the purpose, stakeholders, and progress of the project are all unclear," adding, "We have been requesting materials related to the New Deal for months, but each ministry just plays ping-pong, only sending replies to inquire with the Ministry of Economy and Finance."

Lee said, "The Korean New Deal revealed so far has the risk of being a 'back deal' in that it could be a repetition of the Roh Moo-hyun administration’s failed attempt under a different name," adding, "Also, the projects, which are packaged as grand future growth industries, are fake deals filled with short-term jobs and simple hardware replacements, and they are patchwork deals full of hasty measures where nearly ten times the annual budget per project must be spent within three to four months through supplementary budgets."

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