"Lee Jae-myung, Criticizing or Rather Insulting," Lim Jong-seok Joins Lee Jae-myung and Lee Nak-yeon's 'Basic Income' Dispute

Lee Jae-myung Targets Lee Nak-yeon: "Must Abandon Submissive Defeatism"
Im Jong-seok: "Leaders, Words and Attitudes Matter"

Im Jong-seok, Chairman of the South-North Economic and Cultural Cooperation Foundation Photo by Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Intern Reporter Jumi Lee] Former Presidential Chief of Staff Lim Jong-seok joined the 'basic income debate' between Lee Nak-yeon, leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, and Lee Jae-myung, Governor of Gyeonggi Province. He agreed with Lee Nak-yeon's opinion and indirectly criticized Lee Jae-myung.

On the 8th, Lim posted on Facebook, stating, "Governor Lee Jae-myung proposes to immediately start with 1 million KRW per person annually," and explained, "This requires a budget of about 52 trillion KRW, while the amount per citizen is 83,300 KRW per month."

He continued, "To provide the mid-to-long-term goal of 500,000 KRW per month proposed by Governor Lee, approximately 317 trillion KRW in budget is needed," and pointed out, "Even though 500,000 KRW per month is still ridiculously insufficient for living expenses, an enormous scale of tax increase is already necessary."

He also criticized Lee Jae-myung's backlash against Lee Nak-yeon's claims. Lim said, "Governor Lee was very angry at Leader Lee Nak-yeon's remarks. Saying 'Except for Alaska, no other place implements it, and it cannot replace existing welfare systems' is not entirely wrong," and added, "He (Leader Lee) is the leader of the Democratic Party to which we belong. The counterattack calling it a 'colonial inferiority complex' sounds more like a slander than criticism."

Previously, Leader Lee expressed a negative stance on basic income, saying, "Except for Alaska, no other place implements it," while Governor Lee retorted, "We must abandon the colonial inferiority complex that says, 'Other countries don't do it, so how dare we?'"

Lim further pointed out, "Leaders need not only philosophy and vision but sometimes words and attitude are much more important."

Lim also expressed concerns about the justification of basic income. He said, "I still cannot shake off the concern about whether the idea of basic income is fair and just in our current reality," emphasizing, "Social polarization has been continuously and sharply increasing over the past 30 years. This trend will further grow in the market going forward."

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