'Helping Merchants Who Sold Alcohol and Cigarettes to Youth Under Deception'... Presidential Office Turns Public Proposal into Policy

Senior Official for Civil Society Presents National Proposal Policy Tasks
Relief Provided After Verifying CCTV Upon Self-Employed Objections
Youth Purchasing Alcohol and Tobacco Tracked for Guidance and Protection Measures

#Mr. A, who runs a restaurant, recently experienced an unfair situation. He was fined 6.9 million won for selling alcoholic beverages to minors. Although he had clearly checked the ID, it turned out to be a forged ID. Despite his full attention to thoroughly screening out minors, there is no way to deal with teenagers presenting forged IDs.

On the 20th, Hwang Sang-mu, Senior Secretary for Civil Society, announced a total of 15 national proposal policy tasks, including measures to prevent cases like that of self-employed person Mr. A, who was punished for mistakenly selling alcohol and cigarettes to minors at the Yongsan Presidential Office this month.

Senior Secretary Hwang said, "We will strengthen the role of guidance and protection for minors who purchase alcohol or cigarettes using forged or altered IDs," and added, "We will ensure that unfairly punished self-employed people who mistakenly sell alcohol and cigarettes to minors do not increase."

The government plans to strengthen preventive measures to stop minors from deceiving store owners into thinking they are adults to purchase alcohol and cigarettes, and to prepare related guidelines allowing the suspension of fines until a final guilty verdict is reached if an objection is filed by the seller.

A senior official from the Presidential Office said, "Many large-bodied minors come with the ID of their older brother or father to buy alcohol or cigarettes," and added, "For self-employed people unfairly treated, we plan to investigate all CCTV footage and, if it is proven that there was no intent and they were victims in good faith, we will provide full relief."

Regarding minors who purchased alcohol and cigarettes, the focus will be on protection and education rather than punishment. The official explained, "We will track and secure minors who bought alcohol and cigarettes," and "There are programs to help stop illegal purchases of alcohol and cigarettes," emphasizing guidance and protection measures.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

In addition, the Presidential Office will extend the winter energy voucher usage period for vulnerable groups from the current April 30 to May 25 starting next winter, expanding the heating cost support period by about a month.

For self-employed people, plans include ▲establishing an integrated employment insurance information guidance service scattered across institutions ▲amending laws so that farms engaged in beekeeping in forest areas, as well as farmland, are subject to agricultural management entity registration.

Youth-related policies include ▲encouraging the extension or abolition of the validity period (usually 3 months) of career certificates required during corporate hiring ▲expanding remote education content for the National Tomorrow Learning Card ▲differential interest rate support for youth enterprises ▲and improving educational finance efficiency by abolishing student guidance fees at national and public universities.

Support related to childbirth and childcare will also be expanded. The criteria will be revised so that health insurance applies from the day either spouse first receives infertility treatment, and the number of health insurance-supported in vitro fertilization infertility treatments will be increased from 18 to 20 times regardless of fresh or frozen cycles. Additionally, information on multi-child-friendly hotels will be surveyed and disclosed.

Other initiatives include ▲improving the resident registration certificate to prevent remarriage status from being revealed in remarried family member listings ▲improving traffic safety education courses for personal taxi transfers to focus on actual users ▲legislating notification and refund procedures for wrongly paid parking violation fines ▲and promoting the installation of sound-generating devices in silent electric vehicles.

During the second quarter of this year (April 1 to June 30), a total of 13,017 national proposals were submitted. The Presidential Office began the fourth policy-making process, conducted a full survey of the submitted proposals, and identified 308 tasks for policy review. The National Proposal Review Committee, based on discussions on November 29, finally selected 15 tasks to be promoted as policies.

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