President Yoon Seok-yeol speaks at a cabinet meeting held at the Presidential Office in Yongsan on the 18th. yunhap news
On the 18th, President Yoon Seok-yeol mentioned countermeasures following record-breaking heavy rains and said, “We will abolish all subsidies for interest cartels and corrupt cartels, and use the funds to invest in flood recovery and damage preservation.” Criticism comes out that they are making political divisions by linking the eradication of the ‘interest cartel’ to a national disaster that has taken dozens of lives, and aiming at the critics. President Yoon held a cabinet meeting at the Presidential Office in Yongsan, Seoul on the same day and said, “The government will mobilize all available resources to promote rescue and recovery work and support for victims with a sense of speed.” We will mobilize all available government resources, including recovery personnel, disaster-related financial resources, and reserves.” Then, he said, “People’s blood tax should be actively used to wipe away the people’s tears caused by disasters.” In his closing remarks, President Yoon said, “Cut all the political subsidies of the concession cartel and corruption cartel, and invest 100% of the crop damage farmhouses and mountain collapse villages (damaged). Spokesman Lee Do-woon of the President’s office said, “Please spend enough money to wipe away people’s tears.” An official from the presidential office explained to the statement, “(President Yoon’s remarks) are intended to inject sufficient government resources into flood recovery and to reduce government subsidies for each ministry that are unnecessary for the next year’s government budget.” Another official said, “The president’s order is to reduce all unreasonable subsidies to ‘zero'” and said, “We will not organize an additional budget for debt to future generations.” Another official said, “It is not at the stage where the total amount or items of subsidies are organized under the name of the interest cartel.” It is said that President Yoon’s remarks did not have in mind the specific scale of financial resources, such as the amount of subsidy cuts. Criticism came from the opposition party as well as the ruling party that President Yoon was hitting critics such as civil society in the midst of a national disaster in the remarks that came out indiscriminately mixing the will of’cartel subsidy eradication’ and’injection of flood recovery funds’. Kim Han-kyu, a spokesman for the Democratic Party of Korea, said, “We should not use (flood damage) politically by talking about cartel interests, and we need a plan to prepare realistic financial resources.” Justice Party spokesperson Kim Ga-young also said, “It is a situation where it is not enough to correct the discipline of public office that shifts responsibility to others and to prepare for disaster response from the president himself, I am only doing it,” he criticized. Former lawmaker Seung-min Yoo criticized on Facebook, saying, “If you have shame, it doesn’t seem like you are mentioning the cartel again in this disaster.” Former CEO Lee Jun-seok also posted on Facebook, saying, “The concession cartel is a political term, and flood recovery is an urgent issue, and tying these two together is the first mistake. It is unclear how to calculate a subsidy whose amount or scope is not clear, but using it as a source of funding is the second error,” he wrote, saying, “The staff member who advised to issue such a message should be cut off immediately.” Reporter Bae Ji-hyeon [email protected] Reporter Shin Min-jeong [email protected]
2023-07-18 21:00:18
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