Moon administration‘s 5-year roadmap unveiled

Jul 20, 2017, 09:00 am

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President Moon Jae-in is giving a greeting before announcing his administration's five-year plan at the presidential office on Wednesday./ Source: Yonhap News

By AsiaToday reporter Choi Tae-beom

The Moon Jae-in administration unveiled Wednesday its five-year policy roadmap, which will be the outline of the major policies that will be carried out and will serve as a blueprint for policy execution.

The State Affairs Planning Advisory Committee, which served as a de-facto transition team for the Moon administration, presented a policy roadmap for Moon's five-year presidency in a report session held at Cheong Wa Dae on Wednesday.

The five-year roadmap is comprised of the following:
- national vision
- 5 major policy objectives
- 20 major strategies
- 100 major tasks
- complex and innovation projects

First, the Moon administration set its vision to make a "people's country, a just Korea." This is a spirit of the times that will be embraced for the next five years. Besides, the five policy objectives, 20 strategies and 100 major tasks of the five-year plan will serve as specific roadmap to achieve the national vision.

The five policy objectives are a) creating a government ruled by the people, b) accelerating economic democratization, c) better social safety measures, d) balanced development of the nation, and e) establishment of peace on the Korean peninsula.

The key task of the "government ruled by the people" is eradicating corruption, a key election pledge of Moon. To this end, the government plans to set up a task force for each ministry and set up an independent anti-corruption body and an investigation bureau committed to looking into corruption allegations related to high-ranking public officials.

This includes separating the investigative powers of the prosecution and police as well as retrieving illegal assets of Choi Soon-sil, the central figure of the massive corruption scandal. The government plans to prepare a bill to confiscate Choi Soon-sil's assets illegally acquired at home and abroad.

The economic plans will mainly focus on creating jobs, which is Moon's first order since taking office in May. The government plans to create 810,000 public sector jobs, introduce job-hunting subsidies, and increase state organization's quota for hiring youth from 3 percent to 5 percent.

For better social safety measures, the tasks focus on the welfare of the people, education, and safety by providing more child care support, increasing basic pensions gradually, implementing national support for dementia treatment, renovating the country's disaster response system, finalizing comprehensive plan for fine dust, reducing dependence on nuclear power and more.

To ensure balanced development of the nation, the tasks push for greater autonomy for regional and district governments by holding the second state council with 17 cities and provincial governors, adjusting national and local tax rates, and more.

For the peaceful and prosperous Korean Peninsula, the tasks include a speedy takeover of wartime operational control, raising the salaries for soldiers to 50% of the legal minimum wage, resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis through all means including dialogues and sanctions, and reestablishing North-South Korea relations through the signing of a new basic inter-Korean agreement.

Especially, the concept of a "New Korean Peninsula Economic Map" will be promoted. It is a concrete embodiment of President Moon's "New Berlin Doctrine", a plan to build joint industrial zones and traffic networks along the eastern and western coastal areas and the DMZ. This reflects the Moon administration's belief that the inter-Korean private exchanges should be restored first for the denuclearization of North Korea.

In addition to the 100 major tasks, the committee called for stepped up efforts to create quality jobs, resolve demographic cliff, support innovative startups, and decentralize for balanced development.

The committee said it would take 178 trillion won for the five-year roadmap, and decided to cover 151.5 trillion won with government fund and 26.5 trillion won with provincial transfer funds. Since many of the policies will require new laws or revisions, the government plans to enact laws by submitting 427 cases by next year.

#Moon Jae-in #5-year roadmap