Less than a month into the Lee Jae Myung administration, several of his key policy priorities are starting to take shape.
Below is a breakdown of top policy moves based on the announcements from the presidential State Affairs Planning Committee, tasked with coming up with a blueprint for how Lee will run the country for the next five years, and the ruling Democratic Party of Korea.
Prosecution overhaul
As a candidate, Lee had pledged to take away the public prosecution service's investigative functions entirely.
Shortly after Lee took office, the Democratic Party announced sweeping bills that would abolish the prosecution service and set up new bodies instead.
Under the bills, prosecutors would completely lose their authority to investigate, including any supplementary role in police investigations. Prosecutors would only decide whether or not to indict the accused, based on the results of an investigation they did not conduct.
This raises concerns that gaps in police investigations, which would have been revisited by prosecutors under the existing system, could be left open. It would also no longer be the prosecution's job to ensure an investigation is properly executed.
Until now, prosecutors have handled white-collar crimes involving powerful people, while the police have taken charge of "street crime."
According to the rival People Power Party, the Democratic Party's push to significantly slash the prosecution's role in the criminal justice process is motivated by the criminal charges against the president as well as the allegations surrounding his close aides.
Cash handouts
The Lee administration has proposed a supplementary budget totaling some 13.2 trillion won for cash handouts to all South Koreans. Each person would get up to 520,000 won in the form of digital vouchers under the proposal. This is intended to encourage spending and stimulate the economy, according to the Democratic Party.
On top of the direct cash aid, small businesses will be eligible for the cancelation of up to 50 million won per business in outstanding and defaulted loans. The Democratic Party says debts accumulated during national crises such as COVID-19 and the "insurrection" -- referring to former President Yoon Suk Yeol's controversial martial law decree that lasted six hours -- should be the government's responsibility.
The People Power Party says these stimulus measures only promote moral hazard and raise inflation concerns. "What kind of message does it send to people who have worked hard to pay back their loans themselves?" said Rep. Park Soo-young, a People Power Party member on the parliamentary finance committee.
Shift to renewable energy
A shift in emphasis away from nuclear power as an energy source and toward renewables was one of Lee's main policy pledges.
In the supplementary budget proposal, some 120 billion won has been set aside for renewable energy such as solar and wind. Key renewable energy clusters in the country are located in the Jeolla provinces, which are traditional Democratic Party strongholds. One policy challenge is how to build a system that will transport power generated in these southern provinces to Seoul and rest of the country.
This marks a reversal of the focus on nuclear power under the previous Yoon administration.
AI race
One of the most frequent key phrases in announcements by the Lee administration has been artificial intelligence.
Last week, Lee recruited two AI experts from the country's largest tech companies -- Ha Jung-woo from portal site Naver's AI innovation team as his chief aide for AI policies, and Bae Kyung-hoon of LG's AI research as minister of science and technology.
Lee pledged to make South Korea the world's top AI power, vowing to invest some 100 trillion won into the sector.
arin@heraldcorp.com
