Pres. Park issues national statement urging to overcome crisis

Pres. Park issues national statement urging to overcome crisis. January. 14, 2016 08:12. january@donga.com.

At the statement to the nation Wednesday, President Park Geun-hye mentioned the word "economy" 34 times, emphasizing that the Korean economy is in an emergency state. However, she also said there is a bright spot, encouraging people to have a positive mindset and turn crisis into opportunity.

President Park said, "Everybody is aware of difficult domestic and external conditions with the U.S. having hiked its interest rates and the Chinese economy being unstable," but added, "We have to believe that we can turn these adverse situations into opportunity, and we should overcome difficulty." She said U.S.` rate hike means that its economy is now on its normal path, while the current state of the Chinese economy is a "growing pain" in the process of shifting its structure towards domestic demand.

President Park stressed that exports are a way to overcome the crisis. "We signed free trade deals with many countries last year which also took effect," adding, "We need to keep creating export opportunities by linking with what we do well like the Korean Wave." The government plans to continue expanding exports through various marketing strategies by taking lessons from the nation`s failure to achieve 1 trillion dollar trade last year due to sluggish exports.

On speculation that the government`s 3.1 percent GDP growth target will be hard to achieve, she said, "I`ve been hearing positive reports that domestic demand recovery has been continuing since the latter half of last year," adding, "Many domestic and foreign institutions are forecasting Korea`s economic growth rate at the 3.0-3.2 percent range." Nevertheless, President Park said the public won`t be able to feel it even if growth is higher unless employment rate improves, adding, "I will make this year where the public actually feels our accomplishments by raising the employment rate centering on creating new jobs."

On household debt, she said, "Though the total debt size grew, quality has improved significantly," adding, "I will make effrots to increase the share of `fixed rate-installment payment` (instead of gloating rate-long-term lending)." On the difficulty of getting chonse rental (renting home on a lump sum deposit), she said, "The housing market is entering a structural turning point. Who would put house on chonse when interest rates are this low," adding, "People are begining to think of real estate in terms of living rather than owning. We will expand large scale enterprise-style house lease, public lease houses, etc."