President says safety should be priority in budget allocation

President Park Geun-hye ordered on Thursday to “allocate a budget for changing the national safety framework and provide financial and human support by priority.” Through the comment, the president makes it clear that she will handle the safety issues as top national priority after the Sewol ferry disaster.

At a meeting on national fiscal strategies held at the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae where the direction of Korea’s fiscal policies for the next five years is discussed prior to allocating budgets for the next year, the president directed each ministry to “thoroughly review its budget and work related to safety.”

President Park stressed that “disaster prevention rather than disaster response and restoration should be at the center when prioritizing budget allocations” and “investments should be made into not just the hardware, such as facilities, but also the software, such as nurturing experts, developing manuals and providing training programs.” She suggested maintaining fiscal soundness, prohibiting pork-barreling budget allocations and maintaining on-going economic recovery as principles of national fiscal management.

“Given the soaring welfare spending due to population aging and the possibility of radical change in North Korea, (we) should pay special attention to maintaining fiscal soundness from now on,” said the president. She also stressed the effectiveness of budget spending by saying, “Even if the overall budget scale is large, dividing it into pieces can diminish the effectiveness felt on the field… Ministries should not lower the effects of budget spending by allocating pork-barreling budgets (tearing budgets into pieces among ministries).”