Choo Kyung-ho, the nominee for finance minister and deputy minister for economic affairs, called Sunday for an extra budget bill to support people hit by the pandemic, vowing efforts to take the task of making people’s lives better as his No. 1 priority as minister.
Choo made the remarks soon after President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol announced his nomination, promising a careful deliberation on the extra budget so as to not aggravate inflation concerns.
“We need the extra budget. We can’t stop it because of the inflation,” Choo told reporters. “I will deliberate on how we can achieve the objective of and draw an outcome from the extra budget while easing the concerns (about the inflation),” Choo said.
“The top priorities for the new government are to stabilize the price of living for ordinary people and their livelihoods,” he added.
Yoon has promised to use some 50 trillion won (US$41 billion) to compensate small merchants for their losses caused by tighter virus restrictions, but there have been concerns the potential creation of another extra budget is likely to stimulate inflation.
South Korea’s consumer prices grew more than 4 percent for the first time in more than 10 years last month amid soaring energy prices sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Choo, a two-term lawmaker and ex-vice finance minister, had widely been speculated for the job as he’s considered to be a candidate with both professional expertise and experience in politics.
Choo passed the civil service exam in 1981 and spent more than 30 years of his career as a public official in the fields of real economy and financial policy.
He worked as a senior economist at the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development from 1999-2002, before serving as a counselor at the South Korean mission to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) from 2006-2009.
Choo returned to the Financial Services Commission, the top financial regulatory body, as head of the key financial policy department.
In 2010, Choo was appointed as a presidential secretary for economic and financial affairs by President Lee Myung-bak.
In 2013, Choo was named the first vice finance minister and promoted to the chief of the government policy coordination office under the Prime Minister’s Office in 2014 during the Park Geun-hye government.
Choo is known to have played a major role in devising Park’s key “three-year economic plan.”
Choo entered politics as a member of the conservative Saenuri Party, now the People Power Party, with his win in the 2016 parliamentary election.
Choo won his second term as a lawmaker in the 2020 general elections and has served as a deputy floor leader of the PPP since last year.
He has been leading the planning and coordination subcommittee on economic issues under Yoon’s presidential transition committee since the March election.
Choo was born in Daegu, a conservative stronghold in the country’s southeast, in 1960, and graduated from Korea University in Seoul with a business degree. He earned his master’s degree in economics from the University of Oregon in the United States in 1993.
Source: Yonhap News Agency