liberal presidential candidate Chung Dong-young's election pledges

1. Environment policy called “New Millennium Mountain and river policy”

-> No More Wetland Destruction!
-> Make greener environment
-> Initiating tree planting campaign in North Korea

2. Space development

-> Advancing Korea the 7th largest country in the field of space development
-> making Korea the hub for mid-sized airplanes
-> doing moon exploration on our own

3. Opening a new era of '40m middle class people'

-> the core of creating a middle class society is mediocrity
-> when working hard enough, you can become middle class within 10 years
-> making a society where mid-sized company can do business
-> creating more than 100,000 jobs every year
-> equal opportunity and strengthening competitiveness
-> enhancing public education and ensuring life-long education
-> nurturing “information-innovation” mid-sized companies
-> nurturing a new industry as an economic growth engine
-> better social welfare ( policies put priority on people without their own house)
-> stronger social responsibility for patients with chronic and hereditary illnesses

4. Making the economy that centers around mid-sized companies

-> review 5,000 existing policies that is supposed to help the business of mid-sized companies and introducing a new set of comprehensive and innovative policies
-> renovate current workforce supplying chain : changing the current high school designed to nurture industrial workforce into “Information Industry Special high school” in order to effectively supplying more special workforce
-> offer dramatic incentives for talents who graduate from such special-purposed high school and work in mid-sized companies, such as replacing working there with the mandatory military service
-> put great emphasis on industrial workers and provide them with various job as well as school education opportunities
-> These measures will gradually solve ‘depolarization(양극화)’problems
-> offering mid-sized companies various incentives for tax, marketing, and finances
-> Technology should be the main factor when loans are given to such companies
-> for that matter, a government agency designed to evaluate mid-sized companies’ technology and competitiveness should be established
- the current government agencies related to the support for those companies should be run by private hands in order to ensure effectiveness and autonomy
-> it is necessary to reduce inheritance taxes of mid-sized companies which has been operating more than 10 years
-> give more power to provincial governments in encouraging local companies

5. “119 Financial Program for Ordinary People” aimed at restore middle class

-> the program is basically to help financially struggling ordinary people get back on their feet again.
-> stringent management of non-registered private loan providers
-> easy and speedy process for people who filed a personal bankruptcy to ensure they quickly go about their everyday life
-> set up a financial institution tailored for poor people to help them take out low-interest loans and give them financial advice
-> it is necessary to reduce oil tax by 20 per cent and distribution channel for oil should be improved for reasonable and stable oil prices
-> reduce mobile phone charges and general medicine prices

6. Inter-Korean policy

è three pledges regarding inter-Korean relations
è 1. absolute settlement of NK nukes
è 2. signing a peace accord and establishing a peace regime
è 3. entering ‘a united nation’

Five businesses regarding inter-Korean relations

: ‘peace and economic special zone’ connecting Seoul, Incheon, and Kaesung
: connecting railroad between Seoul and Pyongyang and eventually to Paris
: Northeast Asia Energy network via North Korea
: West Sea as a ‘peace sea’
: DMZ as a ‘peace zone’

Kaesung is the future

Kaesung is ‘a plant making peace, a melting furnace of peacemaking and unification, and an exit for future of the Korean peninsula.” The first stage of development has been a success, so the next stages should be swiftly implemented

The next government should focus on the completion of “9.19 joint declaration” and North Korea’s nuclear problems can be solved not by ‘pre-abandonment’ of nukes but by a comprehensive approach to the problem.

7. Job is key revive middle class

-> nurturing innovative mid and small ized companies in order to cut a vicious cycle of ‘jobless growth’
-> more focus on information industry and domestic consumption
-> “Korean Peninsula U-Turn project” via strengthening inter-Korean economic cooperation (which means he will come up with economic policies aimed at turning companies which outsource works to countries like China and Vietnam back to Korea to do more business here, thus creating more jobs)
-> coming up with job long-term policies with emphasis on the young, the elderly, female, and irregular workers
-> developing high-value adding, labor-intensive space industry
-> building more ‘kaesung-type of industrial complexes’ for job creation
-> introducing a tax policy that exempts massive job creating companies part of corporate taxes
-> dispatching ‘silver police(the elderly who work at school as janitor or gatekeeper)’ to 10,000 elementary/middle/high schools, thus creating 40,000 job for old people
-> extending retirement age to 70 by 2020
-> giving tax incentives to companies which introduce a ‘salary peak’ system
-> dispatching 16,000 counselors to local towns to give mothers childcare advice and help them bring up children
-> setting up after-school programs in 6,300 elementary schools which will make additional jobs

-> providing incentives to companies which turn irregular workers to regular ones

8. Education

-> Free high school education and subsidizing all school meals by 2009

Goals for ‘lively students and active schools’
1. the establishment of ‘an educational committee for national future strategy’ and conclusion of a grand social education agreement
2. nurturing universities that rank within the top five in 20 fields
3. extending tuition loans without interests
4. free child up-bringing and education (free education from 0-18 years old)
5. increasing the number of teachers and professors by 5,000
6. opening ‘all-day schools’ and ‘all-day library’ in 5,658 elementary schools
7. increasing opportunities to learn foreign languages

9. “Culturally strong Korea”

-> increasing workforce in the cultural industry to 980,000 in 2012 from 460,000 in 2005
-> increasing cultural exports to $7.8bn from $1.2bn during the above period
-> emphasizing the strategic importance of a cultural industry and making it as a new national growth driver
-> minimizing ‘Culture Divide’ between regions or wealth
-> creating 1,000 ‘culture and art centers’ nationwide

‘Creative Korea 7 Projects’

1. increasing workforce in the cultural industry to 980,000 in 2012 from 460,000 in 2005
2. establishing a foundation to export local culture
3. creating ‘a cultural contents development funds’ worth W500bn
4. establishing Global Contents Agency that will support cultural contents exporting
5. training professionals in the industry through university support system
6. increasing more opportunity for those companies to work at Kaesung Industrial complex
7. creating 1,000 ‘culture and art centers’ nationwide