President Moon Jae-in delivers his keynote speech during the 4th meeting for the Korean New Deal at Cheong Wa Dae on July 14. (Photo on the courtesy of Cheong Wa Dae website)

President Moon Jae-in reviewed the results of the Korean New Deal and on July 14 declared the Korean New Deal 2.0, an upgrade to the original version, at an event to honor the one-year anniversary of the formulation of a comprehensive plan for the Korean New Deal.

President Moon presented the Korean New Deal 2.0 to overcome the economic crisis triggered by COVID-19, and preemptively respond to changes in the nation’s economic and social structures in the 4th Korean New Deal Strategy Meeting at Cheong Wa Dae.

The Korean New Deal is a macroeconomic policy based on an innovative engaging nation. It is comprised of four major policies: Digital New Deal, Green New Deal, Strengthening Social Safety Net and Regionally Balanced New Deal.

The Korea increse New Deal 2.0, which will  its total investment from 160 trillion won to 220 trillion won, is expanding and reorganizing the existing social safety net into the Human New Deal to strengthen education, childcare and youth policies.

At the same time, it will focus on promoting new hyper-connected businesses and laying the foundation for carbon neutrality among others as new tasks.

“Although the threats of COVID-19 are still lingering and the fourth stage of social distancing is in place in the Seoul metropolitan area, nothing can stop the Korean New Deal,” President Moon said in his keynote speech. “The Korean New Deal started in the middle of the crisis.”

“The Korean New Deal is a national development strategy not only to overcome the crisis but to continue to evolve and create hope,” President Moon said. “The international community also evaluates the Korean New Deal as a representative national development strategy to overcome the COVID-19 crisis and cope with the climate crisis.”

“Now, the Korean New Deal has become the way for the world to go together,” Moon said. “We could also confirm at the G7 summit that the national development strategy we proposed a year ago became an universal direction that the world pursues.”

“Today, we announced the Korean New Deal 2.0 along with our strong confidence that we made the right choice,” President Moon continued.

“The Korean New Deal 2.0” is a more advanced strategy to further expand and develop the Korean New Deal based on our achievements, “We will set up the Human New Deal in addition to the Digital New Deal and the Green New Deal,” Moon said.

With respect to the Korean New Deal 2.0, “The Human New Deal” has been developed based on the employment safety net and the social safety net, President Moon said.

“Through the Human New Deal, we will further strengthen the employment and social safety nets, for instance, by establishing a universal employment safety net and completely abolishing the mandatory family support obligations. At the same time, investments in people will be greatly expanded as a response to our low-carbon and digital transitions,” President Moon said.

“The government will focus on supporting young people, a key driver of social change and narrowing ever-growing gaps in education and childcare,” Moon said. “We will support 90,000 talented software engineers, as well as excellent human resources in new growth industries as system semiconductors, bio-tech and health and future cars.”

“We will speed up digital conversion and green conversion,” President Moon said. “We will maintain our digital super-gap with other nations by applying 5G and artificial intelligence to people’s everyday life and industry. We will lead the era of hyper-connection and super-intelligence by supporting new ICT convergence industries such as the metaverse, cloud computing, blockchains and the IoT.”

“Korea will lay the groundwork for carbon neutrality in the Green New Deal to ensure the implementation of carbon neutrality and greenhouse gas reduction goals,” President Moon continued.

“We will overhaul greenhouse gas measurement and assessment system and actively respond to changes in the international order including the introduction of carbon border taxes.”

“We will realize a fair transition,” President Moon said. “We will actively support companies’ business structures for digital and low-carbon economic transformations and help workers move smoothly to new jobs through job training and reemployment support.”