President Lee "The current situation is a 'growth bottleneck'... for now we must focus on recovering growth"

President Yoon Jae-moon stated on the 2nd that it is now necessary to prioritize growth recovery, emphasizing the need to focus on the "growth bullet train" established by the previous administration. He shared this stance on X, via the online platform formerly known as Twitter, by sharing a commentary from the newspaper Hankyoreh titled "A 820-billion won growth-centered super budget, more necessary to mitigate polarization."

The article highlighted that the government's next year's budget would target future growth engines, land balance development, and policies for the younger generation, while the response to polarization caused by the spread of artificial intelligence (AI) and widening of asset gaps was insufficient. Specifically, the budget for industrial and small and medium-sized enterprises and energy sectors increased by 29.7%, while the budget increases for health, welfare, and employment only amounted to 9.3%.

President Yoon stressed that "continuous growth cannot be recovered if we fall into zero growth or even negative growth; polarization will only intensify and social welfare cuts could follow." He added, "Growth welfare expansion is not possible, but growth and welfare cannot be pursued simultaneously; we must necessarily focus on growth for now."

The president also mentioned that he is "doing his best to expand social welfare," acknowledging that there are criticisms of excessive social welfare spending. He reiterated during a previous session of the National Security Council that "increased future resources are needed to expand the economic pie and improve industrial capabilities, which will then expand fiscal resources through productive cyclical budgeting."

The head of the presidential budget office, Lee Duk-hyun, commented on the controversy in a radio interview with CBS's news show "Park Seong-tae's News Show," describing the government's upcoming budget as "providing a financial extension for the nation's life," emphasizing that "expanding and improving the growth potential is crucial, and the upcoming year is a very important timing for that, so we have allocated the budget accordingly."