Yoon vows to focus on living standards in 2024

President Yoon Suk Yeol reiterated his policy focus on Tuesday, saying that the new year should be a year to achieve a "recovery of ordinary people's livelihoods," during the first Cabinet meeting of the year he presided.

According to Yoon, measures are being undertaken to help ordinary people refinance their mortgages via mobile apps, effective Tuesday, aimed potentially at offering a new term with a lower interest rate.

In addition, a greater portion of the vulnerable will receive an increase in their welfare payments, Yoon added. For instance subsidies for four-person households with incomes of 30 percent of the median salary or less will increase to 1.83 million won from 1.62 million won monthly, while the threshold for recipients will change from 30 to 35 percent.

The first high-speed Great Train Express commuter rail network, called GTX-A, is set for a partial opening in its Suseo to Dongtan section in March. The entire GTX-A is planned to run from Paju to Dongtan by 2028.

Also, a new free after-school program, called Neulbom School, will be accessible to all students at over 6,000 elementary schools nationwide by the second half of the year, with about 2,000 schools set for implementation in the first half. The after-school program is one of the measures laid out to tackle the low birth rate.

"Beginning this year, new policies to help ordinary citizens are being implemented," Yoon said.

Among the bills approved at the Cabinet meeting is one aimed at protecting those with debt from unfair treatment by creditors, like excessive penalties for late payments, as well as debt collection without prior notice. The bill will go into effect nine months after promulgation.

Yoon's office is also working to remove late payments from the credit history of individuals or small business owners who fell victim to the COVID-19 economic fallout.

Also, a law revision of the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Child Abuse Crimes gained a Cabinet nod, so that those who committed attempted murder of a child will be given a jail sentence of at least 3 1/2 years, unlike in the past when those who committed attempted murder of a child often ended up getting a suspended sentence.

Yoon did not elaborate on whether he would carry out another batch of presidential pardons before the Lunar New Year holiday in mid-February. Yoon has pardoned over 5,200 prisoners so far.

Yoon's approval rating on Monday dropped by 1.5 percentage points to 35.7 percent compared with the previous week, in the wake of his decision to veto a special bill proposed by the opposition bloc to launch an investigation into allegations of stock manipulation by his wife, first lady Kim Keon Hee, according to a poll by Realmeter.