Seoul City Plans Cash Handouts for Young Jobseekers

The Seoul Metropolitan Government plans to provide W500,000 per month to 3,0000 young jobseekers from next year until 2020 (US$1=W1,140). The measure is part of Mayor Park Won-soon's (pictured above) efforts to come up with citizen-friendly policies.

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The city government said beneficiaries will be jobseekers aged 19 to 29 from low-income families. Some 3,000 of them will be chosen based on applications they submit detailing how they plan to contribute to society.

The successful candidates will get the money for two to six months. City officials decided to set 20 percent of the mid-range monthly salary of workers of W2.5 million as an adequate amount.

The program will cost the Seoul Metropolitan Government W9 billion a year and around W50 billion until 2020. The city government says it does not need approval from the central government since the program comes under its own regulations and a budget created to aid young people in the capital.

Out of 1.43 million people in Seoul between 19 and 29, around 500,000 are estimated to be jobseekers from low-income families, but support will go only to 0.6 percent of this group.

Critics are worried that young jobseekers who are already competing with each other for scarce jobs now have to race each other for the support money as well.

"The program is modeled on unemployment benefit in European welfare states, but this is possible only in affluent nations that charge high income tax", said Cho Joon-mo at Sungkyunkwan University. "You can't effectively generate jobs or create social safety nets in countries like Korea where regional governments are chronically short of cash".

Ahn Sang-hoon at Seoul National University said, "Seoul city is trying to avoid accusations of populism by stressing that young jobseekers have to make a contribution to be eligible, but really it just seems to be a ruse to win over young voters".

Park has repeatedly run into opposition from conservatives with his plans. Police have twice postponed his proposal to turn an old flyover above Seoul Station into a park modeled on New York's High Line, citing a lack of plans to ease traffic congestion.

Police want the city government to show authorization from the minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, but the city says that is not needed.

The city says the jerry-built 1970s flyover is not only ugly but dilapidated and pieces of concrete are already falling off, threatening cars passing underneath. That means it would have to be closed to traffic anyway.

The flyover has been given the lowest safety rating among any structures in the capital.

The city government now hopes to close the flyover at the end of November and start work chipping off the old cement cover and bolstering the foundation. City officials aim to reopen it as a park in 2017.