Vice Minister Lee said, "We plan to directly support 1.06 million jobs in January for those who need jobs and income in winter, considering that employment conditions for the elderly and low-income groups are not good due to concerns over a prolonged COVID-19 and continued quarantine uncertainties." Earlier in December last year, seven ministries, including the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Employment, have conducted the first integrated announcement on 870,000 direct job programs and will implement the second announcement next week.
In the case of the elderly job program, more than 150,000 people have already started working this week, Vice Minister Lee said. "We have also started hiring self-support work and disabled job programs, and we plan to announce recruitment by local governments in January." He added, "In consideration of the COVID-19 situation and the speed of recruitment, we are conducting non-face-to-face interviews at the same time, and we have shortened the preliminary process by providing education non-face-to-face to prevent delays in the input of hired personnel."
The meeting also discussed price trends and supply plans for the 16 major Lunar New Year products. Vice Minister Lee said, "We plan to expand the total supply of 16 high-quality products to 204,000 tons during the Lunar New Year period this year," adding, "We will start supplying them from the 10th with three weeks, an increase of one week from last year." Measures have also been prepared to ease the consumer burden. Vice Minister Lee said, "We will focus on investing 25 billion won in agricultural and fisheries discount coupons (20-30%) during the Lunar New Year's Day, increase the usage limit from 10,000 won to 20,000 won, and apply 15-30% discount coupons in the distribution industry."
Vice Minister Lee announced that he would invest 579.7 billion won, an increase of 56% from last year (370.5 billion won), to build 310 additional types this year to build artificial intelligence learning data covered on the agenda. It plans to expand AI learning data to a total of 1,300 types by 2025. In addition, it plans to establish a roadmap and implementation system for data construction and opening in each field such as healthcare, transportation, disaster and safety, and finance. [Source] Korean policy briefing (www.Korea.kr)