Child Subsidies

[Anchor Lead]

Starting next year, Korea's ruling and opposition parties have agreed to provide child subsidies to all households with children younger than nine years old, regardless of income, raising the age threshold from the present six years old.

[Pkg]

Presently, only households outside of the country's top-10 percent income bracket are eligible for child subsidies of 100,000 won a month. But starting in January, the subsidies will be provided to all households with children younger than six years old. From September of next year, households with children younger than nine will also be eligible for the state subsidies. The National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee has decided to increase the state budget earmarked for child subsidies by over 630 billion won. But the issue of securing the funds remains. If funding is to be raised *after the 2019 state budget is submitted to the National Assembly, funding for other sectors will need to be cut accordingly. Reality is, next year's budget - beyond welfare spending - is already over-earmarked by trillions of won. But the National Assembly's Special Committee on Budget and Accounts has only been able to shave some 500 billion won over four days of deliberations. The committee, which had been closed for three days, was barely normalized after the government agreed to submit revised policies on tax revenues such as a decrease in oil taxes before the committee session ends.

[Soundbite] Rep. Cho Jung-shik(National Assembly Special Committee on Budget and Accounts, Democratic Party) : "We will discuss all the issues that had been mentioned at the committee session."

The ruling and opposition parties plan to process the relevant bills by December 2, the legal deadline. But with only three days left, concerns are rising over possible loopholes in budget deliberations and a failure to meet the deadline.