“Helping Young People Pursue Their Dreams Without Worrying About Costs… Ensuring They Don’t Give Up on Marriage”
Kim Moon-soo, the presidential candidate from the People Power Party, was seen delivering a speech at a meeting organized by the Korea Senior Citizens Association in Seoul’s Jung-gu, at the Buyeong Taepyeong Building.
On the 19th, the People Power Party announced its promises for the youth, addressing issues like easing the burden of housing and marriage costs and establishing a fair hiring culture. On this day, which coincides with Coming of Age Day, the party’s policy leadership team introduced election pledges targeting young people, stating their commitment to expanding opportunities for youth to fully realize their dreams and to allow them to feel fulfillment and rewards while working, ensuring they won’t have to forgo marriage due to financial concerns.
The team promised to reintroduce military service bonus points and to implement a career certification system that allows skills acquired during military service to be recognized by civilian employers through official documentation.
Additionally, to prevent young people from being unable to marry due to money worries, the party plans to expand public wedding venues to reduce reservation costs and to introduce standard contracts in the wedding industry (covering photo studios, wedding dress bookings, bride makeup) to reduce uncertain “dark costs.”
They also outlined a plan to provide housing assistance for newlywed young couples, supplying 100,000 housing units annually that offer nine years of support—three years upon marriage, and an additional three years for the first and second children each.
To alleviate housing costs for young people, the party suggested designating over 10% of public housing for single-person households and creating “half-price rent” areas near university districts by declaring these as Korean-style ‘white zones’ (deregulated areas). They propose supporting rent and security deposits for young single-person households, significantly increasing the monthly rental tax credit rate for young people and newlyweds, and making “dark management fees” for office-tels more transparent.
For university students, they aim to improve the graduation postponement fee system and gradually expand housing stability scholarships. They proposed setting up youth dormitories utilizing public unused lands and decommissioned school properties near the GTX (Great Train Express) stations.
The party also discussed launching a nationwide public transit card (K-One Pass) usable across the country for 60,000 won, offering it for 50,000 won monthly for those in their teens and twenties.
In terms of workplace culture, they pledged to relax legal requirements and promote flexible work schedules for high-income professional workers by exempting them from the 52-hour workweek. They plan to alleviate the wage gap between large and small enterprises by increasing the number of beneficiaries through incentives, savings account adjustments, and other measures for small business employees.
They also plan to extend stock options and restricted stock units (RSUs) currently available to venture firms to general small businesses and provide urban housing rental vouchers to young small business employees.
For elderly workers who reach retirement age, they suggested re-employment after adjusting their wages to create more job opportunities without reducing jobs for young people.
They aim to legislate a fair hiring law to eradicate unfair practices in recruitment by fully revising and supplementing the current hiring procedure law. Measures to guarantee job seekers’ rights, such as the right to request notification of rejection reasons, were also proposed.
Lastly, the party’s policy leadership presented a blueprint of developing a “social mobility index” to measure how much one’s economic background at the start influences their entire life, with the aim to address and respond to the structural difficulties faced by youths in education and the labor market.