At some point, the word ‘youth’ occupies a place in all welfare, including finance, jobs, and housing. Generations other than young people are shouting about this as discrimination and waste of taxes, and even among young people, they are divided into those who have received and those who have not, slandering each other.
The Yoon Seok-yeol administration’s ‘Special Youth Program’ seems to be putting forward new discrimination on the value of labor. The ‘Special Youth Program’ is a project in which the Credit Recovery Committee provides temporary support for one year of interest reduction and exemption and deferment of repayment under the pretext of revitalization and recovery of young people.
It includes a proposal to reduce the interest rate by 30-50% depending on the degree of debt for young people under the age of 34 and the bottom 20% of the credit score, and to defer repayment of principal for up to three years while lowering the interest rate to 3.25% for the period. In a situation where the real estate market is frozen in the aftermath of the Bank of Korea’s big step and the burden on those who are in debt due to Corona 19 is increasing, it is to reduce debt just because they are young people.
Some critics arose as to why all the people had to share the responsibility for the failure of young people to invest in the FSC’s measures. In response, the presidential office said on its official Facebook page on the 19th, “The recent rapid debt adjustment for young people announced by the Financial Services Commission is a system that extends loan maturity and partially lowers interest rates to prevent all bonds from becoming insolvent. It is not supported,” he said, trying to dispel the controversy.
However, it is already helping customers recover through debt reconciliation of existing financial companies, joint debt restructuring through the Credit Guarantee Committee, and court rehabilitation procedures. In addition, the government had similar support programs in the past, but this government raised controversy through an official document distributed directly. According to the content posted by the Financial Services Commission on the 14th, “The 20th and 30th generation who bought a house with a loan in the aftermath of the recent increase in interest rates are experiencing difficulties.” “I think this is getting worse,” he said.
If the government focused on lowering the interest rate for college students paying off college tuition or lowering interest rates on loans to the vulnerable and supporting the self-employed who suffered from COVID-19, there will be critics but supporters. However, this ‘Youth Special Program’ was not fair to young people, nor did it conform to the common sense of the people.
Even if the government’s hidden intentions contain the will to rescue those in need due to difficult circumstances, the keywords ‘stocks’, ‘virtual assets’, and ‘housing’ are used to refer to the younger generation who are working hard to pay off college tuition together with the people who are paying off debt. There is no choice but to leave a deep sense of discrimination.
It also raises questions about the value of work.