Monday 17 December 2012

White Paper on Bankruptcy of S. Korean Economy during Five Years of Lee Myung Bak′s Office

Pyongyang, December 17 (KCNA) -- The National Economic Cooperation Committee released a white paper on Sunday dealing with the truth about the bankruptcy of the south Korean economy and impoverishment of people's livelihood and clarifying who is to blame for them.
According to it, for five years of its office the Lee Myung Bak conservative group has most craftily deceived the south Koreans over the economy and their livelihood.
Traitor Lee Myung Bak, styling himself "president for economy," created impression that he would revive the economy and improve the people's living standard, but the reality was quite contrary to his commitment.
No sooner had the traitor came to power than he sold off the south Korean economy to the U.S. lock, stock and barrel, betraying his true colors as a sycophant serving the U.S.
Typical of his treachery was that he pushed forward the moves for concluding the "Free Trade Agreement" with the U.S. The agreement is peppered with the extremely humiliating and unequal provisions as it has just seven provisions the U.S. is obliged to fulfill whereas it has as many as 55 provisions which oblige south Korea to carry out.
When the U.S. pressurized the Lee group to renegotiate FTA in quest of more interests, it yielded to the pressure again and signed a written agreement, causing an additional economic loss to the tune of 900 million U.S. dollars annually.
Consequently, the agricultural and fishery fields are expected to suffer damages amounting to 12 billion U.S dollars for 15 years.
Owing to the traitorous policy pursued by the Lee group the weak south Korean economy was reduced to a colonial dependent one.
The south Korean economy depends on import of energy 96. 5 percent, on import of minerals 95 pct and its foreign trade depends on other countries 113 pct. South Korea's rate of self-sufficiency in grain is 27 pct: The rate of self-sufficiency in wheat, maize and bean is just 0.5, 1 and 8.4 percent respectively.
Foreign capitals hold 30 percent of south Korean stock market. They hold more than 50 percent of stock in case of big businesses including Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motors and banks. They rake up billions of dollars under the name of stock dividends every year.
The "state" debts of south Korea increased 11.2 percent on an annual average, reaching a total of 1 850 billion dollars.
Meanwhile, south Korea's foreign debts have reached more than 419 billion dollars. Its short-term debts stand at more than 140 billion dollars or 33.8 percent of them which it has to pay back within one year. South Korean businesses' debts have reached more than 1 900 billion dollars, an increase of at least 30 percent as compared with that at the end of 2007.
Lee Myung Bak has thrown the south Koreans' living into dire destitution during his office.
There are in south Korea more than 5.7 million extremely poor and more than 2.5 million people unable to escape from poverty no matter how hard they work. As a result, more than 10 million people are eking out their scanty livelihood day by day.
Quite contrary to Lee's noisy advertisement of the solution to the problem of job, 500 000 more became unemployed in the first year of his office as compared with that of the previous year. In 2011 more than 4.6 million people were registered as jobless, an increase of 50 percent over that of 2007.
There are in south Korea 8.6 million semi-unemployed people such as temporary and daily workers who live on their meager wages earned through daily or few months' work. More than half of university graduates become jobless right after their graduation. In consequence, more than 2 million jobless young people are writhing in despair.
University registration fee has jumped up 10-20 percent every year since Lee's seizure of power, reaching 10 000 dollars per annum, the highest in the world. Therefore, there came even words "tower of human bones" meaning that the registration fee kills students. Unable to pay that fee, 60 percent of all south Korean students stay out of school temporarily, toil and moil after school and offer themselves as guinea pigs. Some of them choose suicides.
South Koreans are suffering from extremely high housing rent and housing problem as lease prices rose more than 36 percent over those in 2007 due to the Lee's policy of real estate speculation.
Consequently, more than 7 million homeless households or 45 percent of the population have their existence seriously threatened. More than one million people have to move to areas where house rent is relatively low. Those people who are unable to pay house rent live in a small room of 0.5-1 phyong, shanties, tents, containers and huts and even in caves. They number as many as 680 000 families.
Over the past 5 years tax has increased 86 percent to the maximum. At present south Koreans have to pay 30 or 40 percent of their annual income as taxes under various names.
The south Korean households are now saddled with debts amounting to 900 billion dollars, an increase of 40 percent over those five years back. This means every family has to pay debt amounting to 50 000 dollars.
Despite his loud advertisement of price control, prices of major daily necessities jumped 23 percent on an average, 80 percent to the maximum during Lee's office. In consequence, there came words "killing prices" and "MB prices".
Heard from among south Koreans are such words as "generation giving up three things," that is love, marriage and childbirth due to their hard living. One of three persons in their thirties refuses to get married.
South Korea is called "paradise of suicide" as it tops the world list of suicide. A man or woman chooses suicide in every 34 minutes. The number of suicides reached more than 15 500 every year.
During his office Lee has pursued the "pro-plutocrats and pro-rich policy" of granting privileges and special favors only to them, widening the gap between the rich and the poor.
According to even the curtailed data published by the south Korean authorities, the gap between earnings of the extremely rich and poor has increased 14.5 times from 5.7 times a decade back. The richest who account for just one percent of the population hold 16.6 percent of the overall private incomes in south Korea.
Since Lee's seizure of power, the wage gap between part-time workers and the regular workers has doubled. The income gap between an ordinary worker and an officer of medium standing of a company rose 600 times and that between the worker and the chairman of a big business 3 000 times.
Over the past 5 years the private properties of families of chairpersons of the 10 giant companies of south Korea reached tens of billions of dollars.
Property gap is also widening.
10 percent of those who are rich in property ownership hold over 53 percent of all properties whereas half of the poor with low earnings hold just one percent of them. In case of fixed property, 5 percent of the rich hold 64.8 percent of all the properties.
The same can be said of the gap between enterprises.
Over the last 5 years the total value of properties and sales of the 30 giant companies and their affiliated ones in south Korea has doubled and increased 1.6 times whereas small and medium enterprises which account for 99 percent of all businesses and 87 percent of employment have gone bankrupt one after another owing to the arbitrary practices of the giant ones backed by the authorities.
The data published by the Central Council of Small and Medium Enterprises of south Korea showed that the net profits of the plutocrats have increased annually whereas the performance of small and medium enterprises has steadily worsened and 16 percent of them are on the verge of bankruptcy.
Due to the conservative group's policy of neglecting small and medium enterprises, 44.3 percent of the self-supporting businessmen were unable to earn even the lowest cost of living, 16.3 percent were left without any earnings last year and 7 of 10 self-supporting businessmen are compelled to close their stalls. -0-

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