President Moon Jae-in on Tuesday is to sit with parliamentary committee chairmen, including the budget committee chief, seeking for their cooperation in passing the supplementary budget bill aiming at creating new jobs in the public sector, according to Cheong Wa Dae.

Skepticism, however, lingers on the effectiveness of the meeting as the conservative main opposition Liberty Korea Party vowed to boycott the occasion, pressing the president first to call off the nomination of some disputed Cabinet members.


“The president will lunch with the chairmen and party representatives of key parliamentary committees, including the Special Committee on Budget and Accounts chief Rep. Baek Jae-hyun," said a Cheong Wa Dae official.

The luncheon, coming in the wake of Moon’s parliamentary speech on the previous day, is expected to pivot on the issue of the pending fiscal plan to draw up an extra budget of 11.2 trillion won ($9.95 billion) in the later half of the year.

”There may be a major economic crisis, should we leave the current unemployment problem unattended,“ the president said in his administration address at the parliament.

But the main opposition party rejected the president‘s call, claiming that the current economic situations did not fully meet the prerequisites of an extra budget.

”Our party decided not to attend (the presidential luncheon tomorrow),“ said Rep. Lee Cheol-woo of the Liberty Korea Party, chairman of the parliamentary Intelligence Committee, on Monday.

The hard-line conservative has also been against the president’s appointment of three key Cabinet members, including Foreign Minister nominee Kang Kyung-wha whose role is deemed crucial in the upcoming Korea-US summit.

By Bae Hyun-jung (tellme@heraldcorp.com)