KoreaToday War Room in Operation for Economic Revival
By Na Jeong-ju
Staff Reporter
When Cheong Wa Dae announced early this month that it would set up an economic ``war room'' inside its underground bunker to oversee economic rescue plans, it received a lot of media attention.
Questions ranged from who set up the bunker and for what, to why the government decided to use the military facility for economic officials.
Some critics said the underground bunker is not the right place for discussions on economic plans, so Cheong Wa Dae should find a better location. However, the presidential office had some reasons to choose the bunker for the economic team.
The presidential office, renovated about two decades ago under then President Roh Tae-woo, has sought to set up new office buildings since the Roh Moo-hyun administration, but failed to push the plan through.
The Lee Myung-bak administration, too, requested a budget last year to construct new offices inside Cheong Wa Dae, but the National Assembly turned it down.
``The main reason we set up the economic war room inside the underground bunker is that there is not enough space at Cheong Wa Dae for the new office,'' Presidential spokesman Lee Dong-kwan said. ``Cheong Wa Dae has rented nearby government offices for its staff due to a shortage of offices available.''
Anti-Crisis Management
President Lee created the Emergency Economic Council in early January to map out economic rescue measures ― similar to the one run by former President Kim Dae-jung during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
The council includes senior presidential secretaries on economic affairs and state policy planning, including the minister of finance and economy, the governor of the Bank of Korea and the chairman of the Financial Services Commission.
The council has four support teams on macroeconomic policies, small-and mid-sized enterprises, finance and public sector restructuring, social safety nets and job creation. The economic war room controls these teams and reports what's happening in the market directly to Cheong Wa Dae.
The bunker was set up under former President Roh Moo-hyun to direct military and government agencies in case of a war and a natural disaster.
The bunker, operated around the clock, has computer systems that can observe the movement of North Korean military on the border and trace all airplanes within a 360-kilometer radius of the Korean Peninsula. It also has a videoconference system enabling the head of state to communicate with the top officials of the National Intelligence Agency, the military and the police.
The bunker also has a hotline connecting it to ministries and national disaster-related agencies. It can also check the operation of nuclear facilities and water quality of the Han River on real time.
After North Korea killed a South Korean tourist at Mt. Geumgang in last July, President Lee revamped the government's crisis management structure and used the bunker as the center for national crisis management.
Cheong Wa Dae boosted personnel and resources for the bunker and put it under the direction of the senior presidential secretary for foreign and security affairs.
During times of national emergency and crisis, the secretary would report directly to the President and his advisors and facilitate meetings for the National Security Council and ad hoc sessions with relevant ministries.
The bunker has developed specific risk management ``manuals" to deal with unexpected situations. Instead of broad response instructions, the manuals look at highly specific situations, such as the shooting of a South Korean tourist by the North Korean military, and create detailed, case-by-case responses, according to Cheong Wa Dae officials.
``After the tourist death, we've developed communication and cooperation channels for government officials from different ministries to work together in case emergency situations arise,'' a Cheong Wa Dae official said.
Cheong Wa Dae has named Lee Soo-won, a vice minister-level official of the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, as the head of the economic war room, which will serve as an economic control tower and devise plans to kick-start the economy and monitor the financial situation until the country rides out the ongoing crisis.
Lee is concurrently serving as the head of the macroeconomics team. The SME team is headed by Kwon Pyong-o, a senior official of the Ministry of Knowledge Economy; the finance and restructuring team by Park Young-choon, a Financial Services Commission official; and the job creation team by Lim Jong-gyu, an official of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs.