By Na Jeong-ju
Staff Reporter
Cheong Wa Dae named Lee Soo-won, a vice minister-level official of the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, Wednesday, as the head of an economic emergency ``war room'' that has been installed inside the underground bunker at the presidential office.
The war room 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.
``The war room will report what's happening in the market directly to Cheong Wa Dae,'' a presidential spokesman said. ``The reason we set up the office inside the underground bunker is that there is not enough space at Cheong Wa Dae for the new offices.''
Critics said it is nonsensical to set up an economic war room in military facilities. The bunker has computer systems that can observe the movement of North Korean military during emergencies, along with video conference systems connecting Cheong Wa Dae with the National Intelligence Service, the police and the military.
The war room will have four support teams to deal with macroeconomic policies, small-and mid-sized enterprises (SME), finance and public sector restructuring, social safety nets and job creation.
The strategy and finance official, Lee, will concurrently serve as the head of the macroeconomics team. The SME team will be 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, a Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs official.
President Lee Myung-bak will convene the first meeting of the Emergency Economic Council today to discuss rescue plans.
The council will include 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.
Cheong Wa Dae said the council resembles the emergency economic committee run from March 1998 to April 1999 by then-President Kim Dae-jung to rescue the country from the Asian currency crisis.