By Michael Ha
Staff Reporter
The Lee Myung-bak administration is adding and reorganizing a number of presidential secretarial offices to better address the nation's economic woes.
Major changes include creating a new financial team, in the form of a committee under the auspices of the senior secretarial office for the economy. The administration is expected to appoint a presidential secretarial-level official to head the new committee.
The administration is also putting together a new secretarial office that will deal with balanced regional development, which includes the government's massive, multi-billion-dollar four-river renewal initiative. This particular measure is billed as a key part of the Lee administration's economic stimulus package. In addition to redeveloping Korea's major rivers, the project is expected to create tens of thousands of new jobs, boost regional economic activities and attract more businesses and tourism.
Cheong Wa Dae has tapped Oh Jeong-kyu, an official at the commission for the balanced national development, to lead the new, presidential secretarial office, which will be part of the existing senior secretarial office of governmental projects.
These new changes affecting secretarial offices, according to Cheong Wa Dae, ``aim to aggressively respond to our changing environments including the ongoing economic challenges. The new offices will also help us manage national affairs more smoothly.''
The Cheong Wa Dae official also noted that the administration purposely avoided a wholesale restructuring of secretarial offices and instead focused on setting up a number of new offices to help boost overall administrative efficiency.
The administration has been introducing a number of top personnel changes in the past few days including the appointment of Yoon Jeung-hyun as the new finance minister to replace the unpopular incumbent Kang Man-soo. Another Cabinet-level replacement this week was the naming of Chin Dong-soo, who has been serving as president for the state-run Export-Import Bank of Korea, as the new chairman of the Financial Services Commission in charge of spearheading the looming corporate restructuring initiative. The administration also announced reshuffling some 15 vice ministerial-level officials earlier this week.
On Wednesday, the administration also said it will speed up the funding for one of its main economic recovery initiative, the four-river redevelopment project. Prime Minister Han Seung-soo said the government front load 60 percent of the 22.8 billion won budget earmarked for the project.
Prime Minister Han said that the four-river project is part of the government's ``Green New Deal'' vision that will create new work opportunities for the regional labor force and help revitalize regional markets.