By Na Jeong-ju
Staff Reporter
President Lee Myung-bak urged private enterprises Friday to strengthen "job sharing" programs to provide more jobs to young people, saying the country's job market remains sluggish despite an economic recovery.
The government's recent decision to freeze salaries for public workers for two years and instead recruit more interns shows its strong willingness to fight the so-called jobless growth, Lee said.
"The measure is our strong message to private firms," the former CEO said during a meeting with the heads of the country's top 30 conglomerates at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Lee made the remarks after the Federation of Korean Industries, the country's largest business lobby, unveiled a plan to boost their investments by 16.3 percent this year and hire a total of 79,199 workers, up 8.7 percent from last year.
Lee has encouraged public and private-sector companies to adopt job sharing measures, which would involve cutting the salaries of existing workers in order to employ more people and slashing the starting salaries for college graduates. Lee said pay cuts at firms would eventually improve their competitiveness and offer more job opportunities.
"Today, firms showed their commitment to increasing investments and hiring more workers. It was good news," Lee said at the meeting. "However, we have a long way to go to improve business conditions so that firms can invest aggressively and provide enough jobs."
He also called on businesses to pay more attention to overseas markets, saying globalization is the path they should take to boost their earnings and also the domestic economy.
Participants of the meeting included LG Group Chairman Koo Bon-moo, Samsung Life Insurance Chairman Lee Soo-bin and STX Group Chairman Kang Duck-soo.
Lee also said this year' s G20 Summit is expected to help with efforts to end North Korea's diplomatic isolation.
"South Korea believes the G20's role is important in a variety of development policies for North Korea when it gives up its nuclear weapons and begins to cooperate," Lee said.
South Korea is this year's co-chair for the world's premier forum on economic cooperation and will host the fifth summit in Seoul in November.
Lee said South Korean officials will visit developing nations that are not participating in the summit to ensure that their voices are heard.