{"id":72259,"date":"2026-07-02T13:06:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/72259\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T13:06:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:06:13","slug":"lee-orders-plan-to-expand-culture-and-arts-pass-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/72259\/","title":{"rendered":"Lee Orders Plan to Expand &#8216;Culture and Arts Pass&#8217; Program"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img alt=\"President Lee Jae-myung speaks at a senior secretaries' meeting held at the Blue House on the 2nd. Blue House Press Corps - Seoul Economic Daily Politics News from South Korea\" title=\"Lee Orders Plan to Expand 'Culture and Arts Pass' Program\" fetchpriority=\"high\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"w-full h-auto rounded-sm\" style=\"color:transparent;object-fit:contain;object-position:center\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/news-p.v1.20260702.84085e37a0df420993bdb5fd03851491_P1.jpg\"\/>President Lee Jae-myung speaks at a senior secretaries&#8217; meeting held at the Blue House on the 2nd. Blue House Press Corps<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-[var(--color-text)] leading-relaxed\">President Lee Jae-myung on Tuesday ordered officials to devise ways to expand the &#8220;Culture and Arts Pass,&#8221; which subsidizes the cost of attending performances, exhibitions, and films, and to explore how it could be applied to other policies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-[var(--color-text)] leading-relaxed\">&#8220;Draw up plans for expanding it and for applying and adapting it to other policies,&#8221; Lee said during a senior secretaries meeting held at the Blue House that day, according to Presidential Chief Spokesperson Kang Yu-jung. After hearing a report from the Economic Growth Integration Secretariat, Lee emphasized the importance of the opinion-gathering process, saying, &#8220;We must listen to diverse voices in order to prepare policies that young people can actually feel.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-[var(--color-text)] leading-relaxed\">According to Kang, when Youth Affairs Officer Lee Joo-hyung reported that &#8220;young people&#8217;s perceived benefit and satisfaction with the &#8216;Culture and Arts Pass&#8217; are high,&#8221; the president asked about the age of eligible recipients, usage conditions, the application environment, application requirements, and the budget scale, before giving the instruction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-[var(--color-text)] leading-relaxed\">Lee also received a report from Fiscal Planning Adviser Ryu Deok-hyun on &#8220;measures to reform unemployment benefits and stabilize employment insurance finances,&#8221; again stressing that &#8220;it is important to sufficiently gather the opinions of all stakeholders during the policy implementation process.&#8221; He added, &#8220;It is desirable for policies to be established through a process of opinion-gathering and public deliberation,&#8221; and instructed, &#8220;For example, quickly prepare a plan to institutionalize a body for gathering the opinions of citizens and the public with the character of a citizen assembly, so that gathering public opinion becomes settled into the process ahead of all policy decisions.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-[var(--color-text)] leading-relaxed\">Regarding the &#8220;three mega-projects,&#8221; under which large-scale investments were announced centered on Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, Lee said they were &#8220;not simply support for the regions, but a decision for Korea to leap forward as an industrial powerhouse with a super-gap lead.&#8221; He stressed, &#8220;This will become the &#8216;third stepping stone&#8217; for Korea&#8217;s growth, following the Park Chung-hee administration&#8217;s fostering of heavy and chemical industries and the Kim Dae-jung administration&#8217;s leap into an IT powerhouse.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-[var(--color-text)] leading-relaxed\">He added, &#8220;We must go beyond a growth structure centered on the metropolitan area and diversify the axis of growth across the entire country into multiple poles, turning the whole nation into a &#8216;Korean Silicon Valley,'&#8221; and urged, &#8220;The Blue House and government ministries should pick up the pace in organizing related policies and legislation, providing budget support, and pursuing follow-up investment plans.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-[var(--color-text)] leading-relaxed\">He further instructed that officials &#8220;must approach policy responses with the attitude that the success or failure of state affairs depends on securing future growth engines while also easing polarization,&#8221; saying, &#8220;We must devote all our efforts to strengthening the basic social safety net, creating a fair labor market, revitalizing the neighborhood economy, and building an asset ladder for everyone.&#8221; In particular, he added, &#8220;We must also do everything possible to efficiently utilize additional tax revenue to create stable investment resources for future generations.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Lee Jae-myung speaks at a senior secretaries&#8217; meeting held at the Blue House on the 2nd. Blue&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[39220,39219,31,146,276,275,33,37007,39221,30706],"class_list":["post-72259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-south-korea","tag-citizen-assembly","tag-culture-and-arts-pass","tag-korea","tag-lee-jae-myung","tag-samsung-electronics","tag-sk-hynix","tag-south-korea","tag-three-mega-projects","tag-unemployment-benefits-reform","tag-youth-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}