Song Eon-seok, chairman of the National Assembly's Planning and Finance Committee and a member of the People Power Party, criticized Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the Democratic Party, on the 28th, saying, "The total national reserve fund that will be used for current forest fire measures is 4.87 trillion won," and stated that Lee is "playing with numbers and lying" to cover up the mistakes of the budget that was unilaterally cut.
On the same day, Song issued a statement and pointed out that "Lee Jae-myung and the Democratic Party are deceiving the public into believing that the budget for forest fire response is sufficient, using inaccurate numbers without proper content verification."
Meanwhile, he detailed the budgets related to disaster response. The Democratic Party stated that it can allocate a total of 4.87 trillion won for forest fire response, including 2.4 trillion won in reserve funds, 970 billion won in disaster recovery costs by department, and 1.5 trillion won in national treasury debt liabilities for disaster recovery.
In contrast, Song stated that the actual available funds are 2.1 trillion won.
Regarding Lee's claim that "there is 970 billion won in disaster recovery costs by department," Song rebutted, saying, "The budget available among the disaster and emergency management budgets of each department is only 200 billion won."
Of the 970 billion won allocated for disaster and emergency management in the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, and Korea Forest Service, 417 billion won is for last year's disaster recovery costs, 307 billion won is for the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries' river and aquaculture support, and 100 billion won for the Korea Forest Service's pine wilt prevention, all of which have already been allocated for specific budget uses or have been executed.
Regarding the remaining 2.4 trillion won in reserve funds, he said, "Due to the Democratic Party's unilateral budget cuts, the remaining 800 billion won in general reserve is only for information budgets, and of the 1.6 trillion won in purpose reserves, 1.3 trillion won is designated for free high school education and free education for 5-year-olds in the budget regulations, making it impossible to be used for other purposes," adding that "the purpose reserve available for disaster response is less than 400 billion won."
Regarding the utilization of the 1.5 trillion won in national treasury debt liabilities, he said, "National treasury debt liabilities apply only to facility construction that is performed on credit this year on the premise that they will be repaid next year," noting that "this merely means pulling forward next year's budget, and there is no capability to respond to additional disasters such as typhoons and floods that are likely to occur in the summer."
Earlier, on the same day, Lee stated at a Supreme Council meeting held in Daejeon that "the budget is sufficient. The total national reserve that will be used for current forest fire measures is already 4.87 trillion won," questioning, "What budget is said to be lacking? Has even a penny of this reserve been used?" He indicated that the related budget has not yet been executed and that the difficulty in responding to forest fires is not due to a budget deficit as claimed by the ruling party.
This year's reserve is 2.4 trillion won after the Democratic Party unilaterally cut half of the total reserves in the process of handling the budget at the end of last year. The People Power Party is calling for a public apology from the Democratic Party for the budget cuts. They also emphasize that the reserve is significantly insufficient and that "disaster reserves" should be restored in future supplementary budget allocations.