A state subsidy budget of 1.15 trillion won has been allocated to issue 24 trillion won worth of Local Love Gift Certificates (local currency) next year. The Local Love Gift Certificate program is a project that President Lee Jae-myung has pushed as a priority since his tenure as Gyeonggi governor.
The Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) said on the 3rd that the 2026 MOIS budget was finalized at 76.9055 trillion won. It is up 6.7% (4.8216 trillion won) from this year's main budget (4.8216 trillion won). It also increased by 453.1 billion won during the National Assembly review compared with the original government proposal.
The Local Love Gift Certificate budget was the MOIS item on which the ruling and opposition parties were most divided in the National Assembly. In the end, it was kept as the government originally proposed. The Local Love Gift Certificate budget was not included in the government proposals for 2023 to 2025 under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration, but after the launch of the Lee Jae-myung administration this year, an additional 1 trillion won was allocated through the first and second supplementary budget.
The government plans to differentiate the state subsidy rate and discount rate for the Local Love Gift Certificates by region. The policy is to provide more state funds to non-capital regions than the capital area, and more to population-declining regions than other non-capital regions.
In addition to the Local Love Gift Certificate budget, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) allocated a total of 2.6111 trillion won for balanced regional growth, including ▲ 1 trillion won for the Local Extinction Response Fund ▲ 5.3 billion won for the village enterprise development project ▲ 1.7 billion won for activating multi-ministry collaborative regional capacity growth hubs.
The follow-up budget after the National Information Resources Service fire that occurred on Sept. 26 was also increased in the National Assembly. It includes 49 billion won for building emergency recovery IT equipment and moving to private cloud, and 343.4 billion won for improving key disaster recovery (DR) systems and the transfer expense for relocating the aging Daejeon center.
In addition, ▲ 2.5351 trillion won for public safety ▲ 11.8 billion won to support activation of the social solidarity economy ▲ 1.2661 trillion won for the artificial intelligence (AI) democratic government were allocated.