Cheong Wa Dae sent a formal letter of protest to Bloomberg, the U.S. financial news outlet, which reported Kim Yong-beom, the policy chief's "national dividends" proposal as "distribution of corporations' excess profits."
According to Cheong Wa Dae on the 15th, it sent a letter the previous day to Bloomberg saying it "expresses serious concern about the way it reported Kim's personal social media post." The letter said Bloomberg's report "caused confusion in the market and clearly hurt investor sentiment" and that "Bloomberg should acknowledge this and issue an official apology."
Cheong Wa Dae said Kim's remarks outlined how to use "excess tax revenue collected beyond expectations according to the excess profits of artificial intelligence (AI) corporations" and how to distribute it to various parts of society that contributed to generating record profits, but argued that Bloomberg sparked a "serious misunderstanding" by reporting it as if it were a distribution of "corporations' excess profits."
Cheong Wa Dae specifically demanded a correction to coverage that suggested Kim initially spoke as if it were a distribution of "corporations' excess profits" and later explained it was "excess tax revenue," saying, "That is not true. There was no suggestion to transfer revenue from the private institutional sector." However, Bloomberg has not yet responded to Cheong Wa Dae's request.
Earlier, on the 12th, Kim wrote on Facebook, "The fruits of the AI infrastructure era are not the result drawn out only by specific corporations," and proposed introducing a "national dividends" system as a way to return this to all citizens. Bloomberg reported it under the headline "South Korea floats 'Citizen Dividend' using AI profits."