Opposition calls for scrapping Future Response Fund as Kospi falls below 5,000

[Financial News] After the Kospi fell below the 5,000 mark, the conservative opposition, including the People Power Party, strongly criticized the Lee Jae Myung administration’s stock-market stimulus policies and called for the Future Response Fund to be scrapped. Citing losses suffered by retail investors after the sharp drop in stock prices and issues with the management of the National Pension Service, they raised the question of government responsibility.
People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok said on the 6th, “The results of the U.S. midterm elections may have had an impact, but that’s a condition stock markets around the world are all facing,” criticizing the government’s inadequate response. He particularly criticized the creation of the Future Response Fund using tax revenues that had temporarily increased amid the semiconductor boom, saying, “They intend to gobble it all up before this government ends, within three years,” and argued that this would increase market instability.
Im Lee-ja, the People Power Party’s policy committee chair, also criticized the government at a party floor strategy meeting at the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea that day, saying, “The 9,000-point Kospi, propped up by artificial efforts to boost stock prices and a temporary semiconductor boom, was an illusion and a bubble.” She added, “The populist Future Response Fund should be scrapped, and the money should be used to pay down the national debt, which has ballooned like a snowball.”
Former lawmaker Yoo Seung-min took issue on Facebook with stock-market-related remarks by President Lee Jae Myung and Kim Yong-beom, an official at the Presidential Office, saying, “The first step toward normalizing the stock market is to investigate and hold legally accountable those responsible for pushing people to borrow to the hilt to invest, those responsible for wiping out the National Pension Service’s assets, and those responsible for introducing single-stock leveraged ETFs.”
Independent lawmaker Han Dong-hoon also criticized the government, saying, “The Kospi 5,000 target was a figure the Lee Jae Myung administration set as a policy goal,” and, “A figure you reach and then fail to maintain is worse than one you never reach.” He took issue with the National Pension Service increasing the share of domestic stocks in its portfolio, claiming that 182 trillion won had evaporated over the past three and a half months.
Reform Party lawmaker Lee Jun-seok said, “Even before the partisan wrangling, a perfect storm is approaching,” and called for a policy shift focused on fiscal soundness. People Power Party spokesperson Cho Yong-sul also urged the government to come up with practical measures to secure industrial competitiveness.

[email protected] Kim Gyeong-min Reporter