[Actually] Where and how much money does the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family spend?

Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party of Korea and Yoon Seok-yeol, a presidential candidate for the People's Power, pulled out a card to reorganize the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.

It is a plan to shift the policy stance of the Ministry of Leisure from a focus on women's human rights to gender equality.

The opening was opened by candidate Yoon Seok-yeol.

Candidate Yoon made a pledge on the 21st of last month to "reorganize the Ministry of Leisure and Equality into the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, and readjust related tasks and budgets."

Candidate Yoon said, "The Ministry of Recreation failed to perform its gender equality function properly and the publicity that treated men as potential criminals caused disappointment to the public."

Candidate Jae-myung Lee also posted on Facebook on the 9th, "I propose to change the leisure department to the 'Ministry of Equality and Family' or 'Ministry of Gender Equality and Family' and adjust some functions. We need a department dedicated to eliminating discrimination in reality.”

The keynote and direction of the policy is revealed through the budget.

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family analyzed where and how much the budget was spent and fact-checked the statements of the two candidates.

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How much is the budget for leisure?

The analysis criteria were set as the 2022 budget bill submitted by the government to the National Assembly in August.

As it is the budget for the first year of the president's term, it will serve as a basis for making reform plans.

First, we identified the overall size of the budget for next year's leisure ministry.

In addition to general tax revenue, the Ministry of Leisure is operating and disbursing the Gender Equality Fund and the Youth Development Fund.

If you add up this money, the total expenditure of the leisure department for next year is about 1.41 trillion won.

It was analyzed that it increased by 13.9% from last year's budget (including the supplementary budget).

The national budget for next year was 604.4 trillion won, or 0.23% of the total.

It was also compared with the budget proposals of other government departments.

There are 18 departments and 18 affiliated agencies, but in fact, the team directly calculated the budget by combining the budgets of the departments and affiliated agencies.

For example, the budget of the Ministry of National Defense is a combination of the Ministry of National Defense's own budget, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration, and the Military Manpower Administration's budget.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare prepared a budget of over 102 trillion won, accounting for 16.89% of the total national budget.

It was followed by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and the Ministry of National Defense.

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family's budget was the 18th among the 18 ministries.

How much to spend on women's policies

Let's analyze the budget of the Ministry of Leisure in earnest.

We looked at the 10 businesses that spend the most money.

The amount of money spent on these 10 projects amounted to KRW 1.15 trillion, or 82% of the total budget of the Ministry of Leisure.

Specifically, single-parent families support projects were the most common. A budget of 433.1 billion won was prepared. This is a project that directly supports single-parent families as well as families with grandchildren. Of course, this also includes single-parent families. The Ministry of Leisure and Leisure supports welfare benefits for all singles and singles, provided they meet certain criteria. Support for single-parent families is promoted separately.

The second is child care support of KRW 256.4 billion. A typical example is the caregiver service, which provides support when there is a childcare gap due to dual income. Next is the establishment of a youth social safety net worth KRW 101.8 billion. This includes the operation of youth shelters and the budget for rehabilitation treatment.

If you look closely at the other budgets, you can see that a lot of the budget is focused on the family and youth sectors.

Among the 10 budgets, 'Support for Women's Economic Activity Promotion' stands out as the budget for women of 73.7 billion won. This budget helps women whose careers have been cut off due to childbirth and childcare so that they can return to economic activities. Most of them are being used to operate the 'Saeil Center', a support organization for women who have lost their careers. Although it is set the highest among women's policy budgets, it is difficult to see this as a policy only for women. It has the effect of reducing the economic burden on households by inducing dual-income earners.

Let's take a comprehensive look at the size of spending by policy area. We recently re-analyzed the contents of the <Ministry of Gender Equality and Family Budget Review Report> of the Gender Equality and Family Committee of the National Assembly.

Nearly two-thirds of the total budget is family policy.

877.5 billion won was allocated.

The budget for women's policies is 105 billion won.

Excluding administrative support such as civil servant salaries, female policy was the lowest at 7.42%.

For reference, most of the areas of promoting rights and interests, which account for nearly 10%, are projects that support crime victims.

Support for victims of sexual violence (KRW 46.7 billion), support for victims of domestic violence (KRW 36.2 billion), and support for victims of violent crime (KRW 39.5 billion) are included.

In particular, the project to support victims of sexual violence and violent crime is spent from the 'Crime Victim Protection Fund', which is only a project carried out by the Ministry of Recreation, and the main body of budget management and operation is the Ministry of Justice.

This means that the money from the Ministry of Justice is subcontracted to the Ministry of Recreation and executed.

What is the problem with the budget for the Ministry of Leisure?

If the two candidates claim that the leisure department has not been operating properly, the budget management must also be flawed.

There is a problem.

The <Ministry of Gender Equality and Family Budget Review Report> comprehensively points out three things.

It is located in the 'General Review' section of the report.

First, the issue of the Crime Victims Protection Fund mentioned earlier.

The content is that the Ministry of Justice manages and operates the fund, causing inefficiency problems, and that the main body of management should be returned to the Ministry of Leisure.

Second, the treatment of employees, such as counselors in agencies under the Ministry of Leisure, is inferior to those of other ministries. Content is included.

In other words, unlike what the presidential candidates say with the nuance of 'reducing function', the actual budget analyst is ordering an 'active role' to solve the situation as the situation is poor compared to other ministries.

Prerequisites for Reorganization of the Ministry of Leisure

In fact, after the team analyzed the budget for the Ministry of Leisure, it was difficult to find evidence that the policy of the Ministry of Leisure was biased toward a specific gender as the two candidates said.

In particular, not only family and youth policies, but also women's policy budgets were difficult to see as a business that provided benefits to the special gender.

In general, it can be seen that the welfare aspect is strong, in which all vulnerable family members share the benefits.

As mentioned earlier, the business of helping women with career interruptions find employment is intended to alleviate the financial burden on all family members.

The crime victim support budget, which is a field of advocacy, has the effect of spreading the support benefits to all family members as not only the individual victim of a crime is suffering, but also the whole family.

Clearly, it is reasonable to clearly suggest how the Ministry of Recreation has spent its budget, what policies it has implemented, and what problems it has overall, and then propose a specific reform plan based on it.

Reorganizing only the patterns into the 'Ministry of Equality and Family' and the 'Ministry of Gender Equality and Family' is because only the cost of the signboard is included.

Our fact-checking team is fact-checking the words and policies of the candidates during this presidential election.

I hope the viewers will do the same.

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If you request it, we will fact-check it to the best of our ability.

<References>

2022 Budget Proposal

Committee on Gender Equality and Family of the National Assembly, <Ministry of Gender Equality and Family Budget Review Report>, November 2021.