To review, Park promised a basal pension of 200,000 Korean won for elders from 2014. Then, she promised to make the cost of treating four serious illnesses as a state burden. Last but not least, she promised to aid nurturing fees to all children under age five. As people are reprimanding her talent as a president, there has to be a reason why she refused to make her seemingly possible promises into reality. It is unfair that people and partisans of other liberal and progressive parties harshly reproach President Park, when insufficient reasons are presented.

Ideally, all of the three promises will be a huge breakthrough in aiding the rights of the elders and young children who need more attention than other age groups. Yet, it is found that there are some financial issues when these three promises are to be realized. First, the basic pension for elders demands just more than back-bending burden. The compression of morbidity suggests that people are starting to live longer beyond age 65. This means that there will be more money spent on fulfilling the welfare categories of elders than is spent on other important national goals. Being realistic, more than 13 trillion won has to be secured in 2014. From 2015, approximately 15 trillion won is estimated to be secured.

The second promise is quite appealing for patients suffering from serious illnesses. The main four serious illnesses are cancer, heart disease, brain vascular disease, and rare illnesses. Currently, patients have to burden 25 percent of the medical treatment fees. President Park wanted to make it collect to zero. This means that the government will be “fully” responsible for the treatment fees. However, this solution lays tremendous debate on being fair. Also, speculators hardly believe that this promise is attainable.

The last promise, which is promising nurturing fees for children under age five, is expected to create several people who will abuse this promise. According to President Park, she promised to offer from 100,000 to 200,000 won for children who do not go to kindergarten. For sure, some parents will intentionally not think of sending their children to kindergarten in order to receive the nurturing fees.

The reason President Park had to abandon three of her welfare promises lies on the current national budget. The government budget has increased from four trillion one hundred billion to four trillion three hundred billion won. The increased money is known to be spending on various welfare policies such as free nurture for infants, half-priced tuition fees, social insurance for low income families, soldiers’ salary and honorary pension for veterans.

While the government budget increased, the military budget and the medical budget have decreased. This is the trigger that leads President Park to abandon her welfare projects. The military budget has decreased from 8.8 percent in 2007 to 4.2 percent in 2013. Had not the military budget decreased, Korea would be able to purchase state-of-the-art military goods from the U.S. A decreased medical budget of nearly three hundred billion won even suggests the three welfare promises of President Park unattainable.

Aside from the entire budget, the metropolitan tap-water fee has increased by about five percent. The electrical fee has also increased four percent this year. What is more is that the highway fee has increased. From the start of the year 2013, public fare is increasing in peoples’ everyday lives. So, even if President Park’s welfare promise will, in turn, become realistic, will it be helpful to Koreans? Professionals doubt it. Moreover, citizens hardly anticipate the actualization of the promises. Hence, President Park’s decision of abandoning the promises was not in order to gain massive votes and then leave those as a pile of impossible promises.