President Lee at Cabinet meeting on the 5th
Korean bread prices are high... "Because of collusion"
Reviewing the "price adjustment order system"
President Lee Jaemyung is speaking at the senior presidential secretaries' meeting held on the 5th at Cheong Wa Dae Yeomin-gwan. Yonhap News
On the 5th, President Lee Jaemyung cited "collusion" as the cause of unstable grocery prices and condemned that "monopolies and oligopolies are forcing high prices on the people." He then ordered, "I want this to be corrected without fail by mobilizing the full force of the state's public authority."
Presiding over a meeting of senior presidential secretaries at the Blue House in the afternoon, President Lee said, "Prices are still a problem," making these remarks. He noted, "They say consumer prices have fallen to 2%, the lowest level in five months. It is the lowest in five months," but assessed that "food prices, including rice, are still showing instability."
President Lee also mentioned the recent case of flour and sugar price collusion uncovered by the prosecution. He said, "They say bread prices in our country are extremely high compared to other countries, and it seems that the prices of flour and sugar are one of the factors," adding, "There are even claims that domestic flour prices rose even when international wheat prices plummeted. It must be because of collusion," he criticized.
In this regard, President Lee said, "If prices were raised through collusion, they should be lowered," pointing out that "they offer a brief apology, run discount promotions, and then pretend nothing happened." He then instructed, "This time, make sure that does not happen and manage the situation thoroughly to the very end. We should also make use of the price adjustment order system."
President Lee also said, "It seems that the prices of sanitary pads are going down as well," rebuking that "they could have done this at any time but chose not to." He had previously pointed out several times that the prices of sanitary pads in Korea were excessively high compared to overseas. After that, various companies began to release mid- to low-priced sanitary pads with significantly reduced prices. In addition, President Lee pointed out that there are structural problems in the prices of fruit, agricultural products, and livestock products.
Regarding the abnormal price situation, President Lee said it was "a problem of the national system," and explained, "How about creating a task force (TF) that will intensively manage price issues over a specific period? It seems we need to come up with new methods that we have not used so far."
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