President Lee Jae-myung said Wednesday that "it is difficult to predict how the Middle East situation will unfold," adding that "the government has fully shifted to an emergency economic response system."
Chairing an emergency economic review meeting at the Blue House, Lee said the situation is one where "it is nearly impossible to pinpoint the location and extent of risks amid global supply chains that are intertwined in ways incomparably more complex than in the past." He added, "The International Energy Agency assesses this crisis as 'being as severe as the combined impact of the two oil shocks of the 1970s and the Russia-Ukraine war shock of 2022,'" and noted that "the government has been operating an emergency economic headquarters chaired by the Prime Minister since yesterday."
Lee stressed that "the broad framework for our response will be in place through the countermeasures to be discussed today and the war supplementary budget scheduled for announcement next week, so now the completeness of execution is critically important." He also said, "The current energy crisis could impose unexpected burdens and inconveniences throughout people's daily lives, so the government must prepare in advance without overlooking even minor details," adding that "during a crisis, even small administrative mistakes can cause major repercussions, so we must break free from past inertia, directly verify conditions on the ground, and conduct responsible inspections to the very end."
