Joong ang Daily
Moon So-young
12/28/2006
…[edited]…President Roh Moo-hyun’s Uri Party and the Grand National Party agreed to cut the budgets for inter-Korean cooperation projects…
The North-South cooperation fund, one of the latter budget items, was perhaps the hottest of the hot issues. The Assembly agreed to allocate 500 billion won for that fund, down 150 billion won from the government’s proposal.
The Grand Nationals had demanded that spending be cut by at least 300 billion won, citing North Korea’s nuclear test in October. The Uri Party refused to cut more than 100 billion won. Mainly because of that fight, the budget approval had been delayed from its mandated deadline of Dec 2. Last year, Seoul allocated 650 billion won for the North-South fund, the same amount as the 2007 request.
