ⓒYONHAP News

South Korean officials came up with a policy package to cope with the changing economic environment amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki held an emergency economic response meeting on Thursday, forging policy directions for the "Korean New Deal."

“The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about significant changes in economic and social structures around the world, including contraction in both supply and demand and a surge in untact services and digitalization. In order to wisely overcome such significant changes and the current unprecedented crisis, preemptive responses are crucial."

The pandemic has fostered the demand for non-face-to-face, or "untact," services while killing jobs in conventional industries.

“The so-called Korean New Deal focuses on the digital-based creation of jobs and projects on speeding up economic innovation centered on accelerated digitalization of the economy and promoting untact services.”

Hong said the envisioned Korean New Deal projects will set the stage in the data, 5G telecommunication and artificial intelligence industries.

The government is also considering deregulation measures to allow remote health care, as well as in online education and businesses.

The government plans to announce more details of the Korean New Deal program early next month.

But before these game changer policies come into play, the government is continuing to devise emergency lifelines for those who have lost jobs already.

Hong said the government will provide one-point-five trillion won, or some one-point-two billion dollars, in subsidies to help freelance and temporary workers.

The amount is good enough to provide some four hundred dollars to each of the nation's 930-thousand precarious workers without employment insurance for three months.