President Yoon Suk Yeol is expected not to address the National Assembly on Monday to give an annual speech on South Korea's budget plan for next year.

At a parliamentary audit on Friday, Presidential Chief of Staff Chung Jin-suk said Prime Minister Han Duck-soo was instead expected to address parliament.

While the presidential aide said there have been times when the prime minister had given the budget speech in place of the president, if Yoon decides not to attend on Monday, it would be the first time in eleven years for a sitting president to do so.

The sitting president is required, in principle, to give the speech on the government's budget plan, but up until the former Lee Myung-bak administration, the president had only done so in their first year in office.

The president personally presented the budget plan for eleven consecutive years since the inauguration of former President Park Geun-hye in 2013.

Yoon's likely absence comes amid political wrangling over allegations that the president and first lady Kim Keon-hee had intervened in election nominations, as well as the opposition's push to open a special prosecutor probe on the first lady.