2023-10-27 14:01:08
Statistics Korea/Yonhap News
It was confirmed that the prosecution, which is investigating the Moon Jae-in administration’s ‘suspicion of statistics manipulation’, summoned former Statistics Korea Director Kang Shin-wook for questioning.
According to the Daejeon District Prosecutors’ Office on the 27th, former Commissioner Kang was summoned as a suspect and questioned. The prosecution reportedly investigated whether former Commissioner Kang was involved in manipulating household income and employment statistics from 2018 to 2019. In particular, he is known to have questioned whether there was pressure from the Blue House and whether unfair instructions were given to Statistics Korea employees.
The Board of Audit and Inspection pointed out that in August 2019, during the Moon administration, when the number of non-regular, fixed-term workers increased by 790,000 compared to the previous year, the Blue House instructed former Commissioner Kang to explain that the reason was a changed statistical survey method, and former Commissioner Kang reflected this. An investigation by the Board of Audit and Inspection revealed that at the time, the Blue House pressured the National Statistical Office to calculate the ‘income quintile ratio’, an income distribution indicator, and manipulated the results.
At the time of writing a press release regarding the income quintile ratio in the second quarter of 2018, the Blue House instructed to explain the cause of the worsening income distribution as a ‘sampling problem’. The revised press release was issued on August 23 without being reported to then-Statistics Korea Commissioner Hwang Soo-kyung. Three days following the announcement, former Commissioner Hwang was dismissed and former Commissioner Kang was appointed as his successor.
The Board of Audit and Inspection’s comments were made public last month when it announced the results of an audit on ‘Preparation and use of major national statistics.’ The Board of Audit and Inspection believes that the Moon administration intervened in statistics related to housing prices, income, and employment from 2017 to 2021 and manipulated them to the regime’s advantage.
Accordingly, 22 former and current public officials, including former Commissioner Kang, former government policy chief, Hong Jang-pyo, former Senior Secretary to the President for Economic Affairs, and former Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Kim Hyun-mi, were requested to be investigated by the prosecution on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of the exercise of rights.
The prosecution, which began its investigation, searched and seized the National Statistical Office, Korea Real Estate Agency, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, Ministry of Strategy and Finance, and Ministry of Employment and Labor for two days starting on the 5th. A prosecution official said, “As this is an ongoing matter, we cannot provide further details.”
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