An audit committee member served as chief civil servant overnight…文’Ignore independence’ greeting

On the 4th, President Moon Jae-in appointed Kim Jin-guk as an audit committee member of the Auditor’s Office as the successor to Shin Hyun-soo, chief executive officer of the Blue House. On this day, Kim Jin-guk, the new Chief Min Jeong-guk, is on the move to give a greeting in the briefing room at the Spring House Hall of the Blue House. On the right is Shin Hyun-soo, former chief of Min Jeong. News 1

There is a controversy over President Moon Jae-in’s appointment of the Audit Committee member Kim Jin-guk as the new chief civil servant of the Blue House on the 4th. Criticism came out that the audit committee member’s direct trip to the Blue House undermines the independence and neutrality of the audit committee. A passport official who wanted anonymity pointed out in a call with the JoongAng Ilbo that “it was in a hurry, but it wasn’t good to bring a person who was a member of the audit committee until yesterday to the chief civil servant.”

The Board of Audit and Inspection is an institution whose independence is vital to the extent that it is stipulated in Article 2 of the Act on the Board of Audit and Inspection that it has the status of “independence with respect to its job. Among them, especially, the audit committee members are banned from engaging in political movements or concurrently serving as public officials (Articles 9 and 10 of the Audit Committee Act).
However, the audit committee moved to the office of the presidential secretary, which is also an audited organization, in one day. Chief Kim is a person who was already controversial when he was appointed as an audit committee in 2017 because of his career as the backbone of legal support at Moon Jae-in’s camp during the last presidential election.

Even senior Kim attended the audit committee on the 4th, the day of President Moon’s announcement of personnel, and deliberated and decided on the audit results for the Moon Jae-in administration’s post-nuclear power plant policy establishment process. It was concluded that the government’s establishment of the’energy conversion roadmap’, which was the basis of the nuclear power plant policy decision, was “no illegal or procedural defects.” It is said that he was already appointed as the new chief civil servant when deciding the audit report with this conclusion. This is why there are criticisms that President Moon doesn’t respect the independence of the auditor.

President Moon Jae-in (right) takes a commemorative photo after conferring a letter of appointment to the Minister of Justice Cho Kook at the ceremony for conferring a new minister’s appointment at the Blue House main building on the afternoon of September 9, 2019. [청와대사진기자단]

This is not the only case in which the criticism of President Moon’s greetings as “damaging the independence and neutrality of governmental institutions” has come out. It was the same in 2019 when the former chief of the country went directly to the attorney general. The Ministry of Justice is not an independent agency, but the Attorney General can influence the prosecution’s investigation. It is generally evaluated that it is inappropriate for the president to appoint a member of the Blue House directly to the attorney general for fairness in the investigation.

During the Lee Myung-bak administration, when Min Jeong-Jin Kwon went directly to the Minister of Justice, the Democratic Party, the opposition party at the time, issued a condemnation resolution and insisted that it was “not even in the days of the military regime.” At the time, the general election was six months ahead, and criticism was also raised as “an impure intention to abandon the election neutrality and make a plate in favor of the ruling party” (Kim Jin-pyo, the highest committee member at the time).

However, President Moon also appointed Cho as Minister of Justice eight months before the general election. At the time, the Blue House said, “I expect to establish a fair and just legal order” regarding the appointment of former Minister Cho.

President Moon Jae-in is taking a commemorative photo after conferring a letter of appointment to the new Chairman of the National Rights Committee, Jeon Hyun-hee at the Blue House on July 3, 2020. yunhap news

There was also criticism that it was inappropriate when President Moon appointed Jeon Hyun-hee, a former member of the Democratic Party, as chairman of the National Rights Committee in June last year. The most important role of the KFTC is to monitor corruption and corruption in public officials. It is of utmost importance to maintain independence and neutrality, apart from power. When former President Lee Myung-bak appointed former GNP lawmaker Lee Jae-oh, who was his closest close friend in 2009, to the Chairman of the Rights Committee, the Democratic Party at that time criticized “the Lee Myung-bak’s rights and interests committee” because of its status.

However, the former chairman is a politician who is classified as a’familiarity’. During the 2018 Seoul Mayoral Candidate, he said, “The candidate who breathes best with President Moon” and “I am a friend in action”. To a politician who had boasted of being close to him, President Moon took the role of monitoring the public office.

A member of the Central Election Management Committee in Haeju Jo attended the general meeting of the Administrative Safety Committee of the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul on March 15, 2019, listening to inquiries from lawmakers.

In addition, when the former National Assembly Chairman Jeong Sye-gyun was appointed as the prime minister, criticism was raised by the opposition party, saying, “It was declared a dictatorship to destroy the separation of powers and make the parliament a hand-in-law.”

Reporter Yoon Seong-min [email protected]