Presidential Advisory Committee Chairs Receiving 6 Million Won Monthly in Public Funds Without Standards

Audit Results by Board of Audit and Inspection
Job Committee Vice Chairpersons Receive 6 Million Won Each

Cheongwadae

An audit by the Board of Audit and Inspection revealed that some chairpersons of advisory committees under the President received monthly payments exceeding several million won under unclear criteria.

On the 17th, the Board of Audit and Inspection released a regular audit report on four presidential advisory committees: the Presidential Secretariat, the Presidential Security Service, the National Security Office, the Policy Planning Committee, the National Balanced Development Committee, the Job Committee, and the Economic, Social and Labor Council.

This follows the resumption of institutional operation audits on the Blue House after 15 years in 2018, with plans to conduct regular audits every two years. This time, four presidential advisory committees were included in the audit scope.

The Board of Audit and Inspection inspected the operational status of these institutions for fifteen days starting June 8 and found a total of 12 issues, issuing six warnings and six notifications.

The audit revealed that expert advisory fees, equivalent to compensation, were paid on a fixed basis without any standards to non-standing chairpersons of presidential advisory committees.

According to the audit report, in the case of the Balanced Development Committee, although a fixed monthly payment cannot be made to a non-standing chairperson, former Chairperson Song Jae-ho was paid 4 million won monthly for a year without any separate criteria.

The Balanced Development Committee did not pay advisory fees from August 2017, when former Chairperson Song was appointed, until December of the following year, but from January 2019 until his resignation in January this year, a total of 52 million won was paid. In contrast, the current Chairperson Kim Sa-yeol, who was appointed as his successor, did not receive any advisory fees.

The Job Committee’s vice-chairperson is legally non-standing but performed duties full-time, and from June 2017 to February 2018, former Vice-Chairperson Lee Yong-seop was paid approximately 6.28 million won monthly, totaling about 55.13 million won.

From April 2018 to February 2020, former Vice-Chairperson Lee Mok-hee received about 6.41 million won monthly, totaling approximately 140.99 million won. In total, 196.12 million won in national work assistance fees were paid monthly on a fixed basis without internal payment standards.

Moon Sung-hyun, Chairperson of the Economic, Social and Labor Council, received 6.07 million won monthly from September to December 2017, 6.38 million won from January the following year until the end of last year, and thereafter 6.49 million won monthly as compensation.

The Balanced Development Committee also overlapped payments of position allowance to 56 public officials dispatched from cities and provinces without verifying whether they were receiving position allowances from their original local governments, resulting in about 180 million won in duplicate payments from 2015 until last June.

Chairman Choi Jae-hyung of the Board of Audit and Inspection took off his mask while attending the plenary session of the National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee on the morning of July 27.

◆Presidential Security Service Staff Conduct External Lectures Without Reporting

Additionally, the audit uncovered that staff members of the Presidential Security Service attended external lectures without reporting.

The audit found that four staff members of the Security Service gave a total of five external lectures without reporting from 2018 until last year and were cautioned.

They did not submit official lecture request documents from the requesting institutions nor record these lectures in their work logs, yet the Security Service failed to manage or supervise these activities, the Board of Audit and Inspection pointed out.

The Security Service was also criticized for inadequately completing COVID-19 screening questionnaires for attendees at security events involving the President.

The Board of Audit and Inspection requested corrective measures, noting that the Security Service did not include an item on the questionnaire asking whether there were any self-quarantined individuals among cohabiting family members or those with close contact at the level of cohabiting family, which could result in failure to identify attendees who were under self-quarantine.