Special Access for Kwanpyeongwon Staff to Sejong Office Building Construction?…Korea Customs Service Says "Conditions Were Like That at the Time..."

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] Allegations have been raised that the new Sejong office building of the Korea Customs Service’s Customs Valuation and Classification Institute (hereafter, KCCI) was constructed for the special supply of apartments in Sejong to KCCI employees.

According to Kwon Young-jae, a member of the National Assembly’s Public Administration and Security Committee from the People Power Party, on the 18th, the KCCI was originally not included in the list of government agencies to be relocated to Sejong by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety in 2005.

However, the Korea Customs Service coordinated with the Administrative City Construction Agency to incorporate the plan for the new KCCI Sejong office building and completed the new building in May last year with a budget of 17.1 billion KRW.

However, after the Ministry of the Interior and Safety became aware of the Customs Service’s insistence on constructing the new office building, it filed a public interest audit request with the Board of Audit and Inspection in September 2019, and the actual move-in by KCCI did not take place. The building was returned to the Ministry of Economy and Finance after the public interest audit request and remains vacant to this day.

The issue lies in the fact that during the Customs Service and KCCI’s forceful push to build the new office, many KCCI employees were able to receive special apartment supplies in Sejong, allowing them to gain capital gains.

In fact, out of a total of 82 KCCI employees, 49 received special apartment supplies in Sejong between May 2017 and July 2019, resulting in capital gains of several hundred million KRW (2 to 3 times the original sale price) according to investigations.

This raises suspicions that the Customs Service and KCCI’s aggressive construction of the new office building was carried out with the purpose of special apartment allocations to KCCI employees.

Regarding this, Assemblyman Kwon stated, “An outrageous situation occurred where the new office building was constructed for the special supply of Sejong apartments to KCCI employees,” and added, “The Blue House must explain on what basis the Customs Service dared to carry out such a bold act and also present measures on how to handle the special supply apartments under suspicion.”

Meanwhile, the Korea Customs Service denied the allegations that the new office building was constructed for the special supply to KCCI employees.

A Customs Service official explained the background of the new office building construction, saying, “Since KCCI opened in 2003, the increase in workload and staff made the construction of a new office building inevitable. For the same reason, internal reviews on relocating the office began in 2014, and after consultations with related agencies from 2015 to 2016, the plan to relocate the office to Sejong City was finalized.”

He emphasized, “The decision to relocate the office to Sejong reflected the fact that the land acquisition cost in Sejong was significantly lower than in Daejeon at the time, enabling budget savings, and that securing land was easier because other public institutions were reluctant to relocate to Sejong.”

He added, “At the time of the office relocation push, apartment prices in Sejong were continuously falling, and there were many unsold units, so expecting unearned income through special supply was difficult. The allegation that the Customs Service tried to relocate its affiliated agency for special supply and real estate speculation by KCCI employees is not true.”