Board of Audit and Inspection Requests Prosecution Investigation into Alleged Manipulation of 'Housing Prices, Income, and Employment Statistics'
Moon Cheongwadae, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and Statistics Korea Pressure... Manipulation of Key Statistical Figures
The case in which the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) requested an investigation by the prosecution regarding allegations of manipulation of major statistics including housing prices, income, and employment during the Moon Jae-in administration has been assigned to the Daejeon District Prosecutors' Office.
According to the legal community on the 20th, the Anti-Corruption Division of the Supreme Prosecutors' Office (Chief Prosecutor Yang Seok-jo) reviewed the case requested by the BAI and transferred it to the Daejeon District Prosecutors' Office, which has jurisdiction over the Statistics Korea located in the Government Complex Daejeon, the day before.
The BAI conducted an audit titled "Status of Preparation and Utilization of Major National Statistics" targeting the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT), Statistics Korea, and others as part of the "2022 Annual Audit Plan," and announced audit results that the Blue House under the Moon Jae-in administration and MOLIT pressured Statistics Korea and the Korea Real Estate Board (formerly Korea Appraisal Board) to manipulate statistical figures. This audit was carried out due to continuous concerns raised by the National Assembly and the media regarding the reliability and accuracy of national statistics, which serve as the basis for national policy formulation. The core issue was that MOLIT officials reported the "provisional statistics," which were shared only internally within the Korea Real Estate Board before the housing price trend was officially announced, in advance to the Blue House, and arbitrarily lowered the housing price statistics during the Korea Real Estate Board's housing price trend survey.
The BAI confirmed that the Presidential Secretariat (Blue House) and MOLIT directly or indirectly pressured the statistical agencies, Statistics Korea and the Korea Real Estate Board, to manipulate statistical figures or distort statistical descriptive information, engaging in various illegal acts.
In fact, over five years since May 2017, the gap between housing statistics from the Korea Real Estate Board and KB, a representative private real estate statistics institution, widened significantly. During this period, KB assessed the real estate fluctuation rate in the Seoul area as a 62.20% increase, whereas the Korea Real Estate Board calculated it at only 19.46%, less than half. The discrepancy between the two statistics, which was only 0.4 percentage points between 2008 and 2012, expanded to 15.2 percentage points after 2017, a 38-fold increase.
The BAI confirmed that the improper influence exerted by the Blue House and MOLIT occurred as many as 94 times. From June 2017, the Blue House and MOLIT illegally received midweek and preliminary statistics in advance from the Korea Real Estate Board and exercised influence by applying arbitrary weights to the midweek statistics to produce lower housing price increase rates.
The BAI also confirmed that the Blue House's Office of Public Service Ethics was aware of but tolerated such external pressure from the Blue House and MOLIT. According to the audit, after investigating the facts, the Office of Public Service Ethics only requested that direct contact with MOLIT and the Blue House's Land, Infrastructure and Transport Secretariat be refrained from.
Previously, former Minister of MOLIT Kim Hyun-mi, former Blue House Policy Chief Kim Sang-jo, former Blue House Policy Chief Jang Ha-sung, and former Blue House Policy Chief Kim Soo-hyun were reportedly subjected to face-to-face investigations. Blue House aides and ministry officials, including former Statistics Korea Commissioners Hwang Soo-kyung and Kang Shin-wook, former Senior Secretary Hwang Deok-soon, former Senior Secretary Hong Jang-pyo, and former First Vice Minister of MOLIT Yoon Sung-won, were also investigated.
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