11 former administration officials indicted for data manipulation

Mar 15, 2024, 10:46 am

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(From left) Former presidential chief of staff for policy Kim Su-hyun, former chief presidential secretary forpolicy Kim Sang-jo, and former land minister Kim Hyun-mi/ Source: Yonhap News, AsiaToday database

AsiaToday reporter Kim Hyung-joon

Prosecutors on Thursday indicted 11 former senior officials of the previous Moon Jae-in administration on charges of manipulating data on housing prices, employment, and income to make them look like their policies were working.

The Daejeon District Prosecutors Office indicted 11 people without detention, including presidential chief of staff for policy Kim Su-hyun and Kim Sang-jo, and former Land Minister Kim Hyun-mi on charges of abuse of authority and violations of the Statistics Act.

Seven presidential aides and land ministry officials under the Moon administration were accused of pressuring the Korea Real Estate Board (REB), an affiliate of the land ministry, to manipulate the fluctuation rate of housing prices across the greater Seoul area on 125 occasions to make it look like their real estate policy has stabilized housing prices.

The prosecution believes that they manipulated the fluctuation rate intensively 35 times between April 2019 and March 2020 to support the administration’s key real estate policies.

Four others, including former presidential policy chief Kim Sang-jo and the head of Statistics Korea, Kang Shin-wook, were indicted on charges of skewing employment data on the number of nonregular workers to make it look favorable to the government, after a survey showed that the number of nonregular workers surged despite the government’s job policy.

“This is the first Statistics Act violation case where the government abused its power, and directly violated the accuracy and neutrality of national statistics,” a prosecution official said.

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