SEOUL, The state audit agency is considering questioning a former presidential economic aide as part of an inspection into alleged distortion of economic statistics by the previous government, officials said Saturday.

The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) has been probing government agencies since late September over allegations that the Moon Jae-in administration tweaked official data on income, employment and house prices to support its economic and real estate policies.
The agency is considering summoning Hong Jang-pyo, who served as senior secretary for economic policy from 2017-18, to determine whether the presidential office was involved in the alleged manipulation, officials said.

Hong, now an economics professor, is known as the architect of Moon’s income-driven growth initiative.

The agency has recently questioned two former chiefs of Statistics Korea, Hwang Soo-kyung and Kang Shin-wook.

Hwang resigned from the post in 2018 after releasing statistics that indicated income disparity worsened under the signature economic policy of the Moon administration. She was replaced by Kang, who previously published data favorable to the policy.

BAI is also looking into suspicion that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport skewed samples and cooked data in its surveys on real estate prices.

The agency on Friday concluded its on-site audit of Statistics Korea, the land ministry and the Korea Real Estate Board. It will determine early next year whether to continue the inspection of the agencies.

The audit is one of a series of investigations into the Moon administration officials and members of the main opposition Democratic Party since President Yoon Suk-yeol took office in May.

“The purpose of this audit is to come up with measures to improve the accuracy and reliability of major national statistics. There are no other intentions,” a BAI official said.

Source: Yonhap News Agency