Ministries ordered to maintain gov’t documents during presidential transition
The presidential transition committee has warned the central government ministries not to destroy any existing government documents so that they can be of future use by the incoming government under President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol.
The transition committee issued the order on March 29, requesting the ministries to keep all government documents, either in digital or paper format, intact, as well as refrain from replacing the existing computers in their offices with new ones.
The transition committee’s spokesperson, Won Il-hee, said on Thursday it was only a natural routine for an incoming government to issue such an order so as to make the transition smoother.
“All the documents produced, in each ministry, must be preserved as records so that the new administration can later check them,” another official from the transition committee said. “We never specified the documents to be kept as those that are related to President Moon Jaein. What we meant was government documents in general. There isn’t any hidden idea behind the order.”
The transition committee, however, exempted Cheong Wa Dae from the order, since all the documents produced inside the presidential office are separately transferred to a presidential archive for preservation according to the law.
Despite the transition committee’s explanation, the order has created a tense atmosphere among the government bodies, as well as the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK). It has aroused concerns of whether the incoming government will punish the Moon Jae-in administration based on its findings from the government documents.
The transition committee is apparently concerned about the ministries possibly destroying government documents because there are precedents of them having been destroyed in the past. One of the major cases of such destruction happened in 2020, when three officials of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy were sued over charges of destroying government documents about the Wolsong nuclear power plants in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, before the ministry was due for an inspection by the Board of Audit and Inspection of Korea (BAI).
One of the suspects, learning of the BAI’s inspection, ordered the other two to destroy the documents in November 2019. One of the two subordinates, the following month, secretly destroyed some 530 digital files from a computer inside the ministry’s office in the early morning.
The transition committee’s questionable order is also suspected of being a stepping stone for Yoon to launch investigations by prosecutors against the ministries of environment and trade, industry and energy. Specifically regarding to the alleged manipulation of documents linked to the assessment of the country’s economic index under a scenario in which the country’s nuclear power plants are no longer expanded, as well as the alleged illegal dismissal of officials.
Rep. Youn Kun-young of the DPK said on Facebook, March 31, that the transition committee’s order gives off the impression that the present ministries are doing something wrong and that the incoming government wants to monitor them. He said that the controversial order “considers acting public workers to be potential criminals rather than fellow colleagues,” and is seen as an “attitude typical of occupying forces.”