Gov’t to monitor civic groups receiving state subsidies

Dec 29, 2022, 08:52 am

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Lee Kwan-sup, senior presidential secretary for policy and planning, announced the government’s current subsidy distribution system to the private sector and its future plans at the presidential office in Seoul on December 28, 2022./ Source: Yonhap

AsiaToday reporter Kim Na-ri

The Yoon Suk-yeol administration is promoting a complete overhaul of state subsidies given to the private sector, which have been criticized as ‘easy money’. The government plans to conduct a complete investigation by all ministries to monitor the process of selecting organizations for support, the accounting management, and whether subsidies have been used for the right purpose, and prepare improvement measures such as reorganizing the subsidy distribution system.

Lee Kwan-sup, senior presidential secretary for policy and planning, announced the results of an interim survey on the government’s current subsidy distribution system to the private sector and its future plans at the presidential office in Seoul on Wednesday.

According to the survey, government subsidies paid to various civic groups, associations, foundations, welfare facilities and other nonprofit private organizations from 2016 to 2022 amounted to 31.4 trillion won. The annual volume surged from 3.56 trillion won in 2016 to 5.45 trillion won this year. This is an average increase of about 400 billion won per year from the previous administration. The number of private organizations receiving government subsidies increased from 22,881 in 2016 to 27,215 this year, marking a seven-year increase of 4,334.

“The Yoon Suk-yeol government has selected enhancing the transparency of subsidies to nonprofit private organizations as a key policy task,” Lee said, citing instances of the inappropriate use of government subsidies and donations by some civic groups, such as the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. “We decided to conduct a probe of the current state of state subsidies and prepare improvement plans based on the investigation.”

“I don’t think this is a problem unique to the Moon Jae-in administration,” a high-ranking official in the presidential office said. “The amount of subsidies offered to nonprofit private organizations have seen a substantial increase over the past several administrations, and the rate of increase has been very rapid especially under the Moon Jae-in administration,” the official said.

The government plans to manage ‘local government subsidy projects’, which account for nearly 60 percent of state subsidies, under the responsibility of ministries. “Any inappropriate conduct by public officials will come under scrutiny and criminal investigations can be requested depending on the case,” the official said.

“We will boldly repair projects that have been found to be problematic according to the investigation results,” Lee said. “The online subsidy management system will be reorganized so that subsidies can be thoroughly managed online, and management results will be transparently disclosed so that abnormalities can be identified immediately if occurred,” he said.

Wednesday’s announcement came a day after President Yoon Suk-yeol ordered strengthening of comprehensive management of government subsidies for nonprofit organizations during a Cabinet meeting.

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