Suspicions have been raised that the Ministry of Economy and Finance has begun preliminary work to overhaul public institution chiefs.
According to the "Report on key contents of the revised 2025 public institution management evaluation manual," released on the 13th by People Power Party lawmaker Park Soo-young of the National Assembly Strategy and Finance Committee (Nam District, Busan), an absolute evaluation would allow recommendations for dismissal of institution chiefs. It sets the basis for the Lee Jae-myung administration to dismiss public institution chiefs who were appointed under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration and are currently in office.
The ministry finalized a revision to the "2025 evaluation manual," created in Dec. 2024, at a meeting chaired by Second Vice Minister Im Ki-geun on Sept. 30. During the revision, it created a new item for evaluating institution chiefs that was not in the original draft. The evaluation of institution chiefs, which had been only a non-quantitative 5 points out of a 100-point institution evaluation, was newly established as a separate 100-point scale.
As the rationale for pushing the revision, the ministry said, "A need for changes arose due to the new administration's policy direction and the enactment and amendment of laws and regulations." Even when it sent an official letter requesting opinions to public institutions and quasi-government institutions, it made no mention of the creation of a new item for replacing institution chiefs.
In addition, institution chiefs whose tenure is less than six months as of the end of this December were excluded from evaluation, which means that those appointed by the current administration are excluded from dismissal.
Park said, "Under the Lee Jae-myung administration, the public institution management evaluation has lost its original purpose and has been distorted into a de facto evaluation of chiefs' political inclinations tailored to the administration's tastes to purge personnel appointed by the previous administration," adding, "After the Democratic Party of Korea's attempt to retroactively shorten current chiefs' terms through an amendment to the Act on the Management of Public Institutions was blocked, this is a de facto unconstitutional retroactive application to oust chiefs through an expedient manual revision."
He added, "We will use every means and method to uphold the legally guaranteed terms of public institution chiefs and normalize a manual with weak legal grounds so that public institutions can achieve autonomous and accountable management."