President Lee Jae-myung said on the 21st, "More recently, acts that destroy the constitutional order are more serious than anti-corruption," adding, "While fake news is rampant, we need to discuss the causes and countermeasures of a society where only the two extremes exist and the middle disappears."
Kang Yu-jung, the senior presidential spokesperson, said in a written briefing that at the first Anti-Corruption Policy Council presided over by the president at the Blue House that afternoon, Lee said the meeting felt a bit late, as it was held more than a year after the launch of the Lee Jae-myung administration.
Lee did not explain what the "acts that destroy the constitutional order" he mentioned referred to. However, in politics recently, Supreme Court Chief Justice Jo Hee-de sparked controversy by breaking with convention and submitting Supreme Court justice candidates to the president in writing. In the ruling camp, there was a reaction that Chief Justice Jo ignored the president's authority to appoint Supreme Court justices.
The presidential office also did not specify what it meant by "fake news." However, Seong Gi-hong, the senior presidential secretary for public communications, appeared on the YouTube channel "OhmyTV" that day and, regarding remarks by National Court Administration head (Supreme Court justice) No Kyung-pil that "we asked the presidential office for a meeting between the chief justice and the president but did not get the chance" and that "we consulted with the senior presidential secretary for civil affairs on the written recommendation method," argued, "That is not true at all."
The Anti-Corruption Policy Council is a meeting of ministers of agencies related to anti-corruption, created to push ahead with anti-corruption measures in a comprehensive and systematic manner. Lee presided over the meeting from 3 p.m. for 2 hours and 40 minutes that day.
The meeting focused on two themes: "eradicating entrenched corruption and eradicating corruption in public contracts," and "eradicating the illicit receipt of subsidies and other embezzlement of state finances and eradicating collusion with former officials."
Lee said, "It is hard to believe that local council members entered private contracts with companies set up under their own or their family members' names, and that some public officials embezzled public funds with unofficial ledgers," adding, "Using artificial intelligence (AI), have each ministry and agency speed up building a system to detect this."
Regarding government procurement bids, Lee said, "If national treasury revenue increases and profits are clear, do not hesitate to offer whistleblower rewards."
On the customs service's plan to root out import and distribution corruption by companies that abused tariff-rate quotas, Lee said, "A measure created as an exceptional step with good intentions may have developed into structural corruption," adding, "Please work with the competent ministries, including the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, to consider institutional fixes."