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| The new presidential office in Yongsan District, Seoul / Korea Times file |
By Nam Hyun-woo
The opposition bloc's fact-finding team has alleged that the presidential office has underreported the costs of its relocation in May after President Yoon Suk-yeol's inauguration.
Lawmakers of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) have stated that the total cost of the relocation surpassed 1 trillion won ($703.9 billion) and that the office has underreported costs by dividing up the total expenses into budgets allocated to related ministries and municipalities. The presidential office and the government denied the allegation, saying that the office is sticking to its initial budget of 49.6 billion won pledged in March 20.
According to Seoul Metropolitan Government data submitted to DPK Rep. Han Byung-do, Wednesday, the Seoul Metropolitan Fire & Disaster Headquarters was allocated 1.15 billion won as a reserve budget, which it used on June 17 to relocate a firefighting department from Cheong Wa Dae, the former presidential office and residence in central Seoul's Jongno District, to the new presidential office in the defense ministry compound in Yongsan District, Seoul.
The data showed that an office, waiting room, firefighting vehicle garage, as well as a ladder vehicle, chemical vehicle and small pump vehicle, had to be set up anew at the new presidential office in Yongsan, as Cheong Wa Dae consists of low-rise buildings while the new presidential office is in a 10-story building.
The costs also added up because 15 more firefighters than had previously been employed were deployed to staff the department in order to cover both the new presidential office in Yongsan with 15 firefighters and the new presidential residence in the nearby neighborhood of Hannam-dong with 12 firefighters.
Rep. Han said that these costs were not included in President Yoon's initial budget.
"(The Yoon administration) has used not only the state budget but also the Seoul Metropolitan Government's budget for the relocation of the presidential office," Han said. "The presidential office should admit that it came up with 49.6 billion won without calculating the essentials and that the promise was nothing more than a lie."
DPK Rep. Jo Seoung-lae also raised the fact that the Ministry of Science and ICT decided to shoulder 70 percent of the total cost for developing a new X-ray system for entrance security checks at the presidential office, which is a job of the Presidential Security Service (PSS).
According to the ministry's data submitted to Jo, the ministry plans to spend 10 billion won to develop the new system over the next three years under the name of the "R&D project to solve social problems." The ministry will provide 7 billion won for the project, while the PSS will finance the remainder, the Hankook Ilbo, the sister paper of The Korea Times, reported.
"It is inappropriate to promote the new X-ray system for the security of the Yongsan presidential office as the science ministry's 'R&D project to solve social problems,'" Jo said. "It is suspicious that the project is aimed at concealing costs for the presidential office's relocation."
The PSS said that the project has nothing to do with the relocation, and had been selected as a national R&D project in April, a month before the presidential office was to move to Yongsan, as a follow-up technology development project to a patent that the ministry registered in 2021.
In addition, the DPK said that the relocation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) headquarters should likewise be included in the total cost of moving the presidential office and residence, because the headquarters had to move in order for the presidential office to move into its former space in the defense ministry compound.
The DPK's fact-finding team released its calculations showing that the total costs stemming from the presidential office's relocation add up to 1.08 trillion won, including expenses allocated to the budgets of related ministries and municipalities totaling 36.85 billion won and expenses that will be included in next year's budget totaling 153.9 billion won.
The presidential office flatly denied the allegations.
"We deeply regret that the DPK is making untrue allegations under the pretext of fact-finding," the presidential office said in a statement. "It is a false accusation that the cost for moving the JCS should be included in the cost for presidential office relocation. The necessity for the JCS' relocation has long been raised in the military during past administrations in order to combine peace and wartime operational systems to improve their efficiency."
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