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| President Yoon Suk Yeol speaks during a New Year briefing by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism at Yeongbingwan guesthouse in Seoul's Jongno District, Jan. 5. Joint Press Corps |
By Nam Hyun-woo
Even before he took office, President Yoon Suk Yeol had been pitching the idea of small government and underscoring that the role of government will be limited so as to empower the private sector to do its part. Tax cuts and deregulation have been proposed to meet Yoon's goal of small government.
But it seems he has been doing the opposite since his inauguration last May.
Yonhap News Agency reported on Monday that his office is mulling over the creation of a senior presidential secretary for education and culture, citing an official of the ruling bloc.
The move came amid Yoon's drive to facilitate reforms in the fields of education, labor and pensions, which are all tasks of the office of the senior secretary for social policy, creating concerns over the office's workload. If established, the new senior secretary for education and culture will likely handle education issues.
An official at the presidential office said it has yet to determine whether to create the post.
Adding to this, the office is in preparations to create new secretary positions in charge of international legal affairs and policy coordination.
The policy coordinating secretary will be in charge of coordinating pan-government tasks such as the export of nuclear reactors and defense technologies. The international legal affairs secretary will be handling legal affairs related to international trade, such as the potential losses of South Korean carmakers in the wake of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act.
For the two posts, Park Sung-taek, director general for trade controls policy at the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, is being mentioned as a policy coordinating secretary, and former Coupang Vice President Lee Young-sang has been suggested for the international legal affairs secretary position.
Along with the secretary posts, the presidential office is moving to create a new audit team for public officials under the civil service discipline secretary.
In the wake of his presidency, Yoon abolished the post of senior secretary for civil affairs, who was in charge of disciplining public servants. The new audit team is anticipated to play the abolished role of monitoring civil servants.
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| The presidential office in Yongsan District, Seoul / Courtesy of presidential office |
Outside of the presidential office, the government is now in preparations to set up a ministry for migrants, in order to oversee migration affairs. Also in the pipeline is establishing a ministry for overseas Koreans and a space ministry, as well as elevating the status of the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs to a full-scale ministry.
The move contrasts with President Yoon's pledge to keep the presidential office slim and minimize the government's presence.
Streamlining the presidential office was Yoon's election pledge, as the president sought to distribute presidential power to related government branches and jack up economic growth through greater market discretion.
In his election pledges last year, Yoon promised to cut presidential staff by 30 percent, saying he would set up "a small but effective organization."
In line with Yoon's pledge, the presidential office was designed to have approximately 490 staffers, but 409 officials were working as of late November, far more than the 343 which would signify a 30 percent cut. Also, the government announced in July that it will freeze the total number of civil servants for the next five years.
However, this policy direction has been shaken due to mounting workloads. In November, presidential secretary for administrative affairs Yoon Jae-soon said in a National Assembly committee meeting that it is "difficult to meet the 30 percent cut standard due to the exponential increase in workload."
"The policy direction of small government and a slim presidential office has been virtually rescinded," said Eom Gyeong-yeong, director of the private political think tank Zeitgeist Institute.
"As seen in the cases of the Itaewon crowd crush and North Korean drone intrusion, criticisms mount over the control tower function of the government whenever there are national disasters or incidents," he said. "As calls grow for a control tower, the presidential office is returning to the old convention of the office having greater authority and power."
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