 Seen is Oasis noraebang and Matsarang restaurant. / Korea Times photo by Lee Tae-hoon |
By Lee Tae-hoon
Public relations officers of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the nation’s top military decision-making body, admitted Wednesday of wrongfully using government issued credit cards to have drinks and sing at a Korean style karaoke.
The officers said they made inflated payments at a restaurant, named Matsarang, in Yongsan, downtown Seoul to get cash during the daytime so that they could use the money to go to a karaoke bar, called Oasis, at night. Oasis is located next to the restaurant.
“It’s true that some business expenses of the JCS public relations (PR) office have been illicitly used,” spokesman Col. Lee Boong-woo acknowledged.
“Unlawfully using the card to get money for a further session of drinking at another location has long been a common practice. We have failed to eliminate it, but we assure you that it won’t happen again.”
Korea introduced the so-called “clean card system,” government issued credit cards with clear guidelines for use, in 2005. Officials using clean cards are barred from making payments at entertainment facilities, such as karaoke bars, nightclubs, massage parlors and casinos.
Lee argued that officers of the JCS PR office had no choice but to make bogus payments at Matsarang, where they had become patrons, in order to cover “unavoidable expenses” incurred at Oasis.
However, he later backtracked, saying that no such illicit activity was carried out during his term in office.
“Perhaps, that happened in the past, but how could this take place these days?” he asked, refuting his earlier comments.
Another JCS PR officer explained that his office receives slightly more than 10 million won ($8,957) a year as meal and entertainment expenses, but the money usually runs out in November.
“The JCS public relations office has crossed the line, but it did so with no bad intentions,” he said.
A defense source claimed that the JCS PR office managed to get away with its illicit diversion of the business expenditure partly because the officer at the Defense Security Command (DSC) in charge of monitoring its unethical activities has turned a blind eye.
He said the DSC officer, identified as Maj. Ma, demanded a separate room and bottles of beer from the JCS PR office when he was on duty monitoring JCS officials at Oasis in December last year following JCS chief Gen. Jung Seung-jo’s dinner gathering with defense reporters.
A spokesman for the Army said that its PR office also frequented Matsarang, but has never made bogus payments nor abused the credit card system in order to raise funds necessary to cover drinking bills.
“We receive slightly more than 20 million won a year as business expenses, and do not make bogus payments to have drinks in bars and karaoke rooms,”he said.
“When it is absolutely necessary to have drinks for a business purpose, such as drinks after a dinner gathering with reporters, we use cash provided by the Army Chief of Staff Gen. Kim Sang-ki out of his business expenses.”
Spokesmen for the Air Force and Navy also downplayed the possibility of using credit cards for unsolicited purposes, adding that they receive less than 10 million a year as business expenses.
Military insiders, however, refuted the claims, saying the abusive use of the card has long been prevalent, especially among senior defense officials.
In October last year, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance imposed penalties on officials of 109 state-run organizations, including the Korea Expressway Corporation (KEC), for using their cards illegally.
Officials of the KEC were found to have charged 428 million won on their business credit cards at restaurants during office hours.
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