Write a critique column, the Ministry of Finance comes up and says, "Give me the budget details"

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Recently, when a scholar from a national research institute wrote a column criticizing the government's tax policy, it was confirmed that the Ministry of Strategy and Finance stepped in and put pressure on it.

I asked him why he wrote such a post and asked him to provide the budget details of his research institute, which was covered by reporter Jo Ki-ho.

<Reporter> This

is a column published in the Kyunghyang Shinmun last week.

It is a criticism that the tax reform bill recently announced by the Ministry of Finance is a tax cut for large corporations and the rich, and that the vulnerable classes are not properly looked at.

The author is a scholar affiliated with the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs who spends the government budget.

An expert on welfare issues for the low-income class, mainly at this institute for over 20 years, he writes a column for this newspaper once a month.

However, as soon as this article was published, I received a call from the Ministry of Strategy and Finance.

He was a person in charge of the tax office that made the tax policy, and Deputy Prime Minister Choo Kyung-ho asked why he mentioned it and why he said he had neglected the low-income class.

And the next day, the budget office of the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, which controls the budgets of all government ministries, continued to contact me.

I have been demanding that the Institute for Health and Social Affairs provide all the detailed budget, especially the department where the scholar is located, in detail on which research and how much was spent.

The scholar said, "I was worried that there might be damage to our researcher," and "I felt pressure."

[Jae-Ryong Song / Special Professor, Department of Sociology, Kyunghee University: Isn't that the way you want to pressure or feel something?

don't do that in the future.

There is definitely a problem with trying to be gagged like that.]

When the SBS coverage began, the Ministry of Finance took a step back, saying, "It was an act that could be misunderstood."

However, it seems difficult to avoid criticism for wasting the power given to watch over the bosses and to silence the criticism.

(Video coverage: Ho-Jun Choi, Edit: Kyung-Yeon Kim, CG: Jegal-Chan·Lee Jun-Ho)