The Blue House, which has now become a popular tourist destination, especially the Chunchugwan, a work space for journalists, is a special place for me.
I worked there twice: in 2012, at the end of the Lee Myung-bak administration, and in 2017, at the beginning of the Moon Jae-in administration.
I think I was lucky as a reporter in that I was able to experience both the conservative and progressive governments of the Blue House.
During the Lee Myung-bak administration, which was at the end of the administration, I watched the scene of the president leaving the Blue House, and like the people of the Blue House who launched the government without a transition committee in the early days of the Moon Jae-in administration, I also unpacked my luggage at the Spring and Autumn Hall without time to prepare anything.
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There is a briefing room on the second floor of the Spring and Autumn Building.
It is large enough to seat 100 people, which is quite different from the White House briefing room, which seats less than 50.
It is probably the influence that was established during the authoritarian military regime.
Behind the briefing room podium is a door leading to the Blue House main building.
Until the former President Kim Young-sam, through this door, you could always enter the Secretariat and meet the people of the Blue House.
Then, during the former President Kim Dae-jung, access time was partially restricted, and it is said that access was virtually blocked from the former President Roh Moo-hyun.
Because of this, some reporters say that only the pattern is 'Cheongwadae reporter', but actually 'Chunchugwan reporter'.
Of course, there are cases where people go in to cover events inside the Blue House, but it was not possible to go in and out for individual coverage.
blocked door... The harmful effects of closure
You can't go inside, so of course there's no way to know who's working in the secretariat.
While I was in and out, I was given the names, positions, and contact information of only high-ranking officials at the secretary level or higher through the Senior Public Relations Office or the Senior Public Communication Office.
However, the executives who are working-level executives had to figure it out wittily (?) through the contacts they knew when they entered a political party in the past or through various kinds of coverage.
So, who works where, and what that person's contact information is, was itself a measure of a kind of coverage ability.
It is said that it has become more difficult under the Yoon Seok-yeol administration, but it is said that the secretary-level or higher makes an announcement to the press as before, but does not provide contact information.
Of course, we do not disclose the administrator.
When you hear the word 'administrator', you may not be able to get a good sense of it, but grades 2 through 5 are administrators.
In the case of a senior administrative officer, he is a second-level (director), which corresponds to the head of a general government department, chief judge of the high court, and police magistrate.
In the past, in the days of authoritarianism, I heard that when an executive of the Blue House went down to a province, the governor directly welcomed it.
It is already closed enough to be called Gujunggung Palace, and even the people who work there are kept secret, so there are not many side effects of making words.
When I was in and out of a political party before, when I heard the internal trends of the Blue House from a high-ranking passport official, I often asked other high-ranking officials to confirm and report on, "Is the current of the Blue House in this or that situation?", "Whose Blue House?, ○○○'s Blue House, or The Blue House of △△△?" I used to ask.
Could it not have been that the reporting environment, which had to rely only on the message of a specific person, made the inside of the Blue House escort?
White House reveals salaries for all employees
After I came to the United States as a correspondent while doing coverage in Korea, where these things were taken for granted, I came across a different report on the White House website.
I didn't find it, it's open to anyone, so I was told to check it out and searched for it.
This is a staff report that the White House submits to Congress every year (2022 Annual Report to Congress on White House Staff), which contains the names of all the White House staff, their types of employment (whether hired or dispatched), their salaries, and their titles.
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Since it is written every year, you can also see how the number of employees and salaries have changed.
Shortly after this year's announcement, US media reported that the number of employees had dropped by 86 from 560 a year ago.
In 1995, after Congress demanded the White House to disclose the salaries of all employees, the report has been submitted every year.
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When the White House released the data, the main emphasis was on the diversity of its human composition.
Because the United States is racially diverse, there have been many comments such as that it is more diverse than the composition of the entire American population, or that the ratio of women is higher than the ratio of the total population.
For reference, in a report released this year, the proportion of women in the White House was 58%, higher than the proportion of women in the total population of 50.5%.
When the Yoon Seok-yeol administration initially formed the cabinet, it was pointed out that the ratio of female ministers was low, but I wonder what the outcome would be if the composition of the presidential office was also disclosed.
An official from the presidential office said, "I have nothing to say about the disclosure of the list of staff at the White House." "If Congress makes a decision, we should do it, but in a situation where it is not, we first say, 'We should do that' or 'I should not'. seems to have changed,” he said.
In the case of other government ministries, while most of the government departments provide a search function for employees or job managers through their homepages, when asked why only the Blue House is not disclosing employees, he said, "If the media raises a problem and those things are made into public opinion, The system can change.”
Changes that roster disclosure can bring
The presidential office is noisy due to the recent controversy over hiring a son of an acquaintance of the president.
The private recruitment controversy and the disclosure of the employee list are not directly related.
However, if you disclose who works where, the presidential office will try to filter out those who may be controversial from the very beginning of hiring.
Although the disclosure of the list cannot ensure fairness in recruitment, it is enough to make the presidential
office more cautious in that it enables post-mortem verification by the media and the general public.
It is the role of the National Assembly to implement the
The presidential office is more open so that it is no longer heard of 'the palace' or 'the dragon palace', so it is more transparent to hear the people's voices and, conversely, the public can directly see how the presidential office is operated by who and what kind of people If you can create a structure, unnecessary controversy will be reduced.