"As President, I have a new determination to take the initiative and stand in front of the people. That is why I will disclose my wealth today."

Former President Kim Young-sam / Inaugural Address of the


President on February 27, 1993



It is a promise made in

It is said that he intends to disclose his property in a transparent manner, but the word to pay attention to is 'disclosure'.



The public official property registration system in Korea was already enacted in the Civil Service Ethics Act in 1981, but the obligation to disclose was omitted, so it was only a half-placed system.

This is because, in principle, the reported property is kept private except for specific purposes.



As a result, there were many gaps in the poorly made system, and the increase in illegal property of public officials who abused it became a problem.

This was also pointed out in an editorial titled 'Registration of ambiguous public officials (property)' of the Chosun Ilbo on June 27, 1984.

They criticized that there is no way to verify that the property listed at the time of registration matches the facts, and that it makes illegal corruption by hiding the property.

They only report it as a ritual, and there is no way to know whether or not the property was properly reported.



In order to eradicate these loopholes and corruption among high-ranking public officials, President Kim Young-sam promised a transparent 'property disclosure' just two days after taking office, and the National Assembly also swiftly revised the enforcement ordinances and enforcement rules of the Public Service Ethics Act.

We put the first button on so that anyone can check the wealth of public officials every year.

Thus, on September 6, 1993, the properties of high-ranking public officials including the legislative branch, the judiciary, the executive branch, the Constitutional Court, and the National Election Commission were released to the public for the first time in history.

But why publish it as a PDF...?

The problem is in the form of publicly disclosed property statements.

The details of the wealth of high-ranking public officials were released as PDFs this year as well.

Property items by classification, such as buildings, land, deposits, etc., details, and amount are detailed, but there is not much difference from the method first disclosed in 1993.

Fortunately, even PDFs have been uploaded to the official website since 2005, but before that, they were published as thick books like phone number books, so their utilization was low.



PDF is an abbreviation of Portalbe Document Format. It is for reading and correcting text, not for calculating numbers, so it is difficult to understand the increase or decrease of property and analyze property details by classification.

It is a file format mainly used for official documents and meeting minutes.

This means that the file format is not suitable for full analysis of the wealth of thousands of public officials.

It is not an exaggeration to say that it is the same word as 'Do not analyze the property of public officials with this'.



For example, a PDF of the property details shows the present value of real estate held by public officials.

Due to the nature of the PDF, it is easy for people to read and read, but it is impossible to calculate detailed property details numerically, such as verifying multiple houses or the amount of land owned by individual public officials.



As a result, the media can only cite simple statistics (average, increase or decrease, etc.) provided by the press releases of each public service ethics committee, but it is not easy to analyze all property details and find illegalities and tricks.



Is there one curious thing here?

Why do you have to publish it as a PDF?

There is a reason why it is released as a PDF because the government also moves according to procedures.


Can't you just give it to Excel...?

is that difficult?

This is a question from the 2019 regular asset disclosure press conference.

This is a question mark that anyone who is interested in the details of public officials' property may have come to mind at least once.

In order to analyze the entire property of public officials in the media, which is obligated to monitor public officials, a file format that is easy to analyze such as Excel or CSV (comma seperated value), rather than PDF, is inevitably necessary.

So the above reporter asked for a raw-data format, but the response from the Ministry of Human Resources and Innovation was negative.



The reason why it is disclosed in PDF is that Article 10 (Disclosure of Registered Property) of the Public Official Ethics Act stipulates that the property of high-ranking public officials must be published in the Official Gazette or the Official Gazette.

According to the law, the government requires that it be uploaded to the Official Gazette, so there is no way to do it because it is uploaded in PDF format suitable for the official gazette format.



The Official Gazette mentioned here has been in use since March 2, 1981, and is used for the purpose of disclosing public officials' property, naturalization/renunciation of nationality, and military service for public officials.

However, there are many opinions that it is not appropriate today to advocate a 'digital' government.

This means that you need to provide the file format for the intended use.



Also, there is no legal basis for the government to 'disclose in Excel' for reasons that cannot be disclosed in Excel.

However, on the other hand, there is no evidence that it should be published as a PDF, so it is also necessary to pay attention to the position that it is correct to disclose it in 'Excel' if the public wants it.

There are probably no people who will be dissatisfied with the publication of the Official Gazette in Excel, right?


[Disclosed] Property Details of Government & National Assembly Public Service Ethics Committee in 2022


[Excel Link - Click]


▶ Disclosure of property details of the Government Public Service Ethics Committee in 2022 ▶ Disclosure of property details

of


the National Assembly Public Service Ethics Committee in 2022



We convert all publicly available PDFs of property details into CSV format and disclose them transparently.



The above excel file is useful for extracting only paddy fields, fields, and orchard fields owned by high-ranking public officials and analyzing and exploring the details of illegalities and tricks of high-ranking public officials, such as the violation of the Farmland Act, the percentage of direct descendants or descendants refusal to notify, and those with multiple houses in the metropolitan area and unlisted stocks. can be utilized.



Written by: Bae Yeo-Woon