Stealing the golden key and handing over bidding information... “Discipline under the Ministry of Gender Equality has been relaxed”

National Power Kim Geon "We must strengthen internal control of public institutions to prevent recurrence of similar misconduct."

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Yullip Lee = People Power Party lawmaker Kim Geon, a member of the Gender Equality and Family Committee of the National Assembly, announced on the 12th that public institutions under the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family have suffered a serious breakdown in public service discipline, with incidents of embezzlement of large sums of money and obstruction of bidding by employees occurring one after another.

Rep. Kim said this based on data received from the Korea Gender Equality Education Promotion Agency (Yangpyeongwon) and the Korea Women's Human Rights Promotion Agency under the Ministry of Gender Equality.

According to the Korea Gender Equality Promotion Agency's '2025 Specific Audit Results Report', it was revealed that Employee A had a trading company purchase golden keys as souvenirs for the event and then personally stole them.

The amount of misconduct committed by this employee related to a total of 5 companies is approximately 153.61 million won.

He has continued to commit fraud on several occasions since the second half of 2024, but the Yangpyeongwon was found to have become aware of the fact and conducted its own investigation only in October of last year.

Yangpyeongwon requested the police to investigate on November 3 last year, and held a personnel committee meeting on the 28th of the same month to dismiss the employee.

At the Korea Women's Human Rights Agency, it was revealed that employee B leaked bidding-related information to an external company while working at her former employer, the Korea Healthy Family Promotion Agency (Hangawon) under the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.

According to the Uijeongbu District Prosecutors' Office's case decision report, Mr. B was indicted without detention by the prosecution in June on charges of leaking major bidding-related information such as business plans and proposal requests to a specific company during the 2021-2022 informatization project bidding process while working at Hangawon (bidding interference).

As a result of this incident, Ms. B was dismissed while on standby status after another incident of misconduct at the Korea Women's Human Rights Promotion Agency was revealed.

Rep. Kim said, “This is a case that shows that there are serious loopholes in the internal control and management and supervision systems of public institutions,” and added, “Using this incident as an opportunity, we must strengthen the internal control of public institutions to prevent similar misconduct from recurring.”