South Korea's state auditor finds evidence of coercion and misconduct in previous administration's audits

SEOUL, Aug. 27 (Yonhap) -- Threats, coercion and other unlawful means were used when the state auditor conducted an audit during the previous Yoon Suk Yeol government into suspicions involving the preceding Moon Jae-in administration, including alleged manipulation of real estate statistics, officials said Thursday.

The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) announced the results of an inspection into suspicions that humiliating and menacing remarks and coercive tactics were employed during the audits conducted in 2022-2023 when ousted former President Yoon was in office.

These audits had targeted the Moon administration's alleged manipulation of real estate statistics and its handling of North Korea's 2020 killing of a South Korean civil servant drifting in the Yellow Sea.

According to the findings, the BAI's team in charge of the statistics manipulation case made threatening remarks while questioning officials from the land ministry and the presidential office under the previous Moon administration, such as their public service careers "will be over" unless they cooperate with the audit, and "this audit targets the presidential policy chief and land minister."

An audit official even fabricated remarks that a land ministry official did not make during the questioning that housing statistics were distorted as ministry officials exercised pressure on the real estate monitoring agency, and put the false remarks into the investigation record.

Some questioning sessions were extended past midnight in violation of human rights, while a series of violations were made in the course of forensic analysis of mobile phones, including forcing officials to consent to digital forensics, extracting private personal data, and creating replica phones without due process.

The BAI said it has filed criminal complaints against nine officials on charges of abuse of authority, obstruction of official duties and falsification of official documents, while demanding dismissal and other disciplinary measures for 10 officials.

"We take it very seriously that severe abuses of audit authority have happened, including coercive audits, evidence manipulation and violation of privacy and the right to self-determination on personal information," the BAI said. "We will immediately begin overhauling our systems and conduct staff training to prevent such incidents from happening again."