Recent announcements by the Board of Audit and Inspection and news of prosecutorial indictments have the media buzzing. This stems from suspicions that during the previous administration, the Statistics Korea’s real estate and employment indicators were manipulated to suit the preferences of those in power. Looking back at the situation then, the U.S. quantitative easing policy flooded the world with astronomical amounts of dollars, and that liquidity flowed into asset markets, causing a real estate bubble and a cryptocurrency boom. It was a bizarre period when the phrase “Cash is Trash” was accepted as gospel. South Korea was no exception to this global trend. Asset values skyrocketed, and the market overheated.

Yet, the government at the time released statistics claiming South Korea’s real estate growth rate was lower than other countries, which contradicted people’s actual experience of prices and caused confusion. Adding to this, the gap between the government’s announcement of record-high employment rates and the reality on the ground raised doubts about the reliability of the statistics. At the center of the controversy lies ‘income-led growth’. In the first quarter of 2018, when the Household Income and Expenditure Survey revealed a sharp decline in income for the bottom 20% income bracket, the government’s approval rating plummeted. This led to the unprecedented dismissal of the head of Statistics Korea. The new Commissioner’s pledge to “repay the public with good statistics” has now, five years later, been called into question again by the Board of Audit and Inspection’s findings. While I don’t believe it amounts to systematic data manipulation, I note the possibility that political intent may have influenced the design of statistical sampling or the interpretation process. I suspect this reflects the impatience of the core power structure, eager to discredit the predecessor who reported ‘bad statistics’ and conceal the dismal employment indicators of July 2018 (a mere 5,000 increase in employment).

Legally scrutinizing the past administration’s mistakes may seem wasteful. Yet confronting the stark reality of the meager statistics hidden behind the rosy slogan of ‘income-led growth’ leaves only a bitter taste. Ultimately, that period will be remembered as one where income disparities widened to unprecedented levels, and ordinary citizens and the middle class suffered the most amid the ‘all-in’ and ‘debt-fueled investment’ frenzies. Things must change now. We cannot rely solely on government-led short-term expansions of elderly employment programs; real private-sector hiring must increase. A healthy investment ecosystem must be fostered where capital from the top income brackets flows not into real estate speculation, but into promising companies and startups with abundant growth potential. I too pledge to contribute to creating such a social atmosphere, rising at 5 a.m. today to write my blog and begin work.