"Accompanying Son to Golf Leads to Promotion?"... Allegations of Corruption Arise During Sangjik Lee's Tenure as KOSME Chairman

Lee Sang-jik, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea and founder of Eastar Jet, is entering the National Assembly Communication Office on the 24th of last month to express his position regarding the Eastar Jet incident.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Eun-young] Allegations have been raised that Lee Sang-jik, an independent lawmaker, engaged in promotion corruption and retaliatory personnel actions that disregarded internal regulations during his tenure as the chairman of the Small and Medium Business Corporation (SBC). Lawmaker Cho Jung-hoon of the Transition Korea party also raised suspicions of performance manipulation in the export incubator project.

According to materials disclosed by Lawmaker Cho on the 17th, while serving as SBC chairman, Lee reportedly granted ultra-fast promotions to employees who actively cooperated with unofficial schedules, while manipulating performance evaluations to suspend or transfer those who did not comply, including assigning them to regional posts.

Unofficial schedules reportedly included accompanying Lee’s son’s golf outings. Lawmaker Cho claimed, "Employees who accompanied the chairman on overseas business trips and handled the 'aftercare' to ensure no issues appeared in the documents were unusually all promoted."

In particular, among nine business trips Lee took in 2018, an employee who accompanied him on eight trips was initially excluded from the top three candidates for promotion by the personnel committee. The candidate pool was then expanded to five and seven times the number of positions, resulting in the employee’s promotion in July of that year. This employee even performed Lee’s personal schedules while on leave.

There was also a close aide who was promoted from grade 3 to grade 1 in just one year and five months. According to personnel regulations, a minimum of three years is typically required to advance one grade at grade 3 or above. Lawmaker Cho argued this was a "quid pro quo promotion unrelated to personnel principles," but SBC stated, "Our internal review found no personnel issues."

Suspicions were also raised about manipulated performance results in the export incubator project. Lawmaker Cho claimed that the chairman gave excellent evaluations to branches with certain employees and the lowest scores to uncooperative branches.

In fact, the 2018 overseas incubator project evaluation score sheet shows that Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, ranked 18th out of 19 regions in the quantitative evaluation in 2017, but surged to first place after the qualitative evaluation was applied. Conversely, New York ranked 7th in the quantitative evaluation but dropped to 18th after the qualitative evaluation.

The SBC explained, "The high scores were simply from the qualitative evaluation and do not constitute performance manipulation," but Lawmaker Cho said, "A change of five or more levels in grade or ranking due to qualitative evaluation nullifies the quantitative indicators," adding, "At that time, Chairman Lee Sang-jik could wield personnel authority based on subjective and arbitrary evaluations by the evaluators."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.