Police Decide Not to Prosecute Former Statistics Korea Chief Kang Shin-wook on 'Statistics Manipulation Allegations'

by Lee Jieun

Published 05 Apr.2024 10:34(KST)

The police have decided not to prosecute former Statistics Korea Commissioner Kang Shin-wook, who was accused of manipulating income statistics.

Kang Shin-wook, Former Commissioner of Statistics Korea [Image Source=Yonhap News]

On the 5th, the Anti-Corruption and Public Crime Investigation Unit of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency announced that it had decided not to prosecute Kang, who was accused of abuse of authority, falsification of official documents, and violation of the Statistics Act, citing "no charges."

The police stated, "There is no evidence to prove the accuser's claim that the documents were falsified," and judged that "since there was no fact that the figures of the statistics were arbitrarily changed before the statistics were published, it does not meet the elements of the violation of the Statistics Act."

Earlier, the civic group Committee for the Protection of the Livelihood of Ordinary People accused former Commissioner Kang of deliberately reducing the proportion of low-income groups in the sample group of the 2018 Household Trends Survey, thereby distorting the statistics to make it appear as if income polarization had improved, and reported him to the police.

Former Commissioner Kang is currently on trial after the Daejeon District Prosecutors' Office indicted him without detention last month on charges of preparing a false press release related to the 2019 non-regular employment statistics survey.

The prosecution indicted 11 figures from the Moon Jae-in administration, including former Blue House Policy Chiefs Kim Soo-hyun and Kim Sang-jo, and former Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Kim Hyun-mi, on charges of manipulating major national statistics.