President Moon Fires Government Statistician Because of Poor Economic Numbers

So what do you do as President when you don’t like the economic statistics?  You fire the person giving you the statistics and replace them with someone who will give you statistics you prefer:

The Moon Jae-in government is facing backlash for replacing the head of its economic statistics agency, whose reports have shown the economy spiraling downward amid hikes in the minimum wage and the government’s income-led growth strategy.

On Monday, lawmakers from opposition parties criticized the Blue House decision on Sunday to replace the Statistics Korea commissioner.

Floor leader of the Liberty Korea Party (LKP) Kim Sung-tae said the person that should be replaced is not the head of Statistics Korea but Moon’s top economic adviser Jang Ha-sung, one of the architects of the income-led growth strategy.

“It’s like scolding a person who shouted ‘fire’ instead of the person who started the blaze,” said the LPK floor leader Kim.

Ham Jin-gyu, head of the LKP policy committee, stressed that the sacking threatens the independence of the statistics agency.

“Statistics Korea is not a department that sets up policy but rather announces statistics,” Ham said. “It’s worrying to think of what future statistics releases will be, considering that the Statistics Korea commissioner is changed just because they are not happy [with the statistics showing the state of the economy].”

On Sunday, the Blue House announced it was replacing the commissioner of Statistics Korea, Hwang Soo-kyeong. This came as a surprise since she only served 13 months in the job, considerably shorter than the average two years of her predecessors.

There is widespread speculation that Hwang lost her job due to the recent unfavorable reports including the worst jobs report in eight and half years and several reports describing a widening income gap between the rich and poor.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but to make this look even worse is the fact that one of the few women in the ROK government was fired and replaced with a male.  It will be interesting to see how much the statistics change.