Recovery of Public Trust

New MOCT Minister Lee Yong-sup pledges reform to curb rising real estate prices

Minister of Construction and Transportation Lee Yong-sup said all what he said at his hearing at the National Assembly indicated the direction of his plans and policies he will push to lead the ministry.
During more than an hour-long inaugural ceremony held at the ministry's auditorium Dec. 11, the new MOCT minister said the most urgent task that the MOCT is faced with is to recover public trust to solve various problems including the stability of the real estate market.
He called on every staff of the ministry to work for reform and born again as a completely new entity, saying that public trust cannot be won for free because they would have to build it one by one through sacrifices and services.
"Conclude the decision on the improvement of apartment allocation system and deal with the rental problems with priority,"the new minister urged. He also said solving real estate problems is the most urgent issue for the ministry because it makes up the core of livelihood of the general public and the economy.
He cautioned, however, that the four major policies of the Participatory Government led by President Roh Moo-hyun including the improvement of welfare and residential conditions of the general public, increased supply, curbing speculative investment, and raising transparency should be kept in tact, while other policies should reflect market conditions and supplemented steadily.
The new MOCT minister dwelt long time on reform, correct attitudes of public servants, and personnel policies that he would push. He said reform is the sole survival strategy for achieving personal dreams and visions of organizations and urged on the employees of the ministry to always suspect the existing policies to find any problems that should be remedied and search for difficult and hard work all the time.
He also promised that personnel policies will be changed in order to lead all the staff to put in a hard work every day because he said organizational reform can't succeed without personnel policy reform. He went on to say that he plans to have each staff can work at the places that he or she would like to work by telling the personnel manager where they would like to work so that they can have passion and feel pride in work they do. But, he warned that any one who tries to make his way to other positions than those assigned to him would face harsh punishment, however.
He also warned that connections would not work under his watch, because they are the practice most counter to personnel reform. Those who try to get himself promoted through other than hard work and take advantage of their personnel connections would be deemed to have lost their competitiveness, saying he will make sure that they would not get priority in personnel matters.
The new minister, at the same time, called on each staff to give him their opinions on what kind of minister they want him to be and got their memos. He said he will read them time to time to check if he is on the right track.
In the meantime, Vice Minister Lee choon-hee is a career MOCT man who joined the Ministry soon after passing the National Civil Servant Examination. He also studied city planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States.
The vice minister during a speech at the 16th Transportation Service Award, said transportation is crucial to every day life of the people in every face of their activities, including the production of goods for the economic development.
He said he sincerely congratulates the winners of the award for their contribution to the transportation network service. As you all know our country has made a great progress in building infrastructure across the country, including roads, railroads, and aviation industry. nw

MOCT Minister Lee Yong-sup is on a tour of subway stations in Seoul.

Vice MOCT Minister
Lee Choon-hee.