Procurement irregularities from the eighth elected-term administration raise questions of criminal liability; Jeong Jae-ung scrutinizes spokesperson office audit
Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province appears to have followed a reversed procurement process in 2023, during the eighth elected-term administration: it awarded a sole-source contract to a specific event company after the event had already taken place, then accepted the company's project plan several days later still.
The sequence has drawn scrutiny for what observers say are potential violations of the Criminal Act, the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes and the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes.
Gangwon Provincial Assembly member Jeong Jae-ung (Chuncheon District 5, Democratic Party of Korea) raised questions Wednesday at an administrative audit of the spokesperson's office about how a startup company called Seojin — which had no track record of projects in the province — came to be awarded a sole-source contract to organize a Greater Seoul busking event marking the launch of Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province in 2023.
Jeong pressed the spokesperson's office on how it had learned of the company and on what grounds it had selected Seojin as the contracting party.
Jeong said the matter could not be treated as a problem confined to a single division within the spokesperson's office. The province, Jeong said, should examine at an institutional level what basis it used to select the contracting party, and whether other departments had similarly allowed companies to carry out work before a contract was even signed.
According to Jeong, Seojin held the event on May 19, 2023, while the province signed the contract with the company on May 25. The commencement report and project execution plan were not received until May 31 — 12 days after the event had taken place.
Jeong asked whether it was normal to hold an event first and sign a contract afterward, and questioned how the company had come to run the event before any contract was in place.
Jeong said Seojin, which the spokesperson's office had engaged through a sole-source contract in March of that year to organize the Greater Seoul busking event, was a newly registered company that had obtained its business license in 2022 and had no prior project record in the province at the time.
Jeong then asked the team leader responsible for the contract how the office had first come to know of the company and whether anyone had made an introduction, but no specific answer was given at the audit hearing.
Jeong also noted that the representative listed for Spring Concert — a company that participated in a similar Greater Seoul event two months after the first contract — shared the same name as Seojin's representative, and that the province subsequently awarded Seojin another sole-source contract, this time for the production of promotional T-shirts.
Jeong pointed out that the two contracts were labeled under different categories — "busking event" and "video production," respectively — and questioned what substantive difference existed between the actual work performed under each, asking whether the province had in effect split a single project into separate contracts to circumvent procurement thresholds.
Jeong also raised allegations about the relationship between the company's representative and the provincial administration at the time, saying the circumstances could constitute a violation of conflict-of-interest regulations and raised serious concerns about breaches of the Local Contract Act and other applicable laws.
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