Lee Ju-seong, the Commissioner of National Tax Service (NTS), all of a sudden handed in his resignation. His action draws attention due to the power of the former commissioners and the extraordinary role given to them. He is the 15th commissioner since the establishment of the NTS in 1966, but this form of resignation is without precedents. Seven out of the 14 commissioners before Lee were promoted to be ministers, implying how easily those in this position gained trust from the president. Interestingly most of them were appointed as the ministers of Construction or ministers of Construction & Transportation.
The first commissioner, Lee Nak-seon, was assigned the task of raising the tax income. Being a man of military origins, he set the world on fire by announcing the new goal of tax income, which was formerly about 40 billion won annually, to be 70 billion won. He achieved this goal of raising tax revenue by 66.5 percent and hit 70 billion won mark by giving encouragement to his workers.
The former president Park Jeong-hee commemorated the achievement by numbering Commissioner Lees car plate 700. This is the story of the time when the government was in desperate need of financial source for the five-year economic development plan.
The group of commissioners with military backgrounds includes the 2nd commissioner Oh Jeong-geun, the 3rd Goh Jae-il, the 5th, Ahn Mu-hyeok, and the 6th Seong Yong-uk. Oh is a member of the loyal faction who crossed the Han River Bridge as a marine commander during the 5.16 military coup that pushed president Park into power, and was the prospective candidate for the head of the Presidential Security Service after his term. Goh is famous for having stressed the commanding power and specialty of his workers during the long years of his office, which lasted for five years and eight months. Goh thought highly of his workers who was talented at briefing and made the controversial selections and promotions of Lee Geun-young of the Yesan District Tax Office and Chu Gyeong-seok of the Iri District Tax Office. Lee later became the president of the Financial Supervisory Service, and Chu the 8th commissioner of NTS.
Ahn Mu-hyeok and Seong Yong-uk were sentenced to prison for raising illegal election funds in the 1987 presidential election. At the time of the election, Ahn was the commissioner of National Security Planning Agency and Seong the commissioner of NTS. The 10th commissioner Im Chae-ju was also imprisoned for having led the illegal raising of election funds through the tax whip incident. People often say that taxes and death are the two awesome things that human beings can never avoid Those who have gone through tax investigations say that the tax officers are as horrifying as hell ruler Yama. What could be the unspeakable tale behind Commissioner Lees sudden resignation from such a horrifying position?
Kim Chung-sik, Editorial Writer, skim@donga.com