President Lee Jae-myung recently said, "We have not taken enough care of the left." In effect, he traced his falling popularity to the departure of his traditional base of core supporters. Lee Suk-yeon, the centrist-conservative figure recruited as chairman of the National Unity Committee under the banner of national unity, was pushed out after just one year. Yet numerous opinion polls point to different causes for the decline in support for his administration: failures in economic policy such as housing and in personnel appointments, and concerns about harm to the public from the abolition of prosecutors' supplementary investigative authority. Most of these are livelihood issues. In other words, the drop in approval is not the fault of a centrist-pragmatist political line, but has come alongside the collapse of his image as a competent administrator.
In fact, the public's distrust of policy stems largely from the president's approach to governing. Lee has sought to take the initiative on sensitive policy agendas by communicating directly with the public through X, formerly Twitter. Debates over regulating owners of a single home who do not live in it, merging metropolitan local governments, restructuring the basic pension, forgiving debts of the self-employed, public purchases of land and housing, a full survey of farmland, a sugar levy and health insurance coverage for hair-loss treatments all began with the president's internet posts.
It is desirable for a president to take direct charge of major policies. The problem is that a decision-making structure is hardening in which bureaucrats simply take dictation after the president issues public instructions. The president's posts are not merely the presentation of an opinion to civil servants. They come closer to policy directives in which not even a particle can be altered. Sufficient consultation and coordination among ministries, along with policy refinement and reviews of side effects, are inevitably pushed aside. The result has been market confusion and declining trust in governance. The introduction of single-stock leveraged exchange-traded funds, which only amplified stock price volatility, largely reflects bureaucrats bending over backward to align with the administration's push to lift the domestic stock market.
The tightening of taxes on owners of a single home who do not live in it is no different. After Lee began saying in January this year that "not all single-home ownership is the same," the government hastily produced a tax revision plan. Yet even before it takes effect, side effects such as rising jeonse and monthly rent prices have grown, leaving the government scrambling to patch things up. The basic pension overhaul that Lee ordered directly, designed to give more to those at the bottom and less to those at the top, ended up half-baked, perhaps out of concern for the elderly vote. The revised Farmland Act, which took effect last month, requires that farmland be sold off by force if it is not farmed without justifiable reason. Critics say the policy ignores the reality of rural areas, where population aging has left neither people to farm the land nor buyers to purchase it.
Lee likens the civil service to Robot Taekwon V. If Cheol-su sits in the cockpit, it must act like Cheol-su; if Young-hee does, it must act like Young-hee. He also said, "Just as with Taekwon V, if you insert as the head a commander who has been delegated power by the people, and the commander is red while the bureaucratic organization is gray, then you have to make it red from head to toe." The remarks suggest he regards public officials as "soulless" components of elected power. Lee told Lee Hyoung-il, the nominee for deputy prime minister and minister of finance and economy, that "I could withdraw the nomination" if he fails to rein in prices ahead of the Chuseok holiday. The president laughed it off as "a bit of an excessive joke," but the authority of the economic policy chief has already been dragged into the dirt.
Of course, the civil service must understand the president's governing philosophy and faithfully carry out policy tasks. But German sociologist Max Weber's phrase that "bureaucrats have no soul" does not mean they should obey an administration's instructions mechanically. It means that as servants of the people, they should work according to law and procedure, expertise and fairness, and preserve the continuity of the state regardless of changes in government.
The 2024 Nobel laureates in economics cited inclusive institutions — decentralized political power, democracy, protection of private property rights and a fair competitive environment — as the backdrop to South Korea's economic development. For such institutions to function properly, the capabilities of the civil service in designing and implementing policy must also be outstanding. Assessments suggest bureaucrats' abilities have declined from the past, but as a crystallization of specialized collective knowledge they still cannot be compared with the capacity of any single individual.
Lee has repeatedly emphasized creative thinking, a spirit of challenge and innovation in the age of artificial intelligence. If top-down policy management continues as it does now, there is no way autonomy and creativity will emerge within ministries. If only compliant figures remain around him, policy confusion and market backlash will keep repeating. Before it is too late, the way the government is run must be boldly changed so that the civil service can do its job properly.
