President Lee Jae-myung on Wednesday urged his cabinet members to guard against being absorbed by bureaucratic organizational logic, saying "if the commander is red and the bureaucratic organization is gray, you must work to make it red from head to toe."
At the emergency economic review meeting and cabinet meeting held at the Blue House, President Lee compared career civil servants to the robot "Taekwon V" from the Korean animated series. Elected officials are the head of Taekwon V, while career civil servants are the limbs, he explained. "If the commander is red and the bureaucratic organization is gray, you must work to make it red from head to toe," he said. "But in reality, the gray pushes upward and one day the red has turned gray."
President Lee pointed out that "the civil servants around you are such experts with their own logic that when you talk to them, everything they say seems right." He added, "In the end, the people installed red, or blue, but later you find that gray has infiltrated everything and it has turned murky."
"That's just how it is. Once you're in there, it's difficult," he continued. "You have to wage ideological struggle, logical struggle, and power struggle."
President Lee emphasized that ministers must "constantly study and explore what the people—the source of our power—want, endure the pressure pushing up from below, and push it back down."
"To do that requires enormous energy and passion. It doesn't work well as time passes. It seems like you shouldn't do this for too long either," he said. "I too am making tremendous efforts not to turn gray, not relying solely on your reports every day."
When Prime Minister Kim Min-seok joked, "If you lectured on democratic theory regarding elected officials and bureaucracy, you could make some money," President Lee laughed and added, "This might get me kicked out."
