The Ministry of Science and ICT conducted a comprehensive audit of the recent allegations against the Korea Federation of Science and Technology Societies (KOFST), including favoritism toward acquaintances, accompanying family members on overseas trips, and personal use of corporate credit cards, and notified KOFST to take disciplinary action against Chairman Lee Tae-sik and others.
According to the science and technology sector on the 15th, KOFST received the results of the comprehensive audit from the Ministry of Science and ICT on the 13th. KOFST is the agency that distributes government funding to academic organizations in the domestic science and technology field and receives budget support from the Ministry of Science and ICT.
This audit was conducted for the first time in eight years since 2016. The investigation also looked into the allegations of accompanying family members on official overseas trips and personal use of a corporate credit card and favoritism toward acquaintances during events.
Chairman Lee is reported to have been accompanied by his wife, daughter, and granddaughter during business trips to the Korea-U.S. Science and Technology Conference (UKC) held in San Francisco last August and the Korea-Europe Science and Technology Academic Conference (EKC) in 2023. There are also allegations that he entrusted some projects to acquaintance corporations without public bidding under the pretext of cost reduction or excessively used business promotion expenses. Earlier, during a press meeting in February, Chairman Lee explained that the business trip costs were covered by personal funds and that the allegations of favoritism toward acquaintances were not violations of regulations.
According to the Ministry of Science and ICT audit, some of the raised allegations have been confirmed. However, unlike employees, KOFST does not have regulations to discipline executives, so instead of the usual recommendations for serious or minor disciplinary action from the audit, a reprimand was issued based on violations of the employee code of conduct.
A KOFST official said, "We are currently reviewing the audit results internally and can file for retrial within a month, so we are discussing countermeasures," adding, "The decision to appeal will be based on the results, and we expect to have an outcome as early as next week."