Still slinging mud over Jamboree responsibility

The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) must play its due role as a state agency to find who’s responsible for the disaster. T

A full meeting of the Public Administration and Security Committee of the National Assembly ended only 26 minutes after it convened Wednesday without any questions being raised from lawmakers from both sides of the aisle over who’s responsible for the shameful fiasco of the 2023 World Scout Jamboree in Saemangeum, North Jeolla. The meeting came to a halt after a ferocious partisan battle over whether to bring in North Jeolla Governor Kim Kwan-young, who served as chairman of the executive committee of the international event.

After the Democratic Party (DP) refused to accept the demand from the governing People Power Party (PPP) that the governor from the DP attend the meeting, PPP lawmakers stormed out of the room. Interior Minister Lee Sang-min, who was supposed to answer questions about government measures against possible downpours during the event, also didn’t attend the meeting. Instead, both parties were engrossed in accusing the other for the debacle of the Jamboree.

Governor Kim cannot avoid his accountability for the mess at the camp site on the reclaimed tidal flat. He should have appeared in the committee meeting to answer questions from legislators. But he didn’t. In a farcical development, the two parties are still bent on shifting the responsibility to each other even though preparations for the event overlapped both the previous and current administrations.

The National Assembly must hurry to find exactly what went wrong from the start by summoning all related parties, including Kim Hyun-sook, the minister of gender equality and family in charge of the event. But she didn’t appear at the meeting even after provoking controversy by saying, “Korea demonstrated its ability to respond to a crisis.” Gov. Kim also irked the people by attributing it to an “overblown crisis being posted on social media by scouts from Day One.” The legislature must do its fair share so as not to repeat the unbecoming practice of punishing low-level officials without holding any high-level officials accountable, just like in the aftermath of the deadly crush in Itaewon last year.

The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) must play its due role as a state agency to find who’s responsible for the disaster. The BAI pledged to look into all the process from hosting the event to closing it. The agency is expected to probe all the stakeholders, including the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. It must find out what resulted in the dirty restrooms, the ill preparations for the scorching heatwave and the substandard meals for the teenagers.

The BAI must examine the way politicians and local governments secure a massive budget needed to build local infrastructure by hosting international events. Wasting tax on large-scale projects unrelated to the event must be fixed. The agency must help prevent such a mishap.