Moon orders publication of white paper on lessons learned from egg scandal

President Moon Jae-in on Thursday ordered the publication of a white paper on the recent public scare over contaminated eggs, calling on the government not to make the same mistake again in ensuring public safety or dealing with such a case.

Moon's instruction came in his weekly meeting with top presidential aides, held at the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae, according to Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Park Soo-hyun.

"President Moon said we must take lessons from the incident to make sure such a case will never recur," Park told a press briefing.

"He ordered the entire course of the event to be recorded accurately and thoroughly, and publish a white paper to help find problems and identify ways to improve our counter measures," he added.

The order came three days after the president personally apologized, on behalf of the government, partly for failing to ensure food safety but also for causing confusion in dealing with the food scare.

Food and Drug Safety Minister Ryu Young-jin came under heavy fire after he insisted no locally produced eggs had been found to be contaminated even before the ministry completed testing any significant amount of eggs here.

As of Monday, eggs from 52 local farms have been confirmed to be contaminated with toxic chemicals, including fipronil.

Acknowledging apparent mistakes in dealing with what it called a national crisis, the Cheong Wa Dae spokesman said the government will review its manual for dealing with such events.

"Separately, we decided to revise Cheong Wa Dae's own manual on its initial countermeasures in the early stage of a crisis," Park said.

Thursday's meeting also discussed ways to promote a balance between life and work for all government workers, a move aimed at reducing the overall working hours of government employees, which in turn will help create more jobs, according to the spokesman.

"The government decided to significantly reduce overtime work of government workers and set a new policy objective of having government workers use all their annual leave days," he said.

"In addition, the government plans to use the money saved by a reduction in overtime work and the use of paid leave to increase the number of workers and reduce the overall working hours," the spokesman added.

The president is seeking to limit the overall working hours to 52 hours a week, including overtime.

In 2016, an average South Korean worked 2,069 hours, 305 hours more than the average 1,764 hours of the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation, and the second highest among all OECD members.

The presidential office will set an example by forcing all its employees to use more than 70 percent of their paid leave, Park said, adding the workers will be given higher marks for using a greater number of leave days in their year-end evaluations that may lead to higher bonuses.

President Moon earlier said he planned to use all his vacation days. The spokesman said the president had 14 days of paid leave this year as his term began in May this year. Starting in 2018, the president will have 21 days per year. (Yonhap)