The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) has effectively denied a request for parental leave submitted by an auditor who is currently under investigation for allegedly leaking military secrets related to the "West Sea public official killing incident."

According to the BAI and political circles on July 18, the board recently decided to grant only a partial approval of the parental leave request filed by Auditor A.

Auditor A had been on "study leave" in the United Kingdom under the public official long-term overseas training program, which ended on June 30. Ahead of the scheduled return, the auditor applied for an additional six months of parental leave.

However, the BAI ruled that the request did not meet the criteria for parental leave under the State Public Officials Act, which requires the leave to be "necessary for raising a child," and limited the leave to July 17.

It is reported that the BAI suspects the primary motive behind the leave request is not child-rearing, but rather an attempt to evade ongoing investigations and questioning.

Auditor A was previously reported to authorities in November of last year on charges of leaking military secrets in violation of the Military Secret Protection Act.

The BAI stated that Auditor A was also involved in the audit regarding the "statistics manipulation allegations" during the Moon Jae-in administration and is currently a subject of investigation by the board's internal task force (TF).

In response, Park Sung-hoon, chief spokesperson for the People Power Party, criticized the move, stating, "This is an act of strangling a public official and effectively holding their child-rearing hostage simply because they properly carried out an audit on the previous administration."

He added, "Parental leave is a mandatory requirement that an agency head cannot arbitrarily deny," and vowed, "We will uncover the truth behind this situation to ensure that public officials who performed their duties legitimately do not become victims of the current administration's political retaliation."

(Photo: Yonhap News)