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South Korea new President Lee Myung-bak
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If South Korea's bureaucrats are playing golf, chances are they are not working hard enough, President Lee Myung-bak's spokesman quoted him as saying on Monday.
Lee, a former construction boss, is a widely known workaholic who has started work at 7:30 a.m local time every day since his landslide victory on December 19 election.
Bureaucrats in his government, which was launched just two weeks ago, have been showing signs ofburnout.
"We're starting a meeting at 7:30 a.m. so you're thinking maybe it'll be like this for the next five years," Lee said on Monday before a briefing from the Ministry of Strategy and Finance. "Government workers are supposed to be servants.
"Servants are supposed to get up before the masters, who are in this case the people of this country. When you have servants getting up later than the masters, you're not doing your job right."
Lee's chief of staff, Yu Woo-ik, has pleaded with his boss to have a later start for the working day due to complaints from staff members, but to no avail.
Yu has now all but banned golf for the presidential staff, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
"There is no ban of that kind," presidential spokesman Lee Dong-kwan said. "That's the kind of thing that was done under authoritarian regimes," Lee said, but quoted the president as saying: "You're working hard and there's never enough time. It would be a feat to be playing golf."
(Agencies)
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韓國總統李明博的發言人于本周一援引他的話說，如果政府官員還有時間去打高爾夫，那他們工作可能還不夠努力。
曾任某建筑公司總裁的李明博是個公認的工作狂，他于去年12月19日以壓倒性優勢當選韓國總統后，每天早上7點半就開始工作。
李明博的新內閣剛成立兩周，內閣官員們已經開始有些招架不住了。
李明博在本周一的企劃財政部報告會開始前說：“今天我們7點半開始開會，所以大家一定在想今后的五年可能都是這樣。政府工作人員本應該是‘仆人’。”
“仆人理應比主人起得早，我們的主人是國民。如果仆人比主人起得還晚，那這個仆人就不稱職了。”
由于一些官員抱怨上班太早，李明博的總統秘書長柳佑益懇請總統推遲上班時間，但沒有得到應允。
據韓國聯合通訊社報道，柳佑益現在幾乎已禁止總統府工作人員打高爾夫。
總統發言人李東宮說：“政府并沒有頒布這樣的禁令，那是專制政體下才會有的事。”李東宮援引總統的話說：“你如果努力工作，肯定會覺得時間不夠用，那么打高爾夫就是一件很奢侈的事了。”
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（英語點津編輯）
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