President Yoon Suk Yeol lambasted the previous Moon Jae-in government Monday, comparing it to a business cooking books on the verge of insolvency.
Yoon made the remarks during a dinner at a workshop for ruling People Power Party lawmakers in Incheon, west of Seoul.
"(The Moon government) carried out a lot of projects, but if you look at them closely one by one, all of their accounting has been manipulated," he said.
"If we hadn't been able to take back power in the last presidential election, I wonder what would have happened to this country."
Yoon said the country's finances were in a dire state, maybe due to projects recklessly carried out by the Moon administration just to win votes during elections.
Yoon blasted the opposition Democratic Party, saying its "preposterous" thinking about the future of the nation has made cooperative politics impossible.
"We need to set a firm direction on how to lead the country even if it's between just the ruling party and the government," he said.
Source: Yonhap News Agency