CONTRIBUTION 10 years of Korea-UNDP cooperation on integrity and road ahead
Jung Il-yeon, chairperson of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission
The level of social trust within a country is closely linked to its level of integrity. Corruption creates enormous social costs by undermining the foundations of public systems, deepening inequality and hindering the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations. To address these challenges, the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) signed a memorandum of understanding in 2016 and have since shared Korea’s anti-corruption policies and institutional experiences with the international community.
Over the past decade, the SDG Partnership Programme of the two institutions has evolved beyond a conventional aid-based model into a practical cooperation framework that supports meaningful institutional improvements in partner countries. Korea’s Comprehensive Integrity Assessment, Corruption Impact Assessment, the Clean Portal — a digital platform for reporting corruption and public interest violations — and systems for protecting and compensating whistleblowers have been adapted to the administrative environments of 14 partner countries and are now being utilized.
Korea’s Comprehensive Integrity Assessment, which systematically measures the integrity levels of public institutions and encourages continuous improvement, has produced meaningful results in several countries. Uzbekistan strengthened its implementation framework by linking the assessment results with the responsibility of institutional leaders. Montenegro identified 2,900 improvement measures based on the assessment results and reflected them in revisions to its anti-corruption legislation. Sri Lanka has established more than 300 dedicated assessment units within public institutions to build a systematic integrity management framework.
The achievements of countries that introduced Korea’s Clean Portal are also noteworthy. Mongolia reduced duplicate reports by 30 percent through the advancement of its reporting platform, while Kosovo now processes 87 percent of all corruption and public interest reports through the platform. Uzbekistan has enhanced both accessibility and protection mechanisms by upgrading the platform, launching a mobile application and enacting a law protecting whistleblowers. The country has also shared these experiences with other neighboring partner countries.
The Korean government has continued to share its anti-corruption policy models with the international community while continuously pursuing institutional improvements across both the public and private sectors. These efforts have contributed to Korea’s steady improvement in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and strengthened its role as a country contributing to global anti-corruption efforts.
However, the global landscape of anti-corruption governance is facing a new turning point, distinct from the trends of the past decade. Digital transformation and the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence present opportunities to more effectively detect and prevent corruption risks, while also creating new, unprecedented challenges, including algorithmic bias, questions of responsibility and emerging forms of corruption. Without appropriate oversight and governance of these technologies, transparency and trust in public governance may instead be undermined.
Anti-corruption policies must now move beyond simply detecting and punishing corruption. They must evolve toward a new approach that embraces technological innovation while ensuring fairness and accountability. Building on the achievements of this decade-long cooperation, it is time to explore how the international community can respond to these changes together. In tandem with this, the ACRC, in cooperation with the UNDP Seoul Policy Centre, will host the International Anti-Corruption Forum in Seoul from July 2-3.
Corruption in the digital era travels fast across borders, making it difficult for any single country to address such challenges alone. This is why the international community must share experiences, exchange policy solutions and work together to develop effective responses.
The forum will bring together policymakers, experts from academia and civil society representatives from around the world to review the achievements of the past decade and discuss future anti-corruption strategies. In particular, discussions will focus on practical action plans to maximize the benefits of digital innovation while effectively managing new corruption risks.
The future of global anti-corruption governance should be built around two key principles: human-centered digital governance and an inclusive integrity ecosystem. To achieve this, transparency and accountability must be embedded throughout the digital public administration system, ethical management practices should be promoted in the private sector and open governance frameworks should be established to enable civil society and young people to participate in and monitor the policy process through digital platforms.
Integrity is an ongoing process of institutional development that requires adapting to changing risks while building social trust. The cooperation experience and achievements in improving Korea’s CPI over the past decade represent valuable assets that can contribute to shaping new global anti-corruption standards. We hope that this forum will serve as an opportunity to explore a new direction for anti-corruption cooperation suited to the digital era and further strengthen trust and solidarity within the international community.
Jung Il-yeon is the chairperson of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission.