Bribery Accounts for 25% of Public Officials’ Corruption
By Kim Yon-se
Staff Reporter
Taking bribes ranked second among the types of corruption committed by civil servants, accounting for 24.7 percent of the total, over the past five years.
The presidential Korea Independent Committee Against Corruption (KICAC) made public Tuesday major corruption examples of civil servants between January 2002 and June 2007, based on 446 cases handed over to investigative agencies.
The anti-corruption watchdog said one out of every four, or 110 of the 446 informants, accused public officials of receiving kickbacks.
The most frequent corruption type was budget overspending, including wasting taxpayers' money, which constituted 45.5 percent. Others include inappropriate practices at work, 22.2 percent, and neglect of duties, 4 percent.
The committee said more than half of the cases were reported to the police (27.6 percent) or prosecution (25.6 percent).
The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) looked into 22 percent of the corruption allegations and central ministries took care of 19.5 percent. Regional governments examined 5 percent.
By informants' occupation, 51.2 percent were self-employed or salaried people, followed by civil servants at 25.1 percent.
``It is necessary to promote more active internal complaint-filing by civil servants,'' the commission said in a statement.
Corruption was most rampant in Seoul, accounting for 31.5 percent of all cases; followed by Gyeonggi Province, 16.9 percent; and Busan, 6.1 percent.
Since it was launched on Jan. 25, 2002, the KICAC has supervised nationwide anti-corruption campaigns pursuant to the Anticorruption Act of Korea enacted on July 24, 2001.
Anti-corruption has become a top national agenda item since former President Kim Dae-jung took office in 1998 in the midst of the Asian financial crisis.
The public sector's transparency score has inched up in the past year, but transparency levels as perceived by Koreans and foreigners are still not satisfactory in spite of continuous, comprehensive government reform.
The government aims to rank within the 30 most transparent countries by 2010 in the annual worldwide evaluation conducted by Transparency International (TI). TI is an international nongovernmental organization committed to fighting corruption.