By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
More than 19,000 ineligible applicants, including about 2,500 public servants and employees of state-run agencies, received subsidies meant to help cushion poor rice growers against the opening of the market between 2005 and 2008, according to a government report Friday.
Eleven of the illicit beneficiaries are high-ranking officials from the Korea Communications Commission, the Rural Development Administration, the Ministry of Unification, the Ministry of National Defense and others, the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries reported.
The Board of Audit and Inspection made public a report after a months-long investigation into the case that was first uncovered last October.
The state auditor conducted a full-scale probe into all 1.3 million recipients and found that 1.5 percent of them, or 19,242, claimed the money under false pretenses.
The government plans to hold those illegal rice subsidy recipients accountable and retrieve the money, a government official said.
``About 4.4 trillion won has been spent under the subsidy system since it was established four years ago and the government plans to retrieve 14.3 billion won of it,'' said the official at the Office of the Prime Minister, after a policy co-ordination meeting on the issue between relevant agencies. The meeting was presided over by Prime Minister Han Seung-soo.
``The government will toughen requirements and punishment in enforcing the rice subsidy system,'' the official said.
Last October, Lee Bong-wha, then vice minister for health, welfare and family affairs, resigned after admitting she had received a subsidy to grow rice on land she owned but did not actually farm.
She was the first high-profile casualty of the rice subsidy scandal. Reports said in 2007 alone, at least 168 billion won in government subsidies went to as many as 170,000 non-farmers, including up to 4,600 civil servants, as well as lawmakers.
Subsidies for rice were introduced in 2005 with the aim of cushioning rice farmers from the opening of the Korean market to foreign imports. Under the scheme, only farmers that actually farm the land are eligible to receive subsidies, rather than the owners of the rice paddies.