Gov’t to overhaul state decorations system, target awardees linked to state violence
Interior ministry officials brief reporters on the government's plan for a comprehensive review and revocation of inappropriate state honors at Government Complex Sejong, Sunday. Yonhap
The Ministry of the Interior and Safety said Monday it will conduct a comprehensive review of government honors awarded to perpetrators of state violence and unconstitutional acts, as it moves to strengthen the recovery of revoked decorations and expand public disclosure of revocation grounds.
The ministry said it will take a proactive role in identifying inappropriate awards and fully supporting revocation procedures — a shift from the previous system, in which cancellations were initiated solely upon requests from the recommending agencies.
"Revoking government honors awarded to those involved in past state violence or unconstitutional acts is a duty of the state," Interior Minister Yun Ho-jung said in a statement.
"We will find and revoke every inappropriate award so that the people can take pride in Korea's decoration system."
The ministry added it will identify retrial acquittal cases linked to past state violence — including torture and fabricated espionage accusations — and proactively encourage recommending agencies to review the relevant honors for revocation. The measure aims to address delays caused by agencies' difficulty in monitoring for retrial outcomes promptly.
To that end, the ministry said it is in talks with the Ministry of Justice, which manages retrial proceedings, and will monitor progress in ongoing comprehensive reviews of state violence-related honors being conducted by the National Police Agency and the National Intelligence Service.
In March, the ministry said it worked with the Ministry of National Defense to revoke the military merit decorations of 10 individuals who participated in a military insurrection on Dec. 12, 1979, on grounds of fabricated service records.
The ministry also plans to review whether cases involving serious workplace accidents or human rights violations meet the legal threshold for revocation under the State Decorations Act, and to request cancellations from the relevant recommending agencies.
On the physical recovery of revoked awards, the ministry said it will re-examine cases where retrieval has failed due to unknown addresses or loss of contact. A ministry official acknowledged that current law contains no compulsory mechanism to force the return of revoked decorations.
"There is no legal means of compulsion at present," a ministry official said. "I believe measures approximating compulsion must be established and we will work to develop them.”
Ministry data shows that of 791 government awards revoked between 1985 and 2025, only 260, or 32.9 percent, have been physically recovered. Over the past five years, however, 65 of 68 revoked honors were returned — a much improved recovery rate of 95.6 percent.
The ministry also said it will establish a dedicated task force, an expert advisory panel and an inter-agency consultative body of decoration officials to systematically advance revocations and institutional reforms.
It will additionally develop guidelines to publicly disclose revocation grounds within appropriate limits, balancing the public's right to information against individual privacy protections.