The Integrity Index of the Korean public sector in 2010 scored 8.44 points, slightly down from 8.51 points last year. The Integrity Index is a composite of the External Integrity Index and the Internal Integrity Index, which stood at 8.62 and 7.96 points respectively this year. The integrity scores are represented on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 perceived to have low levels of corruption.

These results are based on a survey of a total of 226,855 people in Korea, commissioned by the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC).

Since 2002, the ACRC has gauged the levels of "external integrity" by conducting a survey of the citizens who had firsthand experience of the service of the public organizations subject to the survey. The survey items include experience and perceptions of corruption, transparency in work procedures, and accountability of public officials.

The ACRC started to assess the levels of "internal integrity" as well from 2007 by surveying the employees of public organizations with regard to organizational culture and internal operation such as human resources management and budgeting.

The ACRC attributed the small decrease in the Integrity Index to the fact that the number of the public organizations subject to the survey substantially increased to 711 from 478 in the previous year. The number of public corporations whose composite integrity levels were measured totaled 231, up by more than ten times from last year.

According to the ACRC, the organizations that were first covered by the integrity assessment are responsible for the drop in the composite integrity scores as they have relatively low levels of will and efforts to address corruption.

Additionally, while the levels of "external integrity" are on a yearly increase, low scores for "internal integrity," especially in the criteria such as human resources management and superiors' instruction, contributed to declining the overall integrity levels.

In this year's integrity assessment, the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs, Seoul Metropolitan Government, Jeju-do Province Office of Education, and Korea Electric Power Corporation topped the list of the most transparent organizations. And it was these organizations that had high scores in the Anti-Corruption Initiatives Assessment (AIA) this year as well. The AIA is another assessment mechanism of the ACRC designed to evaluate the anti-corruption efforts and systems of public organizations. The correlation between the results of the two assessments indicates that the leaders' will and anti-corruption efforts are arguably the main factors determining an organization's overall level of integrity.

The results of the ACRC's integrity assessment will be incorporated into the performance evaluations of local governments and education authorities made by the Ministry of Public Administration and Security and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology respectively.

The ACRC will request the organizations with low integrity levels to submit plans to improve integrity and continuously monitor how they follow up on their plans. Considering that the rate of "undue instruction by superiors" has increased compared to the previous year, the ACRC plans to step up training of high-level officials and encourage public organizations to assess integrity of individual officials on their own.

The ACRC commissioned Hankook Research and Korea Research Center to carry out a telephone survey for the external integrity assessment and an online survey for the internal integrity assessment over the past three months.  The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.02 percent with a 95 percent level of confidence.