The government has recently set up a ‘special body to counter public institutions’ corruption in personnel affairs and recruitment’ jointly with relevant ministries.

The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC, Chairperson Pak Un Jong) will actively support relevant agencies in managing and supervising the public institutions and in improving institutional frameworks thereof by analyzing, and informing of, the current state of corrupt personnel management and employment.

Above all, the ACRC will carry out an all-out examination on the entire employment process of 271 public service-related organizations that are not monitored by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance (MOSF) and the Ministry of Interior and Safety (MOIS).

Out of 1,089 public service-related organizations, the MOSF and MOIS have been supervising 330 (public institutions as specified in the Act on the Management of Public Institutions) and 488 organizations (local public enterprises as specified in the Local Public Enterprises Act and institutes invested or funded by local governments as defined in the Act on the Operation of Institutes Invested or Funded by Local Governments), respectively. The ACRC will launch a thorough inspection of other remaining public service-related organizations.

The ACRC, MOSF and MOIS will share the results of their inspections with one another and use them in formulating relevant institutional improvement measures.

 Furthermore, the ACRC has set up and been running the Integrated Recruitment Corruption Reporting Center for people to report during the special reporting period from Nov. 1^st to Dec. 30^th any corruption in employment at public institutions and public service-related organizations for the past 5 years and will give reporters monetary rewards of up to KRW 200 million.

People can report any hiring irregularities by visiting the Integrated Reporting Center at the ACRC main office or ACRC Seoul Complaints Center, or by post or via the e-People website (http://www.epeople.go.kr/english) and the ACRC website (http://www.acrc.go.kr/english).

* ‘Integrated Recruitment Corruption Reporting Center’ on the 1^st floor of the ACRC Seoul Complaints Center, Limkwang Tower, 87 Tongil-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul

‘Integrated Recruitment Corruption Reporting Center’ on the 1^st floor of the ACRC main office, Government Complex-Sejong, 20, Doum 5-ro, Sejong

For inquiries about reporting, people can call Integrated Government Call Center (#110) or Corruption & Public Interest Violation Report Center (#1398) anywhere in Korea. Reports of any unfair practices will be processed in collaboration with relevant ministries.

For instance, after verifying facts of received reports of corrupt recruitment, the ACRC will refer the case to the Board of Audit & Inspection, Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, the National Police Agency, or if necessary, supervisory institutions of reported public organizations.

 The ACRC will analyze the current status of corruption in employment to support central administrative agencies and metropolitan local governments in conducting their special examination and to formulate government-wide measures to tackle recruitment irregularities.

For the past 5 years, the ACRC has detected 432 cases of corrupt personnel affairs from the data base of corrupt public officials and has also been conducting an analysis on corruption by its type, including special hiring of relatives, fabrication of personnel-related s, non-disclosure of candidate selection factors, and improper solicitations by supervisory institutions.

Furthermore, after the expiration of the special reporting period, the ACRC will analyze its operational results, including the status of reports and handling of such reports, major types of corruption and types of relevant institutions, etc., and will also discuss areas for institutional improvement identified during the process of handling reports and analysis aforementioned with the special body to counter public institutions’ corruption in personnel affairs and recruitment to prepare for countermeasure at all levels of government through the anti-corruption policy consultation council.

 Last but not least, the ACRC will monitor the implementation by relevant public institutions of the existing recommendations for institutional improvements with regards to the corruption in personnel and recruitment and further encourage their implementation.

From 2011 to 2017, the ACRC has provided a total of 5 institutional improvement recommendations in relation to recruitment irregularities to the agencies concerned.

※ Measures for improvement in fairness of the personnel system for local public servants (Dec. 2011, MOIS), measures for rationalization of the system of offering an employment to teachers (July 2012, Ministry of Education), measures for normalizing the abnormal practices of employment by public institutions (Apr. 2014, 256 public institutions), measures for more rational recruitment and service of police assigned for special guard (Dec. 2015, National Police Agency), measures for more transparency in the process of employing temporary teachers (June 2017, Ministry of Education and Metropolitan and Provincial Offices of Education)

The ACRC plans to monitor whether the said measures have been implemented as recommended and to actively encourage non-compliance public institutions to take the recommended measures.

 Conscious of the fact that detection of corruption in personnel affairs is most effectively done through whistleblowers, the ACRC will continue to strive to eradicate all sources of corruption in personnel affairs in public institutions by more thoroughly protecting whistleblowers and to fundamentally prevent employment-related irregularities by strengthening integrity education for those responsible for personnel management in public institutions. In addition to these efforts, the ACRC will more actively join the government-wide anti-corruption efforts by effectively responding to corruption and proactively coming up with anti-corruption measures.