ACRC Will Improve Institutions to Tackle Structural Corruption and Injustice

- To Push Forward with Institutional Improvement to Prevent Public Budget Waste in Various Subsidy Programs and Increase Fairness in Hiring Process, among others -

(8 February 2021, ACRC)

The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (Chairperson Jeon Hyun-Heui, ACRC) has prioritized implementation tasks to address structural corruption, such as granting and receiving privileges, forming collusive ties, and wasting public budget, that has continued even under the pandemic, and to help overcome the crisis, and will initiate efforts toward institutional improvement in full gear.

One of the mandates of the Commission is to carry out "institutional improvement" where it advises all the public institutions that are involved in corruption and inconvenience that the people feel to improve on unreasonable institutions, and follows up on their implementation progress.

In particular, ACRC's requests for institutional improvement has high acceptance rates* thanks to its bottom-up approach where the voices of the people and in the field are reflected based on the review of different reports, complaints and examinations. Meanwhile, the Commission’s institutional improvement efforts complement the areas that have been remained unaddressed as a result of the top-down approach in the implementation of the legacy policies.

* The ACRC has made a total of 916 requests for institutional improvement since its inception in 2008 and until 2020, and the rate of acceptance by concerned public agencies during the same period is 95.3%.

Moreover, the Commission prevents and relieves social conflicts and negative impacts with the collaboration system where opinions of the public agency in charge of the issue, experts and stakeholders are reflected; and joint investigation of the issue between relevant government institutions is conducted before finalizing on an improvement plan.

For example, as broker commissions in real estate trade are rising along with the hikes in housing prices, there have been 3,370 civil complaints and suggestions posted on e-People and 531 petitions on the Cheong Wa Dae website regarding the brokerage fee in the last two years, demonstrating high interest and many requests on the issue from the public. Given this, the ACRC is firsthand carrying out efforts to improve the institution.

The Commission this year will focus on improving institutions to strengthen the social safety net regarding livelihoods and medicine, among others, to overcome the crisis posed by COVID-19, and push ahead with addressing the corruption areas that have been left behind in an effort to restore the public's confidence by enhancing transparency in the administration and public finance. The following is the ACRC's priority tasks to implement in 2021 that include enhancing transparency in subsidizing eco-friendly vehicles and addressing waste of the public budgets.

< Priority tasks to implement in 2021 to address corruption and injustice and strengthen the social safety net >

The ACRC Chairperson Jeon Hyun-Heui stated that "structural corruption, such as violations, privileges, and waste of public budget, that still exist in our society will ultimately erode public's trust in the government and degrade values in communities. We will continue to raise the CPI rating by improving on the structural corruption from the people's perspective."