Anti-Corruption and Integrity Outlook 2024 – Country Notes: Korea

Contextual factors

 

State structure	Executive power	Legislative system	Legal system
Unitary	Presidential	Unicameral	Civil law

Strategy and institutions on anti-corruption and public integrity

Korea's strategic framework, the Five-Year Comprehensive Anti-Corruption Plan 2018-2022, identifies four strategic areas: i) establishing stricter integrity standards; ii) establishing a system for the prevention of conflict of interest among public officials; iii) eradicating abuse of power in the public sector; iv) eradicating corruption in recruitment processes of public institutions. Across the four areas, the Plan sets 15 objectives to mitigate corruption risks in the public sector.

Korea has central independent bodies responsible for coordinating activities on anti-corruption issues (Anti-corruption & Civil Rights Commission), for ensuring access to public information (Information Disclosure Council), and for monitoring political finance (National Election Commission).

However, Korea does not have a central body responsible for monitoring lobbying practices, nor a central harmonisation unit for internal control and internal audit, but its supreme audit institution (Board of Audit and Inspection) evaluates internal audit practices of the public sector.

Overview

 

Greatest strengths	Areas to improve
Transparency of public information - implementation	Lobbying
Implementation of audit recommendations	Conflict of interest
Anti-corruption strategy	Corruption risk management and audit - implementation

Anti-corruption strategy

Korea fulfils 53% of criteria on the quality of the strategic framework and 60% on implementation of the strategy in practice, compared to the OECD average of 45% and 36%, respectively.

Korea's anti-corruption strategic framework establishes objectives in human resources and public financial management, to mitigate integrity risks in the public and private sectors. The strategy is informed by the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention and the UN Anti-Corruption Convention, and employs data on public integrity from international organisations and household surveys. The strategic framework also includes an action plan with lead organisations for each objective, monitoring and evaluation arrangements.

Still, the strategic framework did not undergo public consultations and only 57% of the planned activities were implemented.

Corruption risk management and audit

As measured against OECD standards on risk management, which includes internal control and internal audit, Korea fulfils 56% of criteria for regulation, and 12% of criteria for implementation, compared to the OECD average of 67% and 33% respectively.

The regulatory framework defines managerial responsibilities for the implementation of internal control and internal audit, and ensures internal auditors have autonomy and unrestricted access to political staff and senior civil servants. However, Korea does not fulfil any criteria related to the risk management framework. In terms of implementation, although not all internal audit units include integrity specific objectives in their internal audit plans, Korea is a top performer in terms of coverage of internal audit and implementation of internal audit recommendations, as 98% of central budget organisations are covered by internal audit, 98% of audit recommendations are implemented, and 98% of national budget organisations have been internally audited in the past five years.

Lobbying

As measured against OECD standards on lobbying, Korea does not fulfil any criteria on lobbying for neither regulation or implementation, whereas OECD countries fulfil on average 38% of criteria for regulation and 35% for implementation.

Conflict of interest

As measured against OECD standards on conflict of interest, Korea fulfils 56% of criteria for regulations, but 0% for implementation, compared to the OECD average of 76% and 40% respectively.

Ministers, MPs, high-ranking judges and senior civil servants are legally required to submit interest declarations. However, in practice, there is no centralised data currently available to fully monitor these declarations over the last 5 years, as the law requiring these public officials to disclose their interests only came in to force in May 2022.

Political finance

As measured against OECD standards on political finance, Korea fulfils 60% of criteria for regulation, and 43% of the criteria for implementation, compared to the OECD average of 73% and 58% respectively.

Korea bans contributions to political parties from foreign states, foreign enterprises and state-owned enterprises, but does not apply a complete ban on anonymous donations (despite imposing a minimum threshold above which donations have to be registered). Although all political parties have submitted annual and election campaign financial reports, the reports are not centralised on a single online platform.

Transparency of public information

As measured against OECD standards on public information, which includes access to information and open data, Korea fulfils 56% of criteria for regulation and 73% for implementation, compared to the OECD average of 67% and 62% respectively.

Korea has a high level of proactive disclosure of public information. Publicly available datasets include asset declarations of top civil servants, members of the judiciary and national elected officials, government sessions agendas, and the announcements and results of public tenders.