"Serious 'Privilege Demands and Power Abuse'... Anti-Corruption Commission Rates Local Council Integrity at 68.5 Points"

Significantly Lower Level Compared to Other Agencies
Conflict of Interest Job Avoidance Not Observed
15.51% of Public Officials Experienced Corruption and Power Abuse

The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission announced on the 4th that the comprehensive integrity evaluation conducted on local councils (17 metropolitan councils and 75 basic city councils) resulted in a total score of 68.5 points. This is significantly lower than the score of administrative agencies and public-related organizations (80.5 points), revealing that 15 out of 100 local government officials and employees of affiliated institutions experienced corruption or abuse of power.

Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission. / Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

Since 2013, the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission has developed a separate model to deeply assess the integrity level of local councils, which are in close contact with citizens' daily lives, and has been measuring their integrity. This evaluation comprehensively assessed the integrity level of local councils by combining ▲survey results (perceived integrity) from a total of 34,000 respondents including 20,000 local residents, 7,000 job-related public officials, and 7,000 organizations and experts ▲evaluation results of anti-corruption efforts carried out by each council over one year (effort in integrity) ▲and the occurrence status of corruption cases within the institutions.

Among institutions, four received the highest comprehensive integrity grade of 1: Gyeongsangbuk-do Council, Gangwon Donghae City Council, Gyeonggi Dongducheon City Council, and Jeonnam Gwangyang City Council. Conversely, eight institutions, including Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province Council and Gyeonggi Provincial Council, received the lowest grade of 5. The perceived integrity rated by local government officials, employees of affiliated institutions, and council secretariat officials was generally low. The legislative activity domain, which measures the degree to which work is handled transparently and fairly without solicitation or requests during legislative activities, scored 65.6 points, and the council operation domain, which measures the appropriateness of budget execution and organization/personnel management, scored 68.3 points?both remaining in the 60-point range.

Comprehensive Integrity by Institution Type.
[Photo by Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission]

The corruption experience rate directly experienced by local government officials, employees of affiliated institutions, and council secretariat officials reached 15.51%, a serious level compared to the corruption experience rate in administrative agencies and public-related organizations. Specifically, the most frequent cases were ▲abuse of power such as unfair demands in work processing (16.33%) ▲unfair involvement in selecting contractors (9.96%) ▲unfair intervention for preferential treatment (8.36%) ▲requests for information for private gain (5.05%).

The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission plans to immediately implement a ‘Special Anti-Corruption Measures for Local Councils.’ To eradicate local entrenched cartels that burden citizens' lives, it will intensively inspect violations of the Code of Conduct, the Conflict of Interest Prevention Act, and the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act, as well as the operation status of related systems. A Commission official emphasized, “Attention must be paid to the low awareness among local council members regarding the duty to avoid conflicts of interest and the fact that inappropriate behaviors such as demands for preferential treatment are serious obstacles to improving integrity.”