Since democratization, South Korea has made continued efforts to eradicate corruption. Despite such hard work, Korea’s level of integrity is still low. In some aspects, the country already looks clean and transparent. However, many Korean people, businessmen and those from foreign countries still do not see South Korea as an open and ethical country. Even though the country has shown some improvements in some aspects, the overall corruption levels can still be high. This gap would narrow over time. In South Korea, however, it hasn’t changed much for the past decade, which means that the aspects that had been looked pretty nice may not that as good as they look. In other words, despite such long efforts to eliminate corruption, there still are many challenges ahead.
This study was launched in 2015, and this year is the 3rd year. The above aspects to be improved were discussed under the topic of ‘Countermeasures and Tasks for Prevention of Corrupt Practices’. In fact, various improvement plans were reviewed, focusing on the countermeasures which can strengthen some poor parts among the past efforts made to eliminate corruption. Such anti-corruption countermeasures and implementation tasks were divided into public and private sectors just as stated in the 2nd year report. The public sector was subdivided into politics & legislation, justice and administration to look back the past anti-corruption measures and set a new direction.
This study reviewed South Korea’s corruption from a general standpoint, not specifically suggesting all possible measures. Even so, the results would be helpful in planning more specific policies based on the direction set in this study. It is anticipated that additional studies on corruption in each field would follow.