Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Adventurer]

World highly rates Korea's anti-corruption efforts
July 24, 2006



The following was contributed by Hong Hyun-sun, director general of public relations and cooperation for the Korea Independent Commission Against Corruption (KICAC).

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Recently, the international community has rated the Korean government highly in the fight against corruption. The following facts will help you catch a glimpse of it.

On March 13, France Info, France's state-run radio station, aired a special program on Korea. It reported that the Korea Independent Commission Against Corruption (KICAC) is striving to overcome challenges posed by corruption.

Huguette Labelle, chair of Transparency International, who visited Seoul last April to attend an international forum on the Korean Pact on Anti-Corruption and Transparency (K-PACT), said that Korean society has achieved a great deal in the combat against corruption.

Despite all the encouraging signs, some argue that Korea still has a long way to go before joining the ranks of the world's most transparent countries. In global corruption rankings, Korea falls behind countries whose per capita GDPs are much the same as Korea's. Worse still, a large number of Korean people remain skeptical that Korean society is transparent.

Why such a discrepancy in the perceptions of Korean society? That's because it takes much time to reap tangible benefits from institutional reforms designed to prevent corruption. The underlying cause, however, is that Koreans still engage in cronyism based on school or regional affiliations.

For example, businessmen lavish golf trips on senior government officials who supervised their business areas; the bench treat the judge-turned-lawyer favorably in legal procedures; lobbyists unduly influence the process of policy-making under the auspices of political heavyweights; and former public officials obtain employment in private-sector enterprises related to their former area of government service.

The reason why such unethical cases have recently come to light in large numbers is that the systems for protecting whistle-blowers and promoting transparent management have recently been improved, and that investigative and prosecutorial authorities are relentlessly pursuing the corrupt.

Yet more convincing reason is that what was once acceptable or right has now become unacceptable or wrong, meaning there is a growing public intolerance of corrupt practices in Korean society.

[urlhttp://www.korea.net/News/Issues/issueDetailView.asp?board_no=13102]FIGHTCORRUPTION[/url]

[TexasPete]

HA...the corruption in my school district is unreal. Every foreigner in the school district knows how corrupt it is and how the principals and VP rip the parents and government off every chance they get. The parents and government don't know, don't care or just accept it as the way things are done. It's crap, though.

[Eedoryeong]

[Adventurer]

Corruption is also a big problem in public schools. I applied for a job at a science high school, and they didn't want to initially pay for a computer even though the government gives them 50 million won for having an English teacher that was in Suwon. In Ilsan, a friend at a public school was getting paid late so many times, and even his principle didn't know about it until my friend had a new co-teacher, and she found out. Corruption is so easy to get involved in over here. Also, a poster I know once reported a teacher who was working illegaly at his school (part-time), and someone in immigration tipped off his boss to make the guy disappear that day. Many government workers are paid off or don't want to do their job. They don't investigate things properly enough like Canadian, British, French, or American public servants. Korea has improved a lot, there have been reports of scandals and investigations, but it has a long, long, long, long way to go, and we will see if the current president will do anything about the problems...

[TexasPete]

My situation is this: I'm contracted to get X amount of money per hour for my overtime classes. The government provides the school this money to pay me the agreed upon rate. The admin will ask me to teach overtime/after school classes, but then claim that they're school doesn't have the money to pay me the full amount, by quite a bit actually. I find out also that the P and VP are charging the parents to get their kids into the after-school classes which they aren't supposed to do--a big reason for these overtime classes in the first place is to give opportunities to the poorer kids in the school.

So, I have a P and VP trying to pay me less than the agreed upon amount (claiming poverty) while at the same time, they're charging the parents for these classes. All the while, the government gives my school more than enough to pay me to teach these classes that are supposed to be free for the students and their parents. The admin is trying to skim off the top big time and i know from other FTs in my district that their principals and VPs are doing the same thing (or something very similar) in other schools here.

Needless to say, I said no and nearly everybody loses. I say nearly everybody because the other dipshit FT at my school agreed to do it. So, the P and VP made a bit (but not what they were hoping) the parents paid for something they shouldn't have been paying for and Dipshit short-changed himself. I suppose I looked a little bad by not agreeing, but there's NO WAY i'm going to put up with that corrupt malarkey!

This year, they offered even less and i just laughed.

[TexasPete]

Oh, and the best part was that they paid Dipshit weeks late EVERY time! They claimed they were waiting for the money from the parents or some crap like that.