83 Cases of Public Institution Hiring Corruption Last Year... 9 Organizations Including Junggi Joonganghoe Referred for Investigation

Full Survey of 1,212 Institutions... Number of Violations Less Than Half Compared to 2018
'Score Sheet Tampering' and 'Forced Hiring' Persist... 148 Employees Investigated and Disciplined

[Asia Economy Reporter Moon Chaeseok] Last year, 83 cases of recruitment corruption in public institutions were detected. This is more than a 50% decrease compared to 2018.

The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) announced on the 24th the results of the 2019 regular comprehensive survey on recruitment practices in public institutions, conducted from December last year to May this year in cooperation with the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, and the Ministry of Employment and Labor.

According to the ACRC, a total of 83 recruitment corruption cases were uncovered across 1,212 institutions, including 333 public institutions, 637 local public institutions, and 242 other public-related organizations. These included 75 cases related to new hires and 8 cases related to conversion to regular positions.

The government referred 9 of these cases for investigation and requested disciplinary action for the remaining 74 cases against the involved parties.

The number of detected cases decreased by 75.4% compared to 2017 (338 cases), when the first survey was conducted, and by 54.4% compared to 2018 (182 cases).

Source=Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission

However, corrupt practices such as tampering with scoring sheets and coercing the hiring of specific individuals still persisted.

The nine institutions referred for investigation are the Korea Legal Aid Corporation, the National Maritime Museum, the Korea Rail Network Authority, the Korea Women’s Human Rights Institute, the Gwangjin-gu Facilities Management Corporation, Yangpyeong Corporation, the East Sea Industry Research Institute, the Korean Council for University Education, and the Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business.

In the Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business’s regular new hires, an interviewer tampered with the interview scoring sheets to ensure the success of a specific candidate.

A similar incident occurred in the recruitment of fixed-term workers at the Korea Legal Aid Corporation.

At the National Maritime Museum, a superior unjustly instructed interviewers to select two specific candidates for the curator positions.

In the Korean Council for University Education’s contract staff recruitment, a candidate without the required master’s degree qualification was accepted.

A total of 148 current executives and employees (7 executives and 141 employees) were involved in recruitment corruption.

The government plans to immediately exclude executives and personnel or audit officers involved from their duties and strictly discipline them based on investigation and inquiry results.

Eight candidates who fraudulently passed the recruitment process have been tentatively identified. Measures such as cancellation of acceptance will be taken depending on investigation and disciplinary outcomes by each institution.

There were 122 victims (tentative figure) who suffered disadvantages during the recruitment process due to corruption.

The government will pursue remedies such as providing opportunities to reapply for these victims.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.