Seoul Metro's Secret to Receiving an 'Excellent' Grade in the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission's Integrity Evaluation?

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Seoul Metro Headquarters

[Asia Economy Reporter Jong-il Park] Seoul Metro (President Kim Sang-beom) scored 8.71 points in the comprehensive integrity evaluation announced by the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission on the 9th, achieving the second-highest grade of "Excellent" (Grade 2).

Among the 58 local public corporations and agencies evaluated together, there was no Grade 1, making Grade 2 the highest grade. The grade has risen for two consecutive years since 2019 (Grade 4).

The corporation explained that this result was highly evaluated as a result of establishing an integrity promotion system in which all executives and employees participated under the strong will of integrity from the president and management, and achieving outcomes such as no corruption incidents within the corporation for two consecutive years (2020-2021).

In addition, efforts such as ▲ discovering and closely managing integrity measures through the CEO Integrity Improvement Meeting held every two months (a total of 67 cases) ▲ checking internal integrity through the establishment of a conflict of interest prevention system and activation of corruption reporting ▲ securing external integrity by strengthening contract fairness and simplifying administrative procedures for subway store development also received good evaluations.

Looking at the details, both external integrity, evaluated by contractors who signed contracts with the corporation, and internal integrity, evaluated by employees, recorded Grade 2. Internal integrity rose by one grade compared to the previous year.

It is noteworthy that the internal integrity score, which was relatively lower than external integrity, was significantly raised. Among the evaluation items, the work integrity score, which assesses fairness in personnel affairs, budget execution, and work instructions, improved, achieving remarkable results.

The main factor for the score increase was the activation of efforts to improve integrity related to personnel affairs, such as establishing a small personnel consultative body and operating a personnel corruption reporting system to enhance transparency and reliability in personnel affairs.

In addition, ▲ identifying organizational issues through internal anonymous communication channels and preparing solutions through investigations and audits ▲ education on budget execution cases ▲ establishing an integrated corruption prevention reporting system with 12 channels including a corruption lawyer proxy reporting system ▲ organizing 83 conflict of interest cases and producing manuals were also part of the improvement efforts.

The corporation also made thorough efforts to manage external integrity. ▲ Establishing a triple safety device where the ordering, contracting, and auditing departments pre-review the validity when selecting companies with specific technologies ▲ quantifying evaluation items ▲ including companies with multiple contracts (two consecutive or four cumulative times) as special management targets for full contract condition review, and other various policies to ensure fairness in external contracts were implemented.

When developing subway stores, a one-stop administrative system was established where tenants only need to submit related documents for comprehensive review and notification, and detailed information related to store development was transparently disclosed through the website, which also received positive evaluations.

Kim Sang-beom, President of Seoul Metro, said, “I am pleased that despite the difficult situation caused by the management crisis and COVID-19, the employees recognized the importance of integrity and their best efforts bore fruit,” and added, “Building on this achievement, we will continue to do our best to become an integrity public corporation recognized both internally and externally.”

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