[Exclusive] 'Where Did I See This...'... Fair Trade Commission Business Trip Reports Copied and Pasted for Years

Since 2016, business trip purposes have been transferred as is
Similar or identical expressions also appear in policy implications
Fair Trade Commission: "We will reflect improvements if needed"

It has been identified that employees of the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) have been copying reports written after overseas business trips for several years. Some parts were slightly rephrased from previously submitted reports, while others were copied verbatim. Since the purpose of the trips has remained the same for six years, concerns have been raised that taxes might be wasted on unnecessary trips.

On the 14th, Asia Economy reviewed the KFTC’s document titled ‘2022 Overseas Business Trip Report for Advanced Win-Win Cooperation Case Studies’ and found many sections with similar or identical wording and expressions to previous reports. The report was written after four employees from the KFTC’s Corporate Transaction Policy Bureau traveled to Germany and France for 6 nights and 8 days from December 7 last year, spending 17.41 million KRW.

The purpose of the trip in the report includes the expression, “To strengthen the competitiveness of our industry, large and small-to-medium enterprises must enhance their competitiveness together, and for this, it is necessary to improve transaction practices and strengthen cooperation between large and small-to-medium enterprises.” This sentence also appears exactly the same in reports written by KFTC employees after trips to different countries in 2019, 2017, and 2016. In other words, the purpose written seven years ago has been repeatedly used up to last year.

In the section explaining the status of KFTC’s policy implementation, it states, “Policies such as the Fair Trade Agreement system and the establishment and revision of the standard subcontracting contract are being promoted to resolve unfair practices between large and small-to-medium enterprises and to enable stronger cooperation.” This sentence is also identical to the one from 2019. Regarding the reason for visiting the countries, the phrase “It is necessary to study overseas win-win cooperation cases, SME support policies, and their implications to enhance policy effectiveness” was taken and only changed to “study implications and enhance policy effectiveness.”

Many Similar or Identical Expressions in Past Reports... KFTC Says “Will Reflect Improvements”

Completely identical phrases were also found in the policy implications section. After the trip, KFTC employees proposed “to more substantively evaluate the item of promoting sales expansion of partner companies in the implementation evaluation of the Fair Trade Agreement.” This was a solution proposed to address subcontracting issues, and the same proposal appeared in a report written after a trip to the United States in 2019.

There were also cases where the same expressions were slightly reworded. For example, “vertical exclusive transaction structure is the fundamental cause” was changed to “due to the vertical exclusive transaction structure,” and “efforts to enhance self-sustainability are also important” was rewritten as “it is important to increase self-sustainability.” “Promoting efforts to support large companies’ partner companies’ market expansion” was changed to “promoting efforts to support SMEs’ market expansion.”

This report writing practice has existed since past trips. In the 2017 report, the proposal that “cases contributing to competitiveness enhancement should be recognized as efficiency improvement achievements” was copied exactly from the 2016 report’s “cases where sales increased should be recognized as efficiency improvement achievements.” Expressions such as “providing incentives to actively make efforts” and “inducing the spread of efforts” were also the same.

The government has established separate guidelines to ensure that post-business trip reports are thoroughly written, instructing detailed descriptions of trip results, activities, and implications. The reporting system also requires checking for plagiarism and the completeness of content and format before registration.

However, plagiarism controversies regarding business trip reports continue to recur. In 2019, the Gumi City Council in Gyeongbuk faced controversy after submitting a report largely copied from the 2018 report following an overseas training trip.

The KFTC stated, “Due to being busy, it was difficult to write the content thoroughly,” and added, “We will reflect improvements if there are any.”

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