Korea Press Foundation Entrusts Newspaper Joint Transport to Ineligible Companies for 3 Years

Bid Qualification Leaves Room for Subcontracting Loopholes
Selected Company Lacks 'Cargo Transport Permit'

The Korea Press Foundation has been found to have funneled work over the past three years to a contractor operating the 'newspaper joint transportation route' despite knowing the contractor was unqualified. The newspaper joint transportation route project supports newspaper delivery in underserved areas. While support was previously provided to individual newspaper companies, since 2021, transportation operators rather than newspaper companies have been selected to manage the operation. Eligible candidates are transportation operators or joint consortia operating nationwide transportation routes.

Sponsorship=Korea Press Foundation

According to National Assembly Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee member Lee Byung-hoon of the Democratic Party, who disclosed the National Audit data on the 17th, the Korea Press Foundation opened the bidding qualification for this year's proposal request announced on the Public Procurement Service's Nara Market, allowing a single forwarding operator to participate while specifying in a clause that 'participation in the form of a consortium with regional operators is possible.' As a result, single forwarding operators who did not formally form a consortium were able to illegally employ other regional forwarding operators as contract support and subcontract the work again, enabling a loophole operation.

In fact, the selected contractor that performed the project over the past three years only held a 'forwarding business license' without a 'cargo transportation business license.' They disguised representatives or employees of other regional forwarding companies as sole proprietors, contracted with them, and assigned transportation forwarding in those regions to carry out the project. The Korea Press Foundation explained, "There is no company in Korea capable of managing nationwide operations alone, so cooperation with regional transportation companies was inevitable." However, under the 'Cargo Motor Vehicle Transportation Business Act,' subcontracting between forwarding companies is clearly illegal. It is prohibited to prevent a structure where one forwarding business license holder exploits others by illegally employing forwarding operators from other regions.

Rep. Lee said, "Given that the Korea Press Foundation has presented qualification requirements inconsistent with the purpose of the 'Cargo Transportation Business Act' and funneled work to one company for three years, it is suspicious whether they colluded with a specific contractor to allow loopholes." He added, "In next year's bidding announcement, it is necessary to specify the bidding qualifications as 'transportation operators capable of nationwide transportation' and 'forwarding operators forming a joint consortium,' and to enforce that at least one of these conditions must be met."

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