Public Interest Whistleblower Rewards Increased to Up to 500 Million KRW... Revised Enforcement Decree Promulgated

The maximum reward for public interest whistleblowing will be increased from the current 200 million won to up to 500 million won.

Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission. / Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission announced that the amendments to the 'Enforcement Decree of the Public Interest Whistleblower Protection Act' and the 'Enforcement Decree of the Public Finance Recovery Act' recently passed the Cabinet meeting and were promulgated on the 19th.

Until now, rewards for corruption reports could be paid up to 500 million won, but rewards for public interest whistleblowing and public finance fraud claims were limited to a maximum of 200 million won, raising issues of fairness depending on the report content. With this amendment to the enforcement decree, both public interest whistleblowing and public finance fraud claims will receive rewards up to 500 million won. However, this regulation will not be applied retroactively and will only apply to reports made after the amendment.

Along with this, the maximum payment rate of compensation paid when recovering public institution revenues through public interest whistleblowing has been raised from the existing 20% to 30%, aligning it with the compensation regulations for corruption reports.

Jung Seung-yoon, Vice Chairman and Secretary General of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, said, “With this amendment to the enforcement decree, the level of rewards for whistleblowers at the Commission has been further strengthened,” and added, “We will continue to operate a whistleblower support system that reflects the public interest contributions of whistleblowers.”

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