Roundup: South Korea launches anti-corruption law to alter favor-granting society

South Korea's new anti-corruption act, called here as Kim Young-ran Law named after the act's original proposer, took effect to alter a society in which granting illicit favors in return for money or excessive treatment has run rampant.

The act on banning illegal requests and bribery came into force on Wednesday. The anti-graft act is aimed at prohibiting public servants, journalists and teachers from using their positions to grant favors in exchange for money or excessive treatment.

Subject to the act would be about 4 million people working at 40,919 public and private organizations, including administrative, judiciary and parliamentary bodies, media outlets and schools, according to local media reports.

The act will ban those in question from being treated to a meal worth more than 30,000 won (27 U.S. dollars). Receiving a present worth over 50,000 won will be made illegal, while cash gift given to weddings and funerals worth over 100,000 won will be punishable.

Those in charge of 14 tasks, including business project permission, personnel affairs, school entrance and military recruitment, will be severely punished for accepting illicit requests in return for kickbacks.

Receiving more than 1 million won at a time from the same person will be criminally punishable regardless of whether those cash or gifts are relevant to their tasks or not. Those who receive more than 3 million won in a year from the same person will also be penalized.

The act is forecast to help change a deep-rooted culture of the country, where lower-ranking people in socio-political hierarchy are required to provide excessive treatment for others in higher ranks in the name of customary practices. The anti-graft act will help those in lower ranks be freed from those forcible requirements.

Presidential spokesman Jung Youn-kuk told reporters that the act is anticipated to become a turning point to create a clean society where everyone can compete fairly and exponentially raise the degree of integrity.

Most of ordinary people here expressed positive response to the act through social media, saying it would help South Korea go a step forward to a clean society and establish a "Go Dutch" culture in the bureaucratic, educational and media societies.

The anti-corruption act was first proposed in June 2011 by Kim Young-ran, former Supreme Court justice and then chief of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission. The proposal was based on perception that most of corruptions may start with a cup of coffee or a meal between parties concerned.

The proposed bill was passed through the National Assembly in March 2015 as part of efforts to eradicate the so-called bureaucratic mafia, or Gwanfia in Korean, which is believed to have been one of the main reasons that triggered the Sewol ferry disaster.

Widespread irregularities and collusive links between maritime bureaucrats and businessmen helped cause the catastrophic maritime incident that killed more than 300 passengers, about two thirds of them high school students, on April 16, 2014. Endit