“South Korea’s CPI result is a shame for the nation”
Analysis by Lee Sang-Hak (Board Member, Transparency International-Korea)
According to the 2017 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) results which show the international ranking of corruption levels in various countries, Korea ranked 51st out of 180 countries, which is seen as shameful for a nation of its status. This Transparency International (TI) report indicated that Korea is barely out of the scoring for absolutely corrupt countries, by taking 54 points out of a scale of 100. Thus the score is very poor for a nation such as Korea that has the 10th largest economy in the world. Out of the thirty-five OECD member states in this report, Korea remained close to the bottom at 29th position.
From late 1999 to the late 2000s, Korea’s CPI score recorded the rising trend by scoring of 56 in 2008. Among the countries surveyed, Korea was 39th in 2009 and 2010, but it continued on a downward trend to 52nd place in 2016, which is the lowest after the official investigation, rising slightly to 51st in 2017.
The trend of Score of Corruption Perception and Rank of Countries
If we want to understand the Corruption Perceptions Index more accurately, we need to look at the CPI result. The CPI investigation report from Transparency International has not been directly measured by Transparency International, but using source materials produced by many professional international investigation organizations. Thus if we want to understand the result of the CPI, the resource materials utilised in the CPI are very important.
The resource materials used in the 2017 CPI-Korea report are composed of 10 different resource materials, including:
- Global Competitive Index under the WEF (World Economic Forum),
- Sustainable Governance Index (SGI), and Transformation Index (TI) under the Bertelsmann Foundation,
- World Competitiveness Yearbook under the IMD (International Management Development),
- Rule of Law index under the WJP (World Justice Project),
- Country Risk Ratings under the IHS International Global Insight (GI),
- Asian Intelligence reports under PERC (Political and Economic Risk Consultancy),
- International Country Risk Guide (https://www.prsgroup.com/explore-our-products/international-country-risk-guide/) under PRS (Political Risk Services Group),
- Annual Report from V-DEM (Varieties of Democracy), and
- Country Risk Ratings from the EIU (Economist Intelligence Unit).
If we look through the trend of the resource materials measured in the CPI, several changes are observed. The data of the WEF depicts a rising trend while downward trend is depicted from the Bertelsmann, IMD, and PERC sources. The WJP index shows a wavering trend (rising and falling), while the GI shows an upward movement. The PRS and EIU ratings show no change.
The annual trend of the source material
The source materials have been divided into groups from which we can find the meaning of the source materials more exactly. Firstly, SGI, TI, and Rule of Law indices are grouped together, and they look at the effects of government policy in preventing the corruption of bureaucrats, and abuse of public authority by civil servants. The Global Competitive Index and the Global Insight Country Risk Ratings are the second groups which show the result of the investigation of bribery cases by civil servants and the private sector, such as the daily base of export and import processes, and the obtaining of business licences or approval from the government. EIU’s Country Risk Ratings is the third group which examines the administration and management of public resources, such as the National Pension Fund. The reports released by the IMD, PERC, VDEM, and PRS are the fourth group which analyse the perception level of bribery and corruption in the country as a whole.
The change of trend by groups
| Group | Resource material |
| Preventing corruption and abuse of public authority by civil servants | SGI (↘), TI (↘), WGP (↗↘) |
| Bribery and corruption by businesses | WEF (↗), GI (↘↗) |
| Bribery and corruption in the country | IMD (↘), PERC (↘), PRS (↦) |
| Administration and management of public resources | EIU (→) |
When we divide the groups, an interesting point will be noticed. While a downward trend is seen regarding the data of investigation into the abuse of public authority and prevention of corruption by civil servants, the data concerning bribery and corruption by businesses has been improving lately. There is a clear contrast between the two groups, but there is no change in the data of bribery and corruption as a whole in the country; neither worsening nor improving. It is clear that corruption in the day-to-day business activities related to government offices is decreasing, but the real effect of the government policy to prevent the abuse of public authority and corruption by civil servants has worsened.
The corruption incurred in the daily businesses related to the front line of government officials has decreased. This phenomenon shows similar with the other results investigated by the Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) and domestic organizations in Korea.
On the contrary, the level of abuse by public authority becomes critically deeper and the government policy to prevent these corrupt practices by civil servants has not been working efficiently. These kinds of results indicate that the cases of abuse by public authorities as well as those involving corruption by powerful politicians, and scandals reported on two former presidents along with their confidants and associates seem to be the most significant problems.
Another noteworthy aspect is that the corruption level as a whole in the country seems to be worsening. The worsening result of the corruption in the whole society seems to have diverse interpretations. Some say that power based corruption influences the perception of corruption in the whole society, so it could be interpreted as a so-called ‘echo effect’. This allegation connects with the argument that the corruption index turns out to be much higher than the real level of corruption in our society. However, many argue that there are still deeply rooted corrupt practices in all fields of our society, making the situation worse.
The meaning of the CPI result is evident. Firstly, there is a decline in the level of corruption in daily business activities; however, from the base of the power, there is an exacerbation of corrupt practices. Secondly, the negative influence of the powerful sphere’s corrupt practices and deep-rooted corrupt culture is a hindrance to the society improving their perception of corruption.
The present government has set the prevention of corruption as one of its national priorities, and established mechanisms to clean out these evil practices in order to reach the rank of 20th position in the world. If we look at the 2017 CPI result, it is clear that the government must take action to achieve this goal.
The most urgent response to take is the elimination of the power base of corruption. If we are not able to diminish structural corruption by high-level civil servants and upper class of the society, this will become a limitation to improving the CPI ranking. Michael Johnston, 2014, said that Korea is the typical country of power-elite networking corruption. This is the point that we have to focus on.
In addition, we need to continue our efforts to change the corrupt culture which is deeply rooted in our society. The tackling of nefarious practices is a historical call and it is the most immediate issue for us to improve. However simply doing this or handing down punishment will be a constraint to causing the real effect. We need to exert various types of effort in order to change the culture of the society, along with the aforementioned. I dare say that in this respect, the incumbent government has fallen short in her efforts. If we want to change the culture of our society, we need to change the consciousness of the community. In this process, the values of and practices by individuals will be changed accordingly. For this goal to be realized, we need to have collaboration among all organizations with the broader and active participation of civil society and implement educational activities that focus on the prevention of corruption and institutional change etc.
In particular, the recent much talked about #MeToo campaign and Kapjil (power abuse over the weak) will be very important movements to assist in ridding the corrupt social structure as a whole. Special effort should be put in place to transfer the social movement forces to the social collective energies for rooting out the structural corrupt practices. In these processes, the roles of government and society as a whole must take respective responsibility. At the same time, we expect that the “Clean Society Government-Civil Society Council” which was launched to achieve the goal of a Clean Society will assist in a great way to creating this.