President Park Geun-hye on Tuesday renewed her pledge to root out corruption, claiming that the improvement in law and order will not only help the nation’s reforms but also boost its economic growth.

“It is crucial to maintain law and order and to eradicate corruption, especially with the parliamentary elections coming up,” Park said before receiving the annual business reports from the Justice Ministry and four other departments.

The president’s comments came two weeks after the government announced the “anticorruption vaccine project,” a set of preemptive anticorruption measures to nip corruption crimes in the bud. The four “vaccines” refer to keeping a real-time surveillance over state projects, managing risks preemptively for asset management agencies, sharing information on a continuous basis for the sake of transparency, and introducing a clean internal control system.

The government is also establishing a special investigation department on corruption crimes at the prosecutor’s office, in an effort to add momentum to a forthcoming antisolicitation bill that is to take effect in September.

“According to the World Bank’s survey, South Korea was ranked 27th in law and order last year, which was one of the lowest among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development members,” Park said.

“Some studies have shown that our nation’s economic growth could inch up by about 1 percent, if only the level of our social integrity would border on the OECD average,” she said.

The Anti-corruption and Civil Rights Commission of Korea, in its briefing, vowed to reduce the leakage of public finances by intensifying punishment for corrupt financial acts.

“We will work on legislating a bill to prevent false claims of public finances, aimed at eradicating chronic practices of public financial abuse,” said ACRC chairman Sung Yung-hoon.

Upon this new bill, those who have caused financial losses to public funds will have to pay up to five times the amount in punitive damages.

During the meeting, Park also urged government officials to eradicate domestic violence, citing a recent series of child abuse cases.
 

Earlier this month, a father was arrested for letting his 7-year-old son die in 2012, cutting his body into parts and keeping them in a refrigerator until recently.

Responding to the president’s calls to tighten the legal order, the Ministry of Justice said that it will expand the range and level of notification when it comes to child abuse crimes.

“We will revise the related law so that those working in sex crime victims support centers and adoption agencies will be obligated to report to the police upon detecting suspected cases of abuse,” said Justice Minister Kim Hyun-woong.

The ministry is also planning to additionally allocate 111 officers to all 58 prosecutors’ offices nationwide to exclusively take care of child abuse crimes.

The Education Ministry and the Welfare Ministry will increase their involvement by checking through long-term absentees in elementary schools and report to the police when necessary.

According to the Ministry of Public Safety and Security, the number of child deaths caused by accidents was 2.9 per 100,000 in year 2014. It is the government’s target to bring down the figure to the 1.9-2 level.

By Bae Hyun-jung (tellme@heraldcorp.com)