The Seoul government is seeking to overhaul the country’s largest veterans group by strengthening its control and authority over the leadership and the management following a series of corruption scandals involving its former chief.

The Ministry of Patriots and Veteran Affairs on Tuesday unveiled measures to reform the Korean Veterans Association that has been foundering since the arrest of then-chairman Cho Nam-poong last November. 

The 78-year-old retired four-star Army general has been indicted on charges of taking more than 500 million won ($415,000) in bribes for peddling influence in appointing heads of affiliates and facilitating exchange programs with a Chinese vet group, among other charges. The association held an extraordinary general meeting on Jan. 13 to approve his dismissal.

Under the plan, the ministry will push for legislation that allows it to sack or suspend the organization’s future heads, separate revenue-making projects from its operations and revise the existing election customs that require chairperson candidates to deposit 50 million won and let them bribe voters. Cho was also found to have doled out some 1 billion won to around 200 electors during his campaign.

To that end, the ministry is set to launch an emergency planning committee on Thursday, which will be led by the vice minister and some 15 internal and external legal, accounting, management and military experts and advisors.

“Our task going forward is to craft steps to address the controversy over the profit activities and personnel management and establish an election scheme that could tackle the issues that were brought up in the run up to and after Cho’s win. We will also reinforce our supervisory authority with which we had until now been unable to do anything, even if there was a problem with the association,” Vice Minister Choi Wan-geun said at a news conference.

“Though some people have been calling for an early vote for the next chairman, we think that in order to put the organization back on track, reform measures must come first.”
 

After a string of irregularity allegations surfaced over Cho, the ministry sought last year to stop his term and urged his resignation. Besides the formal charges, he is accused of causing the entity’s debt to snowball to nearly 600 billion won. 

Yet the unfazed chairman defied the demands, continuing to flaunt his power and undertake lavish, unfocused overseas business trips even as a parliamentary audit was just around the corner in September.

Though the chairman post is unpaid and largely honorary, it has enticed many retired generals and other military and defense industry officials who set their sights on the dozen affiliates running funeral services and other revenue earning businesses under its command. As a result, the race often triggers overheated campaigns overrun with unqualified nominees, and a host of officials have been embroiled in corruption scandals.

Since Cho's removal, the fraternity of veterans has formed a group tasked with its “normalization” and vowed to formulate measures to improve the election system for its part, but continues to be reeling from in-house power struggles.

“The envisaged plan is primarily aimed at blocking the leadership from abusing power,” a ministry official said. “As a supervisory institution, we think that the association cannot be normalized without fundamental refurbishment.”

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)