Jung Il-yeon, chairman of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC), said Wednesday that the commission would "proceed with an investigation in accordance with the law and procedures," after the People Power Party recently filed a corruption report with the ACRC over suspicions that the National Election Commission had colluded with companies in private contracts.
Jung made the remarks at a luncheon meeting with the press corps at a restaurant in Jung-gu, central Seoul, that day.
Regarding the ACRC's future role in the election commission suspicions, Jung said, "The election commission is a constitutional body, so there are limits to the investigation, and there are also many restrictive provisions on investigations or fact-finding surveys under the Anti-Corruption Act." He added, "We will watch the situation."
Asked whether the commission is pushing to revise the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act (commonly known as the Kim Young-ran Act), Jung said, "There are many complaints that a situation where teachers cannot even eat cake on Teachers' Day because of the anti-graft law does not fit social norms, and we are conducting interviews and surveys because we want to hear more details about this." He said, "I think the time has come soon to organize the direction of the revision."
In his opening remarks that day, Jung stressed regarding the ACRC's future direction, "We will review establishing a framework act on rewards, including unifying the reward system for whistleblowers and abolishing the ceiling on reward money, so that public interest reporting cases can be handled at a level that meets public expectations." He added, "We will conduct legislative maintenance to prevent leakage of public finances, inspect areas vulnerable to fraudulent receipt of funds, and strengthen anti-corruption laws to actively respond to corrupt acts."
He continued, "We will solidify a government-wide complaint response system through measures to expand complaint handling and communication, and through the implementation of a roadmap for group conflict complaints and unusual complaints." He said, "We will strengthen support to enhance the complaint response capabilities of public officials and complaint-handling agencies, and continuously reduce repeated complaints by establishing a repeated-complaint response process for each agency."
Jung also added, "We will take the lead in achieving 'rights and interests for all' by introducing free legal consultation services from court-appointed representatives for administrative appeals to support the economically and socially disadvantaged, and by prioritizing the operation of the 'Running Anmin Sinmungo' for rural and fishing village areas with poor administrative accessibility and for vulnerable groups." He said, "We will faithfully implement the procedures to build an AI-based citizens' rights platform so that citizens can easily file complaints and public officials can handle complaints efficiently."
