Controlling lobbying corruption in Korea: Toward legislation of lobbying disclosure act

The prevalent corruption in Korea functions as a setback to the democratic development of Korea. In case of Korea, CPI (Corruption Perception Index) reported by TI(Transparency International), or other statistical data, reported by the related research institutions, demonstrate a low level of public officials integrity, compared to levels of economic growth and development. As a matter of fact, the government of Korea, over the years, has struggled to control and prevent the corruption phenomena with limited success. The author in this paper contends that the major causes of the corruption phenomena in Korea refers to weakness of ethics among public officials, lack of proper anti-corruption systems, and prevalent structural culture of corruption. In particular, the author takes some examples of corruption in the context of lobbying and analyzes the cases in further detail. As a result, the unstoppable lobbying culture refers to one of major causes of the prevalent corruption in the country. Although the above-mentioned facts are quite true, the lobbying control act has not been stipulated to this day. That is why the author argues for the lobbying disclosure act, which could function as a new paradigm to control the corruption in Korea. As such, the author of this paper contends the urgency of controlling widespread lobbying corruption and the introduction of an act as an efficient and effective mechanism for controlling corruption in the country. In conclusion, the author argues for a need to build the new paradigm by stipulating a lobbying disclosure act and suggests a new paradigm focusing on maximizing the control-mechanism of lobbying by establishing a new system in Korea