Seoul: The crusader of clean government?

SEOUL: Not many people think that South Korean bureaucrats are so clean and accountable that they can teach their foreign counterparts how to fight corruption. Moreover, if the Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index is considered an accurate indicator of the level of integrity of Korean public officials, it is painfully obvious that the nation lags remotely behind most developed countries in terms of transparency in public administration.

With 4.2 out of a clean total score of 10, South Korea is placed 42nd among the 91 countries on this year's CPI list. It is even more disappointing when considering that the nation has showed little improvement in its integrity indices over the years. Clearly heartening is that there has been a growing realization that one bright spot is emerging from the generally unchaste picture of public administration in this country.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government deserves cheers for shedding much of its old stigma as a pandemonium, or a hotbed of corrupt officials, over the past few years. Commanding the city hall in its combat for transparent governance is Mayor Goh Kun. A career bureaucrat serving his second tenure as mayor of the capital city since 1999, Goh has earned the nickname "Mr. Clean" for what he calls an "all-out war with corruption" under the stern principle of "zero tolerance."

Now, Goh's strenuous efforts to root out the age-old habits of bribe-taking from among the city officials of all ranks are paying off in a global scale. The international community is expressing keen interest in Seoul's successful corruption prevention program utilizing the Internet, which is called "OPEN," or the Online Procedures Enhancement for Civil Applications.

Soon after OPEN was introduced, the Berlin-based global corruption watchdog, Transparency International, praised it as a "model program to stave off corruption in large cities of the world." Its efficiency was highly assessed during the Ninth International Anti-Corruption Conference in 1999, which was held in Durban, South Africa.

Transparency International Malaysia presented Mayor Goh with its Global Integrity Award 2001 in March. Business Week magazine named him one of 50 Stars of Asia leading reforms. Last May, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan agreed to make the system available to all UN member states and produce manuals in its six official languages.

The Seoul Anti-Corruption Symposium 2001 came as a sequel to all these earlier events. The two-day forum, which was jointly organized by the Seoul city and the United Nations, drew some 150 leaders of anti-corruption movements and city government officials from 27 countries. They heard briefings about Seoul's corruption-prevention program and discussed how to implement it under different circumstances of other cities.

In their "Seoul Declaration" adopted on Aug. 31, the participants agreed that the system has offered a useful model in improving transparency and accountability in public administration.

Thus the Seoul city's "patent" anti-corruption program has attained a formal endorsement of the international community for "export" to other countries -- and will be Korea's first public administration program ever to be exported abroad. The 11th International Anti-Corruption Conference, scheduled to be held in Seoul in 2003, is expected to hear experiences of other cities that have adopted this program.

As Peter Eigen, chairman of Transparency International, pointed out, corruption is a diehard tradition and it is causing a vicious circle of poverty and corruption in many countries around the world.

With the recent legislation of the Anti-Corruption Act and a special presidential commission to be launched early next year to spearhead its enforcement, the nation is gearing up for another stage of its difficult battle. The Seoul city government has set a good precedent of a clean electronic government befitting the information age.

The Korea Herald / Asia News Network