The antigraft bill that passed Tuesday, after much wrangling over the constitutionality of parts of it, is nevertheless a step forward in the country’s fight against corruption.
As originally proposed in June 2011 by Kim Young-ran, the former Supreme Court Justice and former Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission chief, the “Kim Young-ran bill” sought to prosecute public officials for receiving bribes. The bill was intended to close the loophole in the existing anticorruption law by prosecuting even those who claim nonreciprocity.
However, the bill that passed Tuesday greatly extended the reach of the law by including private school staff, journalists, public officials and their spouses. They were included because of the public service nature of their work, the legislators said.
Under the new law, persons found guilty of receiving more than 1 million won in money or kind, regardless of reciprocity, can be sentenced to up to three years in prison. Those found to have taken less than 1 million won will be subjected to fines. The law also requires spouses of public officials, private school faculty and journalists to report any payment their husbands or wives receive.
Legislators had serious reservations about the proposed bill but caved in to public demand for the passage of an anticorruption law. Both the ruling party and opposition party legislators claimed that some parts of the law were so vague as to invite a legal contest and that some parts of the law border on being unconstitutional. Yet, the bill passed on the last day of February’s extraordinary parliamentary session as legislators feared a public backlash over failure to pass the popular bill.
The Kim Young-ran bill that passed, in extending its scope, misses its raison d’etre ― to prevent corruption among high-ranking public officials. By including journalists among those punishable, the bill could be exploited as a way to muzzle the media, stifling press freedom. Because of the vague nature of the bill, such exploitation is not unimaginable.
The Kim Young-ran bill was proposed with good intentions. However, the end product is hardly enforceable in the view of some legal scholars, leading some critics to charge that the legislators revised the original bill with the intention of making it unworkable.
The law will go into effect in September 2016 and legislators have ample time to fine-tune the bill to clarify components and eliminate questions of constitutionality.
