Taejon shows highest degree of integrity

Taejon Metropolitan City recorded the highest corruption index with 74.77, followed by Pusan¡¯s 69.58 and Inchon¡¯s 67.59, according to a survey conducted by the Anti-Corruption Center of ¡°Kyongsillyon,¡¯¡¯ or the Citizens¡¯ Coalition for Economic Justice, Tuesday. The highest index implies that it is the least corrupt.

The non-governmental organization announced the result of its survey of the corruption indexes of 16 provincial and metropolitan cities on the basis of public polls of citizens and public servants and materials from the Board of Audit and Inspection and other agencies on the disciplinary measures taken against corrupt officials.

The survey showed that Kyongsang Province earned the highest ranking of 62.32 points from citizens. In comparison, public servants gave South Chungchong Province the highest score of 85.21 points. Kyonggi Province scored the lowest with 75.83 points. Citizens gave 75-86 points to the large autonomous bodies, while government officials awarded than 62-75 points, indicating that citizens think corruption in officialdom is more serious than public servants.

Citizens think that public servants ask for bribes an average of 1.3 times per month each, while officials think citizens propose bribes to them 0.745 times per month on average.

The bribes officials demand from citizens most often include cash, entertainment and tickets for goods in that order, while citizens usually offer entertainment, cash and tickets for goods in that order. The average amount of bribes citizens say they would offer to public servants is 181,051 won per occasion, according to the survey.

Prof. Kim Tae-Ryong of Sangji University, head of the campaign headquarters, said that his organization would conduct similar surveys regularly to help solve deeply-rooted corruption problems in Korean society.

The headquarters took one year to conduct the survey, the professor said. Kyongsillyon questioned 1,000 officials of the 16 provinces and metropolitan cities and civil petitioners about the degree and cause of corruption and how to prevent it. They converted the outcome into the index with 100 points as the highest possible score.

Chung Seong-Hee shchung@donga.com