Government Announces Harsher Punishment for Online Document Forgery

The government announced on September 28 that the online forgery of public documents would be subject to harsher punishment than offline forgery of private documents.

Those convicted of offline forgery of public documents are subject to sentences of less than 10 years in prison.

The government has also requested all public agencies to thoroughly check online public documents against original ones.

Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan presided over a policy coordination meeting on major issues to discuss ways to prevent online forgery of public documents at his office located in Samcheong-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul on Wednesday morning.

At the meeting, an agreement was reached to create a special task force for online security of public documents led by the Ministry of Home Affairs and Administration, the Ministry of Justice and the National Intelligence Service.

The special task force team will be responsible for devising comprehensive measures to prevent online forgery of public documents by the end of next month, after reviewing how the online service system has been working.

In addition to setting up the special task force, the Ministry of Home Affairs and Administration decided to form another anti-hacking and computer forgery task force squad within the e-government headquarters to keep a close watch on potential hackers and come up with precautionary measures.

The ministry is also planning to boost information sharing among public agencies so that public agencies can exchange information directly, instead of letting an applicant get a document from one agency and submit to another.

This is a measure against possible loopholes in the security of e-government, regardless of how strong the system will be.

At the same time, the Ministry of Home Affairs and Administration plans to increase the types of public documents that the e-service offers step-by-step, and build additional e-service systems, taking advantage of other electronic media including mobile phones, PDAs and TVs by June next year.

Kim Nam-seok, the head of the e-government headquarters, said, “No online forgery case has been reported so far, when it comes to public documents,” adding, “Thorough checks of documents against original ones, and stronger criminal enforcement against forgery can resolve the problem.”

In the meantime, the government will consult with concerned agencies to deal with the forgery of private documents including the falsification of TOEIC score certificates.

Hyung-June Park Jong-Dae Ha lovesong@donga.com orionha@donga.com