Translated by: Jiyoung Shin

  Since the introduction of the “half
tuition policy” at the University of Seoul, the number of students who had taken
out loans for the tuition has decreased by more than half. According to the
data provided by Korea Students Aid Foundation (KOSAF), 990.1 students per one
semester had to get student loans for their tuition fees between 2007 and 2011.
However, this number decreased into 473 in 2012.

 

  Considering
the student population, this equals to 11% of the entire students in 2007.
However, this decreased into 4% in the 2012 Fall semester. This was possible as
the Seoul Mayor Park Won-Soon fulfilled his promise of “half price
tuitions” since his inauguration.

 

  Of
course, it is not possible to say that this number is absolute. There will be
some students who get loans from institutions other than KOSAF and some others
who get private scholarships. But still, it is obvious that this figure has a
significant meaning.

 

  Even
before the reduction, the tuition fee of the University of Seoul was lower
than other private universities. Its’ student population is also smaller than
other private universities. If the number of students who applied for loans at the University
of Seoul was 990 on average, the number at other private
universities will be much higher.

 

  Meanwhile,
the Center for Freedom of Information (CFOI) requested the Ministry of
Education, Science and Technology the information concerning the overdue status
of government-guaranteed student loans between 2010 and 2011. According to the
data provided, the overdue rate was 3.88% in 2011.

 

  This
is the highest record since the government-guaranteed loans was introduced to
students. The number of overdue cases was 74,150 in December 2011 and the
overdue amount was 229.7 billion. According to the data of Statistics Korea,
the number of students who got loans from KOSAF increased by 162%, which jumped
from 280,000 to 733,000 between 2002 and 2011. (http://www.opengirok.or.kr/3076)

 

  It
is very unfortunate to see this happen to students. We hope the politicians can
cut down the tuition fees for students as soon as possible and the students are
no longer burdened with debts from young ages. You can find the related
information below.

 

서울시립대대출자수(장학재단)_(1).pdf

 

Translated by SOORIN KIM(voluntarily activist)

Violence in school has been
around for some time, but it is only worsening. In fact, it has become so
widespread that it has its own slang, such as “wangdda” (outcast) and “iljin”
(bully). But students – not just the bullies but also their victims – have
become numb to the problem.

 

School bullying has become
prevalent to the extent that students consider it a natural part of their
school life. The society has grown used to the occasional news about victims
committing suicide.

 

People were appalled
recently when a boy in Daegu who had been suffering school violence ended his
own life by jumping off from his 16-floor apartment. They were stunned again
when it was reported that some of the bullies went so far as to rob the store
run by the victim’s parents. The shock however, did not last.

 

President Lee Myng-bak and
Education Minister Lee Ju-ho met with parents, students and school authorities
to discuss eradicating school violence. Were such a meeting enough to stop
school violence, the tragedy would not have happened in the first place. So we
ask, how has the government been dealing with this aggravating problem of
bullying?

We requested the Education ministry’s accounts of the current situation
concerning school 

violence and handling of it.

1. Actions by the Autonomous School Committee
Against Bullying.

		cases of review	number of assailant	number of victim
2009	elementary school	151	325	273
	middle school	3846	10627	9030
	high school	2608	3653	2405
2010	elementary school	231	657	294
	middle school	5376	14179	10363
	high school	2216	5113	3091

The number of cases of bullying in primary, middle and
high schools increased by about 18 percent from 6,605 in 2009 to 7,823 in 2010.
 The committee punished the assailants
mostly with penalties, such as cleaning the school restrooms. It also required
them to go through a special educational program designed to prevent school
violence. The victims were provided with counseling.

2.  Types of violence reported by the committee

<year 2009>

Category	Review cases	Number of incidents	Number of assailants imposed penalty by the committee
injury	240	366	339
physical violence	3,509	9,240	8523
illegal confinement	2	16	14
blackmail	125	274	260
extortion	20	41	38
slander/libel	52	116	113
fraud	10	13	13
sexual assault	110	190	180
bullying	149	689	663
internet obscenity	26	57	56
mugging	1,157	3,044	2981
others	205	559	538
total	5,605	14,605	14276

In 2010, of the total reported incidents of 7,823,
physical assault again took the first place by 5,119 incidents, with mugging on
the second place by 1,367. Again, assaults by boys (14,740) outnumbered those
by girls (6,209) by about 7,000 incidents. The total reported bullies rose by
about 5,000 compared to last year’s number.

 

Many cases of school bullying go unreported. Although everybody
is shouting for eradication of bullying and school violence, nobody seems to
have found solutions. Are counseling and changing classes or schools for the
bullies enough for protecting the students? Will disciplinary measures, such as
community work, lead the assailant students onto a right path?

 

The assaulted students choose death because they think
they have no other way to end the violence, and the assaulters continue their
violence because they are numb to it. Punishing the assailants and protecting
the victims are only measures after the violence already have taken place. We
have to pay attention to the students’ states of mind and relationships, talk
with them and take actions before someone actually gets hurt.

 

The ministry of education says that it will record the
school violence in school life reports. This however, is controversial, as
there are concerns that this measure might lead to individual students’ bruise
merging once again with college entrance competition or the issue being
attributed solely to the students. We have to think once again, whether this
measure would help us focus on students’ relationships and communications or
rather trigger more segmentations and conflicts.

Translated by SOORIN KIM(voluntarily activist)

The Ministry for Special Affairs is a ministry created after the establishment of Lee Myung Park Administration.
Currently, Mr. Lee Jae Oh is in charge of the ministry office.

 

National Assembly Budget Office analyzed the
closing accounts on the major businesses of Office of Ministry for Special
Affairs in 2010. There seems to be some problems regarding spending of the
special affairs expenses.

 

There are two kinds of budget for special affairs in
the Ministry, expenses for special activities and expenses for special tasks.
The former is arranged directly for gathering information and investigation,
etc. The latter is arranged for the specific tasks like inspecting the organs
of government. According to the closing accounts we obtained, the special
activity expenses allocated for Office of Ministry for Special Affairs was 880
million; 870 million won was actually used and 3 million won was not used in
2010. 337 million won was originally for the special tasks expenses, 46 million
was diverted for other purposes, 192 million was used and 99 million was not
used.

2010 Ministry for Special Affairs closing accounts

The problem here was that the Office of
Ministry for Special Affairs did not present any documents to prove the money
was spent properly. The distribution of the special tasks expenses seems
inadequate as well.

 

Even more striking is 880million won, the
whole allocated money for the special activities was used by only one person,
Mr. Lee Ja Oh, the Minister. The method of distributing the money was need-base
by cash whenever Mr. Lee needed it and after being paid, he wrote a receipt
which only contains his name and amount. 
So it’s impossible to know where the money went and for what purpose the
money spent. Imagine 877 million won being able to be used without a single piece
of proper receipt. This kind of budget execution is a serious problem in the
transparency aspect.

 

 

Furthermore, we found that the Office of
Ministry for Special Affairs had given a portion of the special tasks expenses
to certain individuals by fixed monthly payment. According to the Office of
Ministry for Special Affair’s explanation, total 41 staffs were on the payroll
of the expenses. These people were the whole staff members except for the political
post and the technical post. However, they were not identified as eligible
recipients of the money by any valid basis.

 

According to a report published by the
Democratic Party, the total budget for special affairs expenses arranged for
each ministry for fiscal year 2010 was about 865 billion won.

 

Special affairs expenses are called “don’t
ask budget”. No surprise at all. One can easily use the money without any
receipt. How can anybody check where the money goes? Citizens want to know. The
government needs to start putting efforts on building trust from the public and
to reinforce transparency.

Translated by SOORIN KIM(voluntarily activist)

The Political funds, obviously, shall only be used for
political activities, not for personal expenses or wrongful purposes.
However, the money has long been misused such as being treated as ‘pocket money’
for politicians. The CFOI (Center for Freedom of Information), last year,
disclosed some dubious gas charge expenditures by analyzing congressmen Chung Byung
Gug’s political funds spending. And then we suggested that you too use the Freedom
of Information System to keep an eye on your own local congressmen.

 

CFOI requested the revenue and expenditure reports of
political funds for the Grand National Party (GNP) and the Democratic Party. The
National Election Commission (NEC) released the data to CFOI, and we especially
analyzed the expenses for ‘organization activities’ with spreadsheet. Today, we
would like to share the details of the GNP’s ‘organization activity’ spending.
The GNP’s activity expenses were over 10 billion won a year. Looking into the data,
we could find some interesting parts. 

One of the several interesting things CFOI found out
was that the staff members of the GNP HQ had spend huge amount of money at ‘Sokcho
Seafood Stew’ restaurant. Searching through the data set with the key word
‘Sokcho Seafood Stew’, CFOI even found one expenditure that was over 8 million
won at the restaurant. CFOI found out that they spent over 99 million won under
the name of ‘Sokcho Seafood Stew’ in 2010. We find it very odd for a party to
spend such an enormous amount of money at a single restaurant. 

yr-m-d	usage	receiver	amount
2010-01-12	Party executive food expenses	Sokcho Seafood etc.	8,280,000
2010-02-11	Party executives food expenses	Sokcho Seafood etc.	8,004,000
2010-03-15	Party executives food expenses	Sokcho Seafood etc.	7,857,000
2010-04-09	Party executives food expenses	Sokcho Seafood etc.	9,402,000
2010-05-13	Party executives food expenses	Sokcho Seafood etc.	8,760,000
2010-05-26	Spokesperson food expenses	Sokcho Seafood etc.	210,000
2010-06-02	Secretary general food expenses	Sokcho Seafood etc.	257,000
2010-06-02	Spokesperson food expenses	Sokcho Seafood etc.	39,000
2010-06-09	Party executives food expenses	Sokcho Seafood etc.	8,880,000
2010/7/9	Party executives food expenses	Sokcho Seafood etc.	7,473,000
2010/8/5	Party executives food expenses	Sokcho	8,079,000
2010/9/7	Party executives food expenses	Sokcho Seafood etc.	7,293,000
2010/10/8	Party executives food expenses	Sokcho Seafood etc.	7,014,000
2010/10/27	Party headquarter food expenses	Sokcho Seafood etc.	1,500,000
2010/11/5	Party executives food expenses	Sokcho Seafood etc.	8,166,000
2010/11/9	Spokesperson food expenses	Sokcho Seafood	100,000
2010/12/13	Party executives food expenses	Sokcho Seafood etc.	8,100,000

Another thing was the operation expense from majority
leader’s office. About 800,000 won was mysteriously spent at a movie theater,
CGV.

2010-02-07	Headquarters operating expenses	CGV Yeongdeungpo	574,000
2010-02-07	Headquarters operating expenses	CGV Yeongdeungpo	245,000

Not only that, CFOI found out that the office
of GNP’s secretary general had bought office equipment at a luxury department
store. Since the items they purchased were not specified, we don’t know exactly
what they bought from the department but it makes us wonder if they really had
to buy room equipment at a luxury store. Apart from these, it indeed was weird
and even fishy that the party had spent too much money on dining in expensive
hotels andtoo much money making placards or New Year’s Cards.

2010-02-05

Security Generals office material

Shinsegae Dept. Store

1,500,000

Of course, they can enjoy feasts at hotels, watch
movies, or spend enormous amounts of money hanging out with their supporters or
party officials, but with their own money, not political funds from citizens.
But we just wish that politicians would spend more prudently the money
contributed by the citizens for better politics.

 

 original version of this post

 

Translated by SOORIN KIM(voluntarily activist)

There is a public fund called ‘Reserve for Public Services’. It is a budget allocated by MCST (Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism) for public services. 10% of ‘Sports Toto’ lottery business profit and 2.5% of cycle & motorboat racing business profit are the sources of this fund. The thing is that the budget execution of ‘Reserve for Public Services’ has been known as the typical case of public budget waste.

 

The oversea traveling expenses for the cheering squad of entertainers for Beijing Olympic Game came from the fund. It was very controversial issue several years ago. Not only this, there were many cases in which the reserve was used in inappropriate ways. For example, it was used as a kind of an official expenditure, which MCST gave away to national team athletes or the coaches as incentives. ‘Reserve for Public Service’ is a budget strictly limited to cultures, sports and arts uses for supporting talented people, training experts, educating the disabled, elderly or the low income, and mending and buying facilities for education and training.

 

 

So, CFOI filed FOIA requests for reports on detailed uses of the reserves in 2010. According to the data obtained by the requests, 62.4 billion won of the reserve was funded to 104 projects.

The project that took up most of the budget was ‘the global sports leader promotion project’. 4.7 billion won was given to the project. 2.6 billion won was distributed to 26 Korean consular offices and cultural centers worldwide for ‘global Taekwondo education project’. Yet, the reserves’ subsidy to ‘global Taekwondo project’ is questionable. In 2010, congressman Choi Mun Soon pointed out that 75 million won used for Taekwondo PR by diplomatic offices in the foreign countries was inappropriate expenditures neither for its result nor purposes.

 

The BAI (the Board of Audit and Inspection of Korea) have pointed out the lax execution of the reserve. In 2009, it received ‘the worst public budget execution award’ from the CAT (Citizens’ Action Network), a renowned NGO. It has been recognized as the notorious waster of public budget by both the government organization and citizen watchdog groups.

 

The more imminent problem is that the size of the reserves is growing rapidly while it is clear that the money is spent so poorly. In 2006, it was 8.1 billion won, but it had been increased to 30.9 billion won within two years, and in 2010, it reached 62.4 billion won. It is enlarging in a surprising speed.

 

That the reserves can be spent simply with the minister of the MCST’s approval, and the money isn’t included in the official budget of the ministry makes it seem like some easy money that can be used as the minister’s pocket money. However, there is no hint of reform to fix this problematic practice so far.

 

When we look into the government budget, it is not hard to find so called ‘easy money’. However, it is not because the money is really ‘easy’. It has become easy money because no matter how many times it is called wasted money or stolen money, the institutions granted with the money never listen to the criticisms.

 

There is no such thing as ‘easy money’ after all. We all expect the MCST to spend the reserves for public services transparently and appropriately.

Financial Supervisory Service disclosed ridiculous information of spending on working task

                                                              
                                   

   Translated by Insun Kim(voluntarily activist)

 

 

President Kwon Hyeok-sae of the Financial Supervisory Service (picture from  the Financial

Supervisory Service)

 

 

 

Financial Supervisory Service is a special corporation under the Financial Service Commission to supervise financial institutions. As the service center watches financial companies, it is needless to say that the budget statement and administration of the Financial Supervisory Service should be flawless. We, the Center for Freedom of Information, claimed for the budget statement to the corporation, which the president and the vice president spent, since there is no way to find out that kind of data on its website.

What we demanded for

We sincerely thank you for your efforts on your job. These are the list which we would like to know about.

1. Details of expenditure for managing the company, which the president used, from January to June in 2012.

2. Details of expenditure for the extra things, which the president used, from January to June in 2012.

3. Details of expenditure for managing the company, which the vice president used, from January to June in 2012.

ps. The data should include the purpose, place, date, and amount of expenditure.

What the center disclosed to us.

1. Details of expenditure for managing the company, which the president used, from January to June in 2012.

2. Details of expenditure for managing the company, which the vice president used, from January to June in 2012.

We, the Financial Supervisory Service, do not deal with the money for the extra things.

 

  As you can see above, we asked them to cover the place, date and amount of spending.  However, there was much empty space on the data despite the fact that they opened this information after ten days later.
  What the Financial Supervisory Service revealed on the data was just the sum of expenditure and the frequency of spending per month from between January and June and it was ‘very simple’.

 

Detailed statement of fund for company operation during the fist half of 2012   (unit : 1000won)

month	conference for processing policy		company event		total
	frequency	amount	frequency	amount
January	14	3,861	19	1,900	5.761
February	16	4,343	17	1,700	6,043
March	15	4,422	16	1,600	6,022
April	13	3,619	18	1,800	5,419
May	14	3,970	15	1,500	5,470
June	18	4,833	19	1,900	6,733
total	90	25,047	104	10,400	35,447

 

Spending on company operation, president Kwon Hyeok-sae used, from January to June in 2012, according to the Financial Supervisory Service.

 

Detailed statement of fund for company operation during the fist half of 2012 of three vice president. (unit : 1000won)

month	conference for processing policy		company event		total
	frequency	amount	frequency	amount
January	29	5,763	11	550	6,313
February	24	4,387	1	50	4,437
March	16	4,064	2	100	4,164
April	29	7,249	3	150	7,399
May	44	8,526	0	0	8,526
June	13	2,755	0	0	2,755
total	155	32,744	17	850	33,594

 

 

spending on company operation, the vice presidents used, from January to June in 2012, according to the Financial Supervisory Service.

  Given the amount of expenditure, the corporation spent more than 4,000,000 won on conference for processing policy per month for six months. They also spent 1,500,000 for company event per month for the same time. The total amount is more than 35,000,000, which is very large sum of money.

 

 

  However, there is no way to find out whether the money was used properly for its purpose and whether it was the suitable amount. It only shows how much they spent money per month on company operation.

 

 

  In other words, to examine whether they waste the fund or not, the data should include the information about the purpose, place, and the number of people who used the money.

  There is no doubt that the Financial Supervisory Service knows that these detailed data should be included on what they provided to us. But, it is unacceptable the Financial Supervisory Service dealt with the data so ambiguously.

 

 

  One of the reason that information reporting system was settled and statement of money has to be opened previously is the effort to strength the system for watching on the administration. However, if all the institutions, which are supposed to be supervised, open the information vaguely like the Financial Supervisory Service does, the information disclosure system would be meaningless.

 

  Finance is the core of capitalistic economy. Therefore, it cannot be emphasized enough that the Financial Supervisory Service, which watches on the financial institutions, is highly important. People cannot trust this corporation unless it can  prove its reliability to public.

 

 

original version of this post

 

 

 

  Myongji University, Insun Kim

 

 

 

 

MOFAT’s weak information list is still unsolved! Open the information clearly is the first thing to be done to the rational diplomacy

 

  We, Center for Freedom of Information, have criticized that the closeness of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade(MOFAT) and their highly serious state of closed-door negotiation in terms of major facts of FTA. There have been an intended deletion and edition of information list as a result of the analysis we did about the information list for five months, 2012,1~ 2012,5. We criticized them for the same reason last January, the unopened information of their work, but there is no possibility that the situation will be solved.

  As the information list of the MOFAT is showing, from January to May of this year, the information which was made by MOFAT or they received from the other ministries  is in an amount of 85 in January, 90 in February, 248 in March, 85 in April, 107 in May and the total number is 615. It means that during the last five months, there have been 123 information which was produced by MOFAT or they received per month on average.

 

표- Comparison between the MOFAT and the other ministry about the data which was  registered to information list for five months.

  When it comes to the other same administration, Ministry of Public Administration and Security(MOPAS), there have been 118,857 information was produced and received for five months, during the same time, from January to May.

 
  Another case of the other ministry, Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism(MCST) produced and received 89,102 data during the same time. Average 17,820 cases were made and received for a month. This represents that MOFAT contains only 1/193 amount of MOPAS’ information and 1/145 of MCST’s one. The question is why MOFAT is rarely working while the other same ministries such as MOFAT and MCST are doing many things? It is hard to accept it commonsensically.

 
  Then, why does this kind of situation happen? It is because MOFAT opens  information to pubic what they want to show by editing themselves. Of course, among the information they provide, reports, diplomatic relations, pushing the treaties or agreements, and the other records about the negotiation are deleted 100%. Therefore, there is no way people know what the MOFAT did last month by searching the list of information they opened.

 
  It is clear that MOFAT is cheating public by opening just a small amount of data. Moreover, we can not completely identify whether all the information the ministry recorded on the list was what they recorded or what they sent to the other ministry or it was executed in within their department or it was received from the other ministry.

  We can not say that such a closed practical of MOFAT is illegal due to the Access to the Public Document law. It is because it is possible to unopen the information as long as it matches with the condition about the closed-door record. However, what MOFAT is doing is excessive.

 
  Do you think that there are so much information which should be closed that MOFAT has to delete and edit by themselves? Moreover, we doubt that the information which should not be revealed to information list is completely meet the ‘can not be opened to public’ condition. It is not the right way administration to unopen the record thoughtlessly regarding the national interest.

 

Original version in Korean