Yongin City Establishes 'Integrity Enhancement Plan' to Prevent Corruption Among Public Officials

[Suwon Ilbo=Reporter Park No-hun] Yongin City announced on the 20th that it has established an 'Integrity Enhancement Plan' to prevent corruption among public officials and enhance public trust in city administration.

In relation to recent reports by some media outlets regarding alleged real estate irregularities, the city is preparing measures to prevent such cases from recurring and to establish an honest public service culture at the city level.

To this end, the city will first conduct anti-corruption and integrity training in the second half of the year for all employees, including newly appointed public officials, and will also provide customized anti-corruption training for urban and construction project permit officers and subsidy project operators.

The city plans to actively utilize integrity citizen auditors to gather public opinions through regular meetings to collect complaints about corruption and irregularities.

Additionally, public officials in charge of reporting, permits, and approvals will prepare a self-diagnosis checklist to identify areas that could raise suspicions related to projects in advance, and will receive approval from their department heads.

As medium and long-term measures, the city has secured budgets to provide whistleblower rewards of up to 100 million won to enable citizens to actively report irregularities by public officials, and has strengthened screening of public officials required to register assets. The city has also announced plans to expand the scope of duties from urban development and construction sectors to contracts, asset management, and land registration work.

Furthermore, the city plans to strengthen preliminary inspections of worksites suspected of illegal or improper development by establishing a separate field patrol team composed of personnel familiar with local conditions.

In addition, the city will actively operate existing reporting channels such as the Cheongbaek-e system and the helpline, and will actively promote public official misconduct reporting centers and helplines so that contractors can report related disadvantages when applying for permits and approvals.

Baek Kyun-gi, mayor of Yongin City, said, "I will prevent improper acts such as corruption and misconduct from occurring within the organization in advance, establish a system that can dramatically report these issues, and enhance the transparency of administration."