Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Bribes for What Exactly?

Today's JoongAng Daily reported that corruption was detected in all 16 education offices. The bright side of this is that:
In the past, the results of this survey have not been announced publicly. However, Grand National Party lawmaker Kwon Young-jin, also a member of the Education, Science and Technology Committee of the National Assembly, received the results in a report on Thursday.
I guess the fact that it was reported publicly makes it all better. The sarcasm probably isn't entirely warranted; the most important anti-corruption measure a country can make is transparency. However, admitting that something is corrupt doesn't actually do anything to change it though presumably there will be increased public pressure to resolve the issue.  I had trouble imagining exactly what sort of bribes there were though apparently:
“We see that most of the people who gave money or gifts to civil servants have related businesses [to the education sector] including school meal manufacturers, school facilities companies among others,” said a high-level official at ACRC.
I wonder if the reason the new 4th grade English textbook didn't have an accompanying teacher's manual in English had something to do with this. Probably just regular bureaucratic incompetence

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