ACRC protects the rights of 196,400 people
through resolution of civil complaints
since Moon Administration took office

- With a 94.7% recommendation acceptance rate by public organizations, ACRC achieved its all-time high performance in protecting people’s rights

- 21 central government agencies, including Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy and Ministry of Economy and Finance, accepted 100% of ACRC’s recommendations

(2nd Sep. 2021, ACRC)

Since the Moon Administration took office, the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (Chairperson : Jeon Hyun-hui, hereinafter ACRC) has protected the rights of 196,400 people by resolving 9,750 civil complaints through recommendations for redress, opinion statements, settlement, and mediation of grievance complaints.

In particular, the number of recommendations for redress and opinion statements issued to 285 public organizations by the end of last year was 1,924, of which 1,822 cases were accepted, reaching an acceptance rate of 94.7%. This was the ACRC’s best performance in protecting the people’s rights since its launch.

The ACRC reported the “current status of recommendation acceptance to resolve civil complaints” to President Moon Jae-in at the Cabinet meeting on March 2 this year. President Moon ordered the ACRC “to closely examine any non-acceptance cases by public organizations that had valid ACRC recommendations and thereby caused grievance to citizens.”

Accordingly, the ACRC came up with measures to raise the acceptance rate and closely examined 248 cases with non-accepted civil complaints on 111 public organizations.

As a result of the examination, public organizations recognized the validity of the recommendations and accepted another 88 recommendations, resulting in 197 public organizations (69.1%) out of the total 285 organizations accepting all recommendations. Among central government agencies, 21 agencies accepted 100% of the ACRC recommendations, including the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy, Ministry of Economy and Finance, Ministry of Education, and Ministry of Justice.

Even though most of the organizations accepted the recommendations, 38 organizations still have non-accepted complaints (57 cases). The reasons for non-acceptance were largely due to laws and regulations (25 cases, 43.9%); influence, impartiality, and lack of budget (22 cases, 38.6%); and different outcomes of the internal deliberation commission (10 cases, 17.5%).

The ACRC has actively communicated with public organizations by signing MOUs and holding acceptance cooperative meetings to form a consensus on the protection of the people’s rights and has resolved a lot of civil grievances through active administrative efforts and cooperation with other organizations.

As an example, Mr. K, a bus driver, filed a civil complaint to the ACRC, insisting that “I have been unfairly cracked down five times for violating a designated highway lane that was not easy to identify.” The ACRC made a recommendation for redress to the National Police Agency to cancel the fine and penalty point imposed against violations of the place mentioned. Accordingly, the National Police Agency decided to cancel all 19,830 violation cases that were cracked down for the same reason, even if complaints weren’t filed on them, and it is now proceeding a follow-up process such as the return of fines.

The National Tax Service actively accepted 12 out of 24 non-accepted cases by re-deliberating them from the perspective of a third party at the taxpayer protection commission established in the head and local tax offices. Accordingly, approximately KRW 760 million(USD 640,000) of tax was canceled and refunded.

The ACRC will make continuous efforts to help public organizations follow its recommendations by reorganizing its civil service evaluation system so that central government agencies can be included as the targets of the acceptance rate evaluation and by providing the legal ground to disclose the non-acceptance cases.

Chairperson Jeon Hyun-hui said, “The two reports at Cabinet meetings served as an opportunity to raise the awareness of public organizations on the ever-increasing importance of the resolution of civil complaints. It is very meaningful that the ACRC and other relevant administrative agencies have started to actively protect the people’s rights through cooperation under such shared awareness.” She added that “the ACRC will make more efforts to raise the acceptance rates of public organizations and local governments that are closely related to the daily lives of the people.”