A Study on the Implementation Evaluation of the Moon Jae-in Administration's Anti-corruption and Integrity Policy : Focusing on Presidential Election Pledge
Authors:   Korean Association For Corruption Studies, Lee Chung Joo 
Published: May 2024

The purpose of this study is to identify the tasks that need to be implemented to advance a clean society by deriving the achievements and limitations of the anti-corruption and integrity policies through the evaluation of policy implementation centered on anti-corruption and integrity-related matters among the Moon Jae-in government's presidential election promises.
The policy evaluation targets are 44 anti-corruption and integrity-related tasks (26 eliminating deep-rooted evils, 7 reforming power institutions, 3 reforming political and electoral systems, and 8 economic democratization) among the 19th presidential election pledges of the Democratic Party of Korea.
Whether the presidential election promises are linked to actual national policy tasks was examined through matching with the Moon Jae-in government's five-year plan for national affairs. In addition, the verification of the fulfillment of the pledge was made using the information system of the National Assembly, the data of the National Legal Information Center of the Ministry of Legislation, and the press releases and media materials of the relevant ministries.
As a result of the analysis, it was found that about 7 out of 10 presidential election pledges related to anti-corruption and integrity were reflected in national tasks, and about 5 to 6 were actually implemented. By field, “pledges related to the eradication of deep-rooted evils and economic democratization” were largely reflected in national affairs tasks and many tasks were implemented, but “pledges related to political election reform and reform of power institutions” were evaluated as relatively less so.
The main achievements of the Moon Jae-in administration’s anti-corruption and integrity policy are “establishment of a system of checks and control over institutions of power,” “attempts to restore public-private governance,” “wide-of-government measures that break away from partition administration,” and “Improvement of integrity in the public service community.”
Major limitations include “over-immersion in reducing the power of the prosecution, including the complete deprivation of the prosecution’s right to investigate, resulting in a backlog of priorities for other anti-corruption and integrity reform tasks,” “problems with the political independence of power institutions such as the prosecution and the Board of Audit and Inspection,” “failure to reorganize independent anti-corruption organizations,”“non-compliance with the principle of zero tolerance for corruption,” “insufficient personnel control system for social leaders,” “failure to strengthen management of public interest corporations,” “insufficient legal and institutional infrastructure to ensure sustainability of public-private governance,” and “practice of enacting allopathic legislation according to specific issues with large social impact.”
In particular, given that the issues presented as limitations are immediate tasks that must be resolved in order for our society to move towards a society of integrity, either the conservative or progressive governments should focus more on the relevant issues and exercise their policy capabilities.