By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter

Foreign CEOs and senior officials residing in South Korea believe government officials here are gradually becoming less corrupt but remain crooked by international standards, according to a survey released by the Korea Independent Commission Against Corruption (KICAC) Thursday.

In a July-September telephone survey of 204 senior foreign officials at foreign-invested companies and the chambers of commerce in South Korea, 50.5 percent of the respondents said they think South Korean officials are corrupt. The figure was down 12.8 percentage points from a similar survey conducted in June last year.

As for the private sector, 36.8 percent of those surveyed responded that corruption existed, down 8.7 percentage points from December last year.

Some half of the respondents said corruption in South Korea is mainly due to a cultural structure that promotes corruption, followed by government red tape, a lack of ethics and political structure. This contrasts with a survey of South Koreans who believed a bad political structure was the main cause for corruption.

Nearly 67 percent of the non-Korean respondents said an improvement and strengthening of the related-laws and regulations is needed to make a transparent society.

``South Korea so far hasn’t cleared up its image as a corrupt country, as the poll shows,’’ a KICAC official said. ``We’ll make every effort to fill the loopholes in corrupt sectors in order to build a better image abroad.’’

As part of its efforts, the KICAC plans to introduce and implement a preliminary evaluation system on regulations or statutes at governmental agencies.

``With the envisaged system, we can effectively detect any elusive regulations of an agency that lead to corruptive behaviors before they are implemented,’’ an official explained.

gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr