A government inspection has revealed that 1,073 forestry corporations, accounting for more than half of the total in South Korea, employed technicians suspected of illegal practices or failed to meet office facility and capital requirements.

The Joint Government Task Force for Corruption Prevention under the Office for Government Policy Coordination, together with the Korea Forest Service, announced today (October 16) the results of a joint inspection into the execution of forestry projects.

The government plans to impose administrative penalties on all non-compliant corporations and suspected technicians after formal verification, and refer cases to investigative agencies if violations are deemed serious.

A comprehensive survey conducted by the task force and the Korea Forest Service covering all 1,907 forestry corporations and 12,463 technicians found that 1,073 corporations (56%) failed to meet registration requirements, and 4,716 technicians (37.8%) were suspected of engaging in unlawful acts.

Among the corporations, there were 1,010 suspected cases of fraudulent technical personnel hiring, 82 cases falling short of office facility standards, and 99 falling short of capital requirements, with some overlapping offenses.

Suspicions surrounding technicians included license lending and holding duplicate employment, based on evidence such as failure to verify actual work, non-enrollment in the four major social insurance programs, lack of employment contracts, and circumstances that rendered actual work impossible.

In particular, 33 corporations were caught misappropriating the qualification certificates of 38 deceased individuals, while other cases involved borrowing the names of correctional facility inmates or long-term overseas residents.

The government pointed out, "We confirmed poor operation and low effectiveness in both fact-finding surveys and the Forestry Technology Information System designed to oversee corporations and technicians," adding, "The detection rate of non-compliant corporations in previous surveys stood at under 6%, and there were three instances where no corrective action was taken after violations were uncovered."


Accordingly, the government will subject the non-compliant corporations and suspected technicians identified in the inspection to administrative sanctions following formal hearings, and refer them to law enforcement for investigation if the violations are grave or require an in-depth inquiry.

The investigation also brought to light customary private contracts and project wins by unqualified contractors.

A complete enumeration of major forestry project contracts between 2023 and 2025 showed that private, non-competitive contracts accounted for an overwhelmingly high proportion of about 83% based on contract value.

In particular, an analysis of bids on the state procurement portal KONEPS (Nara Marketplace) identified about 120 corporations suspected of "swarming bids," a practice in which multiple paper entities believed to share the same actual operator submit bids simultaneously.

The government explained, "While private contracting is not illegal, it limits market competition and allows orders to be secured without competitive evaluation, which has been pointed out as a cause of degraded project quality."

In response, the government will transition from customary private contracting to a system centered on competitive bidding.

The goal is to increase the share of competitive bidding from 52% this year to 80% by 2030.

It will also tighten subsidy management guidelines, including introducing prior review procedures for private contracts.

Corporations suspected of swarming bids will be referred for criminal investigation on charges such as obstruction of bidding following additional verification.

In addition, shortcomings were identified in the post-management of reforestation and forest-tending projects.

An inspection of 1,145 wildfire recovery reforestation sites and 71 forest-tending project locations uncovered 79 suspected cases of improper management.

The inspection also identified a lack of systematic, integrated management for tree survival rate data.

The government stated, "We plan to establish sound market order so that forestry projects can contribute to creating and nurturing healthy forests and preventing forest disasters."
 
(Photo courtesy of the Prime Minister's Office, Yonhap News)