「부정청탁 금지 및 공직자의 이해충돌 방지법안」에 대한 문제점 및 개선방안

A Review and Suggestion on the Pending Legislation, the Law against Conflict of Interest - Focusing on the issues of Illegal Gratuity and the Extension of Application -

This article aims to identify problems raised on and alternative measures to the KimYoungran Bill(hereinafter, the Bill) which was proposed in August of 2012 by Kim, Young-Ran, the former chairwoman of the Korean Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission to punish officials' illegal gratuity acts and regulate conflict of interest among current, former public officials and their relatives who improperly influence public officials taking advantage of their former public status. Through the Sewol-ho tragedy occurred on April 16, it has been obvious that corruption rampant in Korean reached a very serious level that needs an immediate measure to guarantee transparent and fair execution of official duty in our society. This paper analyzes the highly controversial codes of the Bill and other similar bills proposed by the government and congressmen: 1) the illegal gratuity crime and its related codes, 2) the issue on extending the scope of official to private school teaching staffs and personnel working for a mass media organization. Based on the analysis, the paper argues that the code on illegal gratuity of the Bill possibly violates the constitution against the principle of clarity and that the code allowing the scope of application to private teaching staffs and mass medial personnel is possibly unconstitutional violating the principle of proportionality. This study, therefore, suggests some revisions on the relevant codes to avoid disputes about the unconstitutionality and to guarantee effective enforcement of the Bill.