[Photo] Retired prosecutors granted re-employment at Samsung by Government Ethics Committee

Throughout the past five years, the South Korean Government Ethics Committee approved the re-employment of over 100 former public prosecutors under the Samsung Group conglomerate. According to data that Democratic Party lawmaker Song Gi-heon acquired from the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, among the 106 retired prosecutors who requested re-employment in the private sector for 2013 to 2017, all but two of them were approved for re-employment under Samsung. The data is troubling because the Government Ethics Committee is a government body in charge of ensuring that the private and public sectors remain separate. South Korea has a history of high-ranking civil servants being re-employed by corporate firms after retirement in exchange for under-the-table favors during their public terms. (Shin So-young, staff photographer)