South Korea

Recent activities

On 6 October 2011 the Korea University International Human Rights Clinic became PWYP’s first member in Korea.

13 April 2011

The South Korean National Assembly debated legislation to introduce mandatory financial reporting for extractive companies. In December 2010, Legislator Seung Soo Cho of the New Progressive Party introduced an amendment to the Overseas Resources Development Act. This amendment requires all enterprises participating in overseas resources development to submit an annual business report to the Financial Services Commission, covering contract, payment and expenses data. The FSC would then disclose these details to the public and to the National Assembly.

This amendment was discussed in a seminar in the Korean National Assembly on March 23, 2011. Legislator Cho, Paul Donowitz from EarthRights International/PWYP US, laywer Pilkyu Hwang and Professor Kyunsing Park spoke in favour of the bill, providing information on the resource curse, Dodd-Frank 1504 (on which the bill was modelled) and gave the example of Burma as a case study of why this bill needs to happen now. Indeed, interest in transparency in the extractive sector in South Korea was raised by the harmful effects of South Korean companies in Burma.