Since 1999, South Korea has had on its books a law prohibiting bribery of foreign officials: The Act on Preventing Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. The law, known colloquially as the Foreign Bribery Prevention Act or FBPA for short, was passed to implement the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions (the Convention), to which Korea became a signatory in January 1999.
Yet despite the FBPA being in effect for nearly 15 years, its history to date has been one of relative obscurity, with little enforcement activity and a total of just 10 convictions.1 Most of the cases brought under the statute have involved bribery of foreign military officials stationed in Korea, not bribery in the commercial context.2 In addition, just last month, the global anti-corruption group Transparency International released a report that listed Korea as one of 20 OECD Convention signatories with little or no foreign bribery enforcement.3
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