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Antidrug agency used 'adjustment plan' to raise senior officials' salaries by 30%, audit finds

Published: 15 Oct. 2025, 13:29

About 600 kilograms (1,323 pounds) of cocaine worth 300 billion won ($210.5 million) is displayed during a joint press briefing on the largest-ever drug smuggling case at Busan Port, held at the Busan District Prosecutors’ Office on Aug. 6. [NEWS1]

A pay raise meant to stop employees from quitting a state-run antidrug agency only ended up fattening the paychecks of its senior officials instead — with top managers seeing their salaries jump by more than 30 percent compared to 8 percent for those at the lower end of the hierarchy.

According to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety’s audit of the Korean Association Against Drug Abuse, salaries for senior-level employees — those at Grade 1 to 3 positions, including associate directors and team leaders — rose between 33 and 37 percent.

In contrast, wages for junior employees, from Grade 4 to 6, increased only 8 to 15 percent. The lowest-grade employees saw just an 8 percent rise, less than one-fourth of the increase given to some senior officials.

The association has been struggling with severe employee attrition among its lower ranks. The turnover rate among Grade 4 to 6 employees reached 22.2 percent last year, meaning roughly one in five have left the organization. To address the issue, the association adopted a “salary adjustment plan” in June last year to improve staff compensation — but most of the additional funding went to managers in Grade 3 and above.

Although internal regulations require the association to follow a “bottom-up” wage principle designed to give larger raises to lower-ranking staff, the rule was ignored. The ministry issued a formal warning to the association and ordered stricter management of salary-related decisions.

Separately, the audit uncovered multiple cases of ethical misconduct. Nineteen employees were found to have failed to report or delayed reporting outside lectures they gave — a violation of the association’s code of conduct — and some accepted lecture fees that exceeded legal limits. Despite such issues, the association had not monitored outside lecture activities for nearly three years, since January 2022.

Rep. Seo Mi-hwa of the Democratic Party criticized the association, saying, “Those responsible for inflating senior officials’ pay while ignoring their own compensation rules must be held accountable. The ministry must strengthen oversight to prevent the loss of trained antidrug professionals.”

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY KIM CHUL-WOONG [[email protected]]