The Korea Times
A significant number of state honors revoked by the Korean government over the past decades have not been returned, raising concerns about the effectiveness of the current system. According to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety on Sunday, only 260 of the 833 government awards revoked since the establishment of the Republic of Korea in 1948 have been returned. Excluding 42 cases revoked this year that are still undergoing recovery procedures, the return rate of canceled state honors stands at just 32.9 percent over the past 78 years. Of the hundreds of awards that have yet to be recovered, about 25 percent involve deceased recipients, around 28 percent were reported lost or destroyed, 16 percent are linked to unknown addresses and the rest, 31 percent, fall under other categories, such as loss of contact. Concerns are being raised about the effectiveness of the system, as a significant number of revoked state honors remain unrecovered. In reality, there are few viable means to forcibly retrieve the awards if recipients refuse to return them. Still, recent trends show notable improvem
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