Since 1989, environmental authorities of South Korea have published on a monthly basis a list of enterprises violating the country's environmental rules and regulations. This may be the longest environmental public disclosure program currently in exis...
Since 1989, environmental authorities of South Korea have published on a monthly basis a list of enterprises violating the country's environmental rules and regulations. This may be the longest environmental public disclosure program currently in existence. Over the period 1993-2001, in excess of 7,000 violation events have been recorded on these monthly violation lists, involving more than 3,400 different companies. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive descriptive analysis of this dataset. Results suggest that the news media has given an important, though perhaps declining coverage to the violation lists, with a focus on publicly traded companies, failures to operate pollution abatement equipment, and prosecutions.