More than 3,300 people have been indicted on charges of siphoning off or embezzling state subsidies worth a total of 170 billion won ($160 million), prosecutors and police said Sunday, revealing serious problems with Korea’s subsidy management system.

In a six-month joint crackdown launched in June, prosecutors and police uncovered a total of 3,349 people suspected of involvement in subsidy-related irregularities. Of them, 127 were formally arrested, while the rest were put to trial without physical detention, officials said.

Money involved in those cases totaled 170 billion won in health, welfare, employment, agriculture, culture and sports and other sectors, officials said. Irregularities in the welfare sector were the largest, with the misused money in the area amounting to 40.5 billion won.

Those indicted included the head of a nursery, who was accused of fabricating documents to inflate the number of staff and children to win 9.4 billion won from the state, and a vocational training center chief, who was charged with illegally receiving 600 million won in subsidies aimed at promoting employment of North Korean defectors. (Yonhap News)