“Overall Modification of National Technical Qualification System”

National technical qualification system, whose market amounts 100 billion won and applicants for the test number at 2 million persons (total man-days), is likely to be reformed extensively.

Labor Ministry (MOL) announced on the 17th that it would improve the national technical qualification system, which is divided into 5 grades and has 570 kinds of qualification.

Hence the Labor Ministry will launch a `committee for improving the qualification system` under Korean Development Institute (KDI) on the 19th, which consists of doctoral researchers and persons in charge in the Korea Labor Institute (KLI) and the Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training (KRIVET).

Park Yong-Woong inspector of Qualification Promotion Division in MOL said, "the goal of this reformation is to re-organize the qualification items which are out of date and have no demand, and to develop new items to increase the field adaptability, which is required for the information society of the 21 century."

For example, they will merge or abolish the 172 unpopular certificate exams for such as clock repair and dyeing, for which less than 50 persons apply every year, and specialize and itemize the qualification tests like information process and office automation, which has been applied increasingly, especially by women, but currently itemized in 15 kinds of certificates only.

Inspector Park added, "considerable numbers of qualification tests have lost their operation as qualification as they cannot test field experience. We will increase the reliability of the test in the future by meeting the requests from the industrial fields with field-oriented questions. "

In relation to this, an official of construction businesses said, "we cannot position newly employed persons, who are qualified as 1st grade construction engineers, to the field directly. We train them for 2 to 3 months under the instruction of experienced partner."

In addition, the Labor Ministry announced that it would adjust the current 5-grade system of technician →industrial technician →engineer →masters and professional engineers, though it was implemented only 4 years ago in 1998.

The national technical qualification tests operated by Human Resource Development Service of Korea collected 15.5 billion won last year from applicants for the test, whose fee was from 6,200 won to 39,000 won by grades, and the scale of the qualification market may amount at 100 billions won if tuition fee for related educational institutes and the price of reference books were included.

Jinn Lee leej@donga.com