Correcting Practices of Selecting Government Officials Disproportionately from Jeolla Province

The President-elect’s government transition committee said that it requested the Civil Service Commission to submit related documents to have a through grasp of the problem in which many believed public servants disproportionately came from Jeolla Province.

Kim Byung-jun, member of the state affairs committee in the transition team, revealed at a meeting with reporters on Jan.3, “We have heard about complaints of selecting major government officials disproportionately from certain regions. So we asked the Civil Service Commission to present related documents to examine the degree of predominant selections of official from Jeolla Provice.”

It has been known that the Civil Service Commission has compiled individual information on around 1,000 high-ranking government officials with over 3rd grade, including data by district.

“First of all, we will try to find the existence of predominant selections of officials from certain regions in the government, to carry out a through examination on the causes and to uncover whether there were complicate political dynamics involved,” he said.

“As a new government led by President-elect Roh is not established on the base of regional rivalry, it is unlikely that some political heavyweights will secretly gather personnel files or name auditors to carry out oversight state-run companies through a backdoor compromise,” he also added.

Furthermore, the government transition team decided to avoid high-handed personnel administration when appointing heads of government-controlled companies and apply selection standards, matching those of selecting CEOs of large private companies.

The transition team attributed the outgoing government failure in reforming the public sector to the failure in personnel administration. Against this backdrop, it has been reported that the team has close consultations with officials dealing with personnel management at private companies such as Samsung, LG, and SK, foreign consulting firms and headhunting firms.

“It is true that under the current government, there are some cases of political influence wielded on the appointment of auditors in state-run companies which lack transparent and reliable corporate governances. President-elect Roh has repeatedly pointed out everything starts from personnel administration in the government. In light of the fact, he will try to do away with bad practices,” he added.

Young-Hae Choi yhchoi65@donga.com