Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0325/03250.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 36KB | 564 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03250}
$Pretitle{241}
$Title{South Korea
Chapter 4B.   The Civil Service}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Rinn-Sup Shinn}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{political
government
party
chun
kim
military
national
percent
democratic
new}
$Date{1981}
$Log{President Chun Doo Hwan*0325002.scf
}
Country:     South Korea
Book:        South Korea, A Country Study
Author:      Rinn-Sup Shinn
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1981

Chapter 4B.   The Civil Service

     For centuries the most honored profession in Korea was the government
service, which had been more or less preempted by the Confucian
scholar-official class (see Traditional Social Structure, ch. 2). For a small
number of bright and privileged males who passed the rigorous Confucian civil
service examination and who were given appointments, power and wealth were
usually assured. In contemporary South Korea, however, the civil service has
lost some of its earlier prestige and lustre. This is partly because
financially rewarding jobs are plentiful in private industry and commerce.

     Generally the civil service enjoys a reputation as competent and
dedicated, but the proverbial corruption in the bureaucracy has also unfairly
brought disrepute to the profession as a whole. Therefore efforts to stamp out
malfeasance have been continuous, perhaps most pronounced after the assumption
of power by a new regime. Between December 1963 and December 1980 a total of
132,500 government officials were referred to disciplinary actions for
assorted wrongdoings. In a gesture of leniency, the government in January 1981
issued a clemency decree to be applicable to about 130,000 affected persons.
This decree did not, however, extend reprieve to the thousands of officials
purged after July 1980 on charges of corruption. The purged officials were
replaced by younger, competent, and "clean" officials. These individuals in
effect came to constitute a new generation of public officials committed
firmly to the Chun leadership. Not surprisingly many of these servants,
especially those placed in the sensitive posts dealing with security,
intelligence, and financial and economic matters, were known to be closely
connected with Chun and his inner circle of supporters.

     A notable reform effort since Chun's presidency in August 1980 was a
measure designed to have all senior public servants disclose their assets as
from July 1981 should these assets exceed W5 million (for value of the won-see
Glossary) per person. A bill was drafted to give real substance to this
attempt to establish "official discipline"; it was intended to apply to the
president, the prime minister, ministers and directors of government
departments, members of the Presidential Secretariat, judges, prosecutors,
National Assembly members, generals and other high-ranking civil servants. In
May 1981 the National Assembly, dominated by Chun's supporters, decided to
drop the bill at least for the time being on the grounds that more time was
needed to enact the bill. The committee in charge of the ethics bill stated,
however, that the basic spirit of the bill would be honored as "an
institutional device to prevent corruption in officialdom."

     The civil service system is managed by the Ministry of Government
Administration. Recruitment is for the most part through competitive
examinations held annually in two categories, "ordinary" and "higher"
examinations. Those passing the higher test are given preference in
appointment and over the years have become the nucleus of bureaucratic elites
scattered in three major government functions-general administration, foreign
affairs, and the administration of justice. People who pass the higher
examinations are generally recognized as bright and able and are loosely known
as members of the so-called "higher civil service examination clique." Many of
these members are generalists and are seen as the guardians of bureaucratic
conservatism. Their grip on the administrative levers is widely known and even
deplored as an impediment to progress, but the supposed liability is
outweighed by their expert knowledge of administrative intricacies and their
proven influence as the mainstay of administrative stability and continuity.

     Training is an increasingly important part of personnel management. The
government continues to stress in-service training; in addition some are sent
to the Central Officers Training Institute located in Taejon or to foreign
institutions for advanced training.

     In 1981 the civil service continued to represent a cross section of the
society. It was manned by 600,000 employees, all but a fraction of the total
being in the executive branch of the central and local administrations. A
small number of officials providing staff support for the National Assembly
and the judiciary are classified as civil servants. As always graduates of the
so-called Big Three-Seoul National University, Yonsei University, and Koryo
University (all located in Seoul)-continued to enjoy advantages in gaining
employment in the government and in private sectors as well. A conspicuous
trend since Chun's takeover has been the forced retirement of incompetent and
elder officials in favor of younger and better trained officials. Also
noticeable has been the growing presence of retired military officers in
responsible positions.

Politics

Political Developments since October 1979

     The authoritarian rule of Park ended on October 26, 1979, as abruptly as
it had begun in May 1961. Park, whose last several years were particularly
repressive, was gunned down by the director of the KCIA, Kim Jae-gyu, who
later told a trial court that he had sought to remove Park since November 1972
because of his dictatorial policies. The country was plunged into a state of
uncertainty. Clearly a large majority of the people wanted Park's repressive
constitutional system dismantled or substantially changed so as to restore a
democratic rule as soon as was practicable. But the caretaker government, led
by Park's former confidants, was unable to forge a national consensus on the
form and substance of political transition. It lost much time in pondering the
future. Unfortunately the resulting image of "delaying tactics" by the regime
complicated the already formidable task of transition toward
"democratization"-a sufficient ground for growing student restiveness, not to
mention the edginess on the part of the stability-conscious military.

     The politics of transition were set in motion under martial law
proclaimed on October 27, and the military emerged as a visible force on the
political scene for the first time since 1963. As prescribed in the 1972
document, Prime Minister Choi Kyu Hah, a career diplomat and Park's confidant,
became acting president. Initially calm prevailed; all political
demonstrations were banned, the media of mass communication were subjected to
military censorship, and universities and colleges were ordered closed.
Nonetheless there were mounting popular demands for the revision of the 1972
constitution and for the abolition of decrees restricting civil liberties. In
November Choi stressed the need to promote political development commensurate
with South Korea's remarkable social and economic progress. Few South Koreans
believed, however, that he had the necessary organization or popular support
to initiate any major political change, let alone effectively lead the
caretaker regime. In fact major opposition leaders demanded his resignation so
that the process of democratization could proceed under a new, more broadly
representative interim government.

     Meanwhile in November the ruling Democratic Republican Party elected Kim
Jong Pil, one of Park's most trusted lieutenants since 1961, to succeed the
late president as the party leader, placing him as a front-runner for
presidential succession. At that time Kim Jong Pil, who had disavowed
presidential ambitions for the time being, indicated his preference for a
gradualist approa