S. Korea to dismiss 274 public employees involved in solicited employment

Jan 30, 2018, 09:00 am

By AsiaToday reporter Kim Eun-sung

274 executives and senior officials at public firms will be fired or referred to state prosecutors due to involvement in solicited employment. They include the heads of eight public institutions who were referred to the prosecution or sacked.

The Ministry of Strategy and Finance and other 17 related ministries held a meeting on Monday on illicit hiring cases of state-run enterprises, and announced the final result of the special inspection. The government and local autonomous bodies launched a pan government special measure headquarters and a solicited employment report center last November, which conducted a thorough inspection of 1,190 state-funded entities and found 4,788 irregularities in the hiring procedures of 946 institutions and organizations.

The government referred 83 cases among them to the prosecution, while taking punitive and administrative actions related to 255 cases. Separately, the government asked the police to investigate 26 suspected cases of solicited employment related to public institutions among the reports received at the report center.

During the inspection process, the government tentatively counted a total of 79 applicants hired through illicit solicitation. If those applicants are indicted as a result of the prosecution's investigation, they will be immediately suspended from them jobs just like those involved in the illicit hiring process.

The restriction provision on those involved in illicit employment will be strengthened. The government plans to open the list of executives who are convicted of illegal hiring and those who asked for illegal employment to the public. It also plans to restrict the qualification of candidates for admission to public institutions for the next five years. "This inspection is the first step toward fair hiring. All ministries and agencies should make efforts to strengthen the fairness and transparency of the hiring process," Vice Finance Minister Kim Yong-jin said at a media briefing Monday.

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