Establishing a Fair Recruitment Environment

- One-year anniversary of the launch of a hiring-irregularity reporting center, establishing a fair recruitment management system in the public sector

(26 Dec. 2023, ACRC)

The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) has laid the foundation for establishing a fair recruitment management system by taking measures such as establishing a Hiring-Irregularity Reporting Center within the ACRC to ensure the realization of the 2023 government task ‘Ensuring Fair Opportunities for Youth to Leap Forward.’

The ACRC Hiring-Irregularity Reporting Center, launched on January 1 this year, has initiated new efforts in ‘institutional improvement for fair recruitment’, ‘specialized education,’ and ‘consulting on recruitment regulations’ for proactive prevention of hiring irregularities, as well as implementing the conventional post-detection measures such as ‘comprehensive investigation of recruitment practices’ and ‘handling reported cases,’ in order to establish a continuous management and supervision system for securing fairness in hiring practices.

The ACRC conducted year-round activities such as ‘handling reported cases,’ ‘comprehensive investigation of recruitment practices,’ and ‘investigations into pending issues’ for post-detection and management following the occurrence of hiring irregularities.

The ACRC ly identifies the factual circumstances related to allegations of hiring irregularities reported by the public and actively refers or transfers such cases to investigative agencies and supervisory authorities when deemed necessary.

In addition, the ACRC made efforts to thoroughly investigate allegations of corruption in hiring practices raised by the public. As a result, 116 cases among a total of 128 reported cases received by the ACRC were processed this year, and there was a significant increase in the number of cases referred or transferred compared to the previous year (27 cases à 49 cases).

< Current Status of Reported Cases of Hiring Irregularities Processed by ACRC >

< Cases into which investigation/inquiry has been completed

Furthermore, the ACRC conducted a comprehensive investigation into hiring practices from February to October 2023, targeting 825 public service-related agencies. Through this investigation, a total of 867 cases of violations of fair employment practices were identified, leading to requests for investigation and disciplinary action against 68 individuals involved in corrupt hiring practices.

Additionally, to enhance public trust and promote fairness in recruitment, the ACRC conducted thorough ‘investigations into pending issues’ to address suspicions raised over preferential hiring of high-ranking officials’ children and hiring irregularity at the National Disaster Relief Association.

On the other hand, the ACRC actively promoted ‘institutional improvements’ to eliminate blind spots in hiring-related regulations, not only for post-detection of hiring irregularities but also to prevent the occurrence of such irregularities at its source, and conducted ‘specialized education for fair recruitment’ and ‘consulting on hiring regulations’ in order to prevent corruption in hiring process due to inadequate understanding of regulations and flaws in internal recruitment regulations.

As for ‘institutional improvement,’ the ACRC recommended institutional improvements on March 15, establishing fair recruitment standards (31 articles) and urging all administrative agencies to internalize these standards since the absence of common hiring standards has led to frequent occurrences of hiring irregularities, despite the scale of non-civil servant recruitment in administrative agencies being approximately 430,000 as of 2020.

The results of the ACRC's inspection of institutional improvement implementation status, which showed that among 550 institutions, 401 institutions reflected fair recruitment standards by 70% or more, have revealed that fair recruitment standards for non-civil servant recruitment in administrative agencies are rapidly becoming established in the field.

With respect to ‘specialized fair recruitment education’ targeting officers responsible for personnel and auditing affairs in public service-related organizations, monthly group training and online courses (introduced in July) were organized, and 5,066 officers responsible for personnel and auditing matters from 907 institutions completed the courses.

The results of a survey on satisfaction regarding the specialized education showed that out of 757 respondents, 684 individuals (90%) responded that it ‘helped performance of duties,’ indicating the effectiveness of the education in enhancing expertise in recruitment affairs.

With regard to the ‘recruitment regulation consulting,’ the ACRC had each institution submit their own recruitment regulations and conducted consulting to see to it that these institutions comply with higher laws and guidelines and reflect fair recruitment standards that are not stipulated in their existing regulations into their own recruitment regulations. This year, the ACRC issued recommendations to 354 public-related organizations to improve a total of 8,485 provisions.

The most frequently recommended items included: ▲ compliance with hiring regulation that provides for granting additional points and preferential treatment for job applicants categorized as persons eligible for employment assistance under ⸢the Act on the Honorable Treatment of and Support for Persons of Distinguished Service to the State⸥ (335 cases); and ▲ strengthening the management of pre-training of job interviewers to prohibit discriminatory questions (331 cases).

The ACRC Vice Chairperson and Secretary General Chung Seung-yun said, “To ensure that the younger generation starting their social life in 2030 does not experience unfairness due to hiring irregularities at the first gateway, the ACRC will strive to more firmly establish a fair recruitment management system in the public sector.”