March 4, 2025
SEOUL – The presidential audit agency said Thursday that it found irregularities in every instance of career staff recruitment conducted by Korea’s election commissions for 10 years from 2013.
During the 10-year period, the commissions hired experienced workers 291 times. The Board of Audit and Inspection detected 878 cases of corruption in these periodic recruitments. None of them were clean.
A wide array of officials from high-ranking to mid-level positions were found to have requested that election commissions give their children or relatives special favors in gaining employment as full-time workers.
Personnel and recruiting managers committed illegal acts or used tricks to meet such requests. They did not post advertisements for the jobs but decided internally to hire the children of election commission employees who asked for favors. They formed a job interview panel composed entirely of insiders well-acquainted with those who requested the recruitment of their children, and manipulated their interview scores.
A former secretary-general of the National Election Commission exerted his influence on a local election commission to have his son hired. A former deputy secretary of the commission asked a provincial election commission to recommend his daughter as a qualified applicant for a career position at a district election commission. Their children landed jobs, while other applicants failed without knowing the reason.
A mid-level manager of a provincial election commission was found to have been absent from work without due notice for 100 days and falsely took sick leave for 81 days while working for eight years. However, the entire absence without leave was treated as normal work hours, and 38 million won ($26,000) in salary was overpaid to the official.
An official at a provincial election commission took two years’ leave to attend law school, although leave for that purpose had been banned. The National Election Commission took no corrective measures though it was aware of what had happened.
The commission once received a letter from a member of the public revealing the employment favors given to a child of a mid-level manager at a provincial election commission, but the NEC closed its internal audit with the conclusion that there was no problem.
When the Board of Audit and Inspection began to investigate, election commission officials attempted to destroy related documents and coerced employees into making false statements.
When legislators demanded data on employees’ relatives working at election commissions, the commission replied that it had no files on them. But this was later found to be untrue.
As the agency began to inspect, the National Election Commission requested the Constitutional Court to rule on whether the board had violated its authority. On the day the board released the results of its inspection, the Constitutional Court issued its decision that the board’s inspection went against the Constitution.
Established in 1963, the National Election Commission had never been inspected at all before it allowed the board in 2023 to conduct an inspection for the first time, limited to hiring issues, with public criticism mounting over news reports of alleged employment corruption.
The court ruled that the board’s inspection undermines the fairness and neutrality of the National Election Commission, which is an independent constitutional institution.
Considering the irregularities exposed through the inspection, it is hard to understand the ruling. In view of the court’s decision, people have to play dumb about corruption. Even if the commission is constitutionally independent, it should not be given special treatment to the point where corruption is tolerated. It is questionable whether the employment irregularities would have come to light without the board’s inspection.
Since the Constitutional Court has ruled that election commissions should not be inspected from outside, the court needs to say what we should do about the commissions. Rather than blocking inspections, the court should have suggested a reasonable way to prevent irregularities.
The National Election Commission is a large organization with some 3,000 employees working at its branches in every city and district across the country. This gigantic institution should not be left to inspect itself.