A Ministry of Public Administration and Security (MOPAS) investigation confirmed that the daughter of Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Yu Myung-hwan was afforded various kinds of preferential treatment during her employment as a “special hire.” This included altered examination criteria, arbitrary selection of examination committee members, and score inflation.

MOPAS issued an announcement Monday on the findings of its special personnel investigation of the foreign affairs department in connection with the controversy over the hiring of Yu’s daughter.

“It has been recognized that in the process of hiring Minister Yu’s daughter for a professional contract position last July, the foreign affairs department seriously compromised fairness and transparency across all areas of employment administration, including testing conditions and procedures,” said MOPAS.

MOPAS also stated that one particular personnel official who was aware in advance that a certain applicant was Yu’s daughter “violated the National Public Service Law and testing decrees for the hiring of public officials” by participating as a document and interview examiner despite not being permitted to do so.

By inflating Yu’s daughter’s scores to nearly 100 percent at the time of her interview and emphasizing during the interview assessment meeting that the candidate “needs to have actual working experience,” this official and another examination committee member from the foreign affairs department led to the “loss of objectivity and fairness in the interview examination,” MOPAS said.

Three external review committee members, including a professor, gave scores two points higher to the second-place finisher. But the aforementioned personnel official and examination committee member respectively gave 19 points to Yu’s daughter, close to a perfect score of 20 points, and 12 and 17 points to the next highest scorer, inverting the order so that Yu’s daughter would be the final selection.

The foreign affairs department personnel official selected examination committee members arbitrarily and without internal approval, when they are supposed to be appointed by the organization head, and changed the language skills priority conditions from “TOEFL or TEPS” to “TEPS alone.” Yu’s daughter only had a score for the TEPS.

In addition, while selecting an “FTA official” to deal with issues such as trade-related legal disputes, the official eliminated the requirement for a lawyer, a position strongly connected with the duties, and inserted a condition for having “two years of career experience following a master’s degree.” Analysts say this appears to reflect active consideration of the fact that Yu‘s daughter possessed a master’s degree and career experience working for the foreign affairs department.

Similarly, the investigation findings showed that foreign affairs department officials changed a number of regulations in areas such as examination committee selection, interview evaluation, examination requirements, and examination administration and used influence improperly so that Yu‘s daughter would be selected. Observers are calling it a “special hiring operation” to make Yu’s daughter the winning candidate.

In connection with this, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesman Kim Young-sun said in a regular briefing Monday that the foreign affairs department “humbly accepts MOPAS‘ personnel investigation finding that there were unfairness issues in the process of an employee’s special hiring and expresses its apologies to the people of South Korea.” Kim went on to say, “We are taking this situation very seriously and will take all necessary measures to ensure transparency and fairness in the foreign affairs departments’ personnel management.”

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