hankyoreh

By Kim Nam-il, staff reporter

Government bodies are clashing over the Ministry of National Defense’s plans to reintroduce a system that awards extra points to male applicants who completed mandatory military service.
The weighted assessment system was ruled unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court in 1999.
While the Defense Ministry is attempting to escape from the controversy by providing additional slots for those who do not qualify for the weighted assessment system, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and lawmakers from the ruling Saenuri Party (NFP) in the National Assembly’s Gender Equality and Family committee are calling the method “unacceptable.”
The Saenuri Party’s committee for women and families held a meeting with the government on June 13, attended by Minister of Gender Equality and Family Cho Yoon-sun, to discuss increasing the number of positions available to women as a way of meeting the Park Geun-hye administration’s goal of a 70% employment rate.
Saenuri lawmaker Kim Hyun-sook, a ranking committee member, said in a briefing after the meeting that no form of weighting for military service would be acceptable, as it would conflict with the goal of increasing employment.
“They need to be cautious about reintroducing a military service weighted assessment system that was already ruled unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court,” Kim said. “It is sure to trigger objections from women and the disabled and create social conflict.”
“We are also opposed to the ‘additional slots’ idea that is currently being discussed,” she added.
An official with the public health and welfare office in the Ministry of National Defense said on condition of anonymity that the extra slot system “is just one of several ideas we are considering.”
“We have not discussed anything yet with the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family,” the official said, adding that the ministry may consider adopting the equal employment target system used in the hiring of civil servants. That system sets quotas to avoid a situation in which too many successful candidates in the employment examination are of only one gender.
If the system is adopted, the Ministry would take steps to ensure that no single gender accounts for more than 70% of the successful applicants taking the examination. For example, if 80 of 100 successful candidates were women, additional male applications would be accepted to meet the 30% quota.
While the weighting system could reverse ratios of male and female hires, the extra slots would help sidestep the constitutionality issue by ensuring that successful applicants are not deprived of opportunities, the ministry claimed.
A reintroduction of the weighting system was previously attempted by the ministry and lawmakers with the Grand National Party (Saenuri’s predecessor) under the Lee Myung-bak administration. Extra points for military service were to account for 2.5% of an applicant’s score - helping to avoid unconstitutionality based on the 1999 Constitutional Court ruling, which held that a weighting of 3% to 5% would have a decisive impact on applicants’ results. But objections from the public were so strong that the legislation never even made it to the review stage.
With the latest National Assembly, an amended to the Military Service Act including a weighting system was sponsored by Saenuri lawmaker Han Ki-ho, a general. On June 20, supporters in the legislative review subcommittee of the National Assembly National Defense Committee made plans to discuss passing the extra slot system proposed by the ministry as the committee’s alternative.
But the constitutionality question remains, as the terms would discriminate against people unable to perform military service, including women, the disabled, and men with exemptions. And with the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family stating its objections, the likelihood of a battle between government agencies appears high.

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