President Moon to implement blind hiring to root out credentialism

Posted on : 2017-06-25 15:03 KST Modified on : 2017-06-25 15:03 KST
Moon’s own experiences of discrimination as a lawyer from outside Seoul appear to inform his conviction
President Moon Jae-in speaks during a meeting of his senior secretariat
President Moon Jae-in speaks during a meeting of his senior secretariat

The instructions given by President Moon Jae-in during a meeting with his senior secretaries and aides on June 22 for the public sector to start implementing blind hiring and employment quotas for talented people outside the Seoul area reflect his conviction about the need to address academic discrimination and the mistreatment of people from the countryside, Blue House officials said. Moon’s conviction about reforming the excessive emphasis placed on such regionalism and credentialism, these officials explained, developed as he experienced for himself the discrimination and disrespect faced by graduates of lesser-known universities from the provinces while he did legal work in the provinces despite having passed the bar exam and completing his studies at the Judicial Research and Training Institute with high marks. “I’ve been told that President Moon became very disappointed with the civil service while watching colleagues at the institute with worse grades than him being appointed as judges and prosecutors because they had graduated from prestigious universities in Seoul. You could say that this experience from his younger years has manifested itself in his conviction about eliminating credentialism in society,” said a senior official at the Blue House.

The blind hiring system that Moon instructed the government to implement on June 22 was one of the pledges he made during his presidential campaign. Considering that this system was on the platforms of all four of the five parties in the National Assembly except the conservative Liberty Korea Party, the Blue House believes that, as long as the government and the ruling party are on board, it can be implemented in the public sector without any obstacles. In June 2016, Minjoo Party lawmaker Han Jeong-ae and others already submitted a bill that would revise the Act on Fairer Hiring Procedures to make blind hiring mandatory. The revised bill would prevent employers from asking applicants to list their physical characteristics, their place of origin or their parents’ jobs and assets on their resumes or personal statements.

“The details of the implementation of the blind hiring system in the public sector and its expansion in the private sector will be worked out during a joint meeting between affected departments. The key goal of blind hiring is to remove information from applications and interviews at public enterprises that could provoke prejudice by hiring person, including the place of origin, family relations, physical characteristics, and academic background, and to implement an ability-focused assessment system,” said Blue House spokesperson Park Soo-hyun during the daily briefing. The Blue House is planning to implement blind hiring at public enterprises in the second half of this year, as soon as discussions are complete at related ministries. With this goal in mind, related ministries (including the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Personnel Management) are planning to work together to finalize the method of implementing blind hiring and to announce it by the end of the month. As for the private sector, the Blue House explained that it is planning to prepare and distribute a blind hiring guidebook that reflects the opinions of experts and people on the ground and to proactively communicate with the National Assembly so that the relevant laws can quickly be revised.

The details of how to implement the employment quota system for talented individuals from the provinces have not been discussed yet. “Since we have the government’s recommended standard of 30%, we’re looking into several ways of promoting this,” said an official at the Blue House. When public enterprises were relocated to “innovation cities,” laws were passed about hiring talented individuals in these areas and preferential policies were implemented, such as giving public organizations that hired such individuals extra points on their management assessment. But most of these were recommendations, not requirements, and their actual effect on employment has been minimal. The percentage of locals who have been hired (as regular workers) at “innovation cities” around the country has remained fairly static, at 8.8% in 2014, 13.5% in 2015 and 13% in 2016. The rates are 24% in Busan Innovation City, 14.5% in North Chungcheong Innovation City and 12.9% in North Jeolla Innovation City, and around 10% in the rest of the cities.

By Lee Se-young, staff reporter, and Park Im-keun, North Jeolla correspondent

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