'Clots' dismay retiring head of civil service

Regional, school and blood ties in the civil bureaucracy still form a barrier between the government and the public, despite steps by the Kim Dae-jung administration to "open up government," Kim Kwang-woong, chairman of the Civil Service Commission, said during a closed seminar on Tuesday.

"A government cannot be healthy if those who campaigned for the president during the election linger on within the administration like blood clots," Mr. Kim told commission members, two days before leaving his three-year tenure.

The chairman acknowledged that there has been a shift from a pyramid-style bureaucracy toward a network style. "But it is not a network formed by task and function, but by personal ties." He added, "The civil service system is like that of the military. The mentality of civil servants, from young starting civil servants to secretaries at the Blue House, is ossified."

Mr. Kim's agency was founded in May 1999 to ensure that the civil service system become more open to the infusion of experts and to maintain fairness and neutrality in government appointments.

The outgoing chairman proposed that the Blue House share information with the public as the next step toward an open government. "The Blue House should have a systematic recruitment system, rather than hire on a rule-of-thumb basis," he said.

He acknowledged that the government still holds many biases against women, while others receive preferential treatment based on regional location, schools and blood ties. "Information is shared, only barely, with the press as well," he said.

At the beginning of Kim Dae-jung's term in February 1998, the civil service system, had 935,000 on its payroll. That number dropped to 868,000 by the end of 2001, but has begun to increase again, reaching 882,000 in April 2002, and it is expected to climb to 894,000 by next year. The government is hiring an additional 14,226 civil servants this year.

by Kim Ki-chan