Focus: hiring of defectors

South Korea plans to enforce mandatory hiring of North Korean defectors in civil service posts as part of efforts to help facilitate their resettlement in the capitalist South, officials said yesterday.

Under the new policy guideline prepared by the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, all government agencies and organizations are obliged to fill more than 1 percent of their administrative assistant posts with North Korean defectors starting next month, said the officials.

With the central and provincial governments scheduled to recruit about 20,000 administrative assistants this year, about 200 North Korean defectors will be able to land civil service positions by December, they forecast.

Any defector hoping to get an administrative assistant job will be asked to hand their applications in to the Hana Center, a facility that processes and supports defectors, or regional employment centers nationwide, said the officials.

Yonhap