How to keep excellent public servants

Lee Geun-myeon
The author is a former minister of personnel management.

Once-popular government jobs are now losing their appeal to young people. Voluntary resignations at the junior level are on an alarming rise. 11,067 public servants in their 20s and 30s left their jobs in 2022 alone, doubling from 5,761 in 2018. The number of quitters with less than one year on the payroll more than tripled from 951 to 3,123 during the same period.

Voluntary retirements of civil servants of the mid-tier fifth grade are also increasing. The fact that young people are abandoning secure positions — hard-won through highly competitive government exams — underscores the waning attractiveness of civil service among young elites. The trend calls for a systematic overhaul of officialdom.

All professions must offer due rewards in order to draw the best from their workers. One of the highest rewards for civil servants would be the betterment of public lives and national progress as a result of their devotion to their work.

Improvements in pay, work culture and work-life balance are not enough to stop the voluntary retirements and keep young people in government jobs. Today’s public sector jobs do not pay sharply below those of private sector as they have in the past. What is imperative is a new recruitment and training system for those willing to devote themselves to civil service with eyes on the future of the country.

More important than improving work conditions is the creation of an environment where government employees can commit themselves to the nation rather than a certain governing power that changes every five years. Civil servants should be free from political power. Officials assigned to key policies from past governments are often demoted or face an inspection or investigation upon the change in the governing power. Many are forced to quietly leave the public sector.

How can junior civil servants work with devotion and passion if their respected and competent seniors are abandoned after being dispatched to the presidential office or handed key government policies? The outdated appointment system under political influence must change so as not to compel talented civil servants to hide their convictions and abilities.

Additionally, government jobs must be oriented to enhance professionalism. The tradition of rotating officials every one or two years hinders them from building depth in any field of work. The current system of transferring officials to new positions by the time they gain some understanding of their current work erases the opportunity for bureaucrats to discover and build their strengths and competitiveness, let alone to catch up with the fast changes and innovations in the private sector.

The outdated system continues taking its toll, not only on individual civil servants, but also on public services and productivity. The rotation system must stop to enable officials to deepen their knowledge in certain fields. Their work also must be compensated through higher pay and promotion according to their performance.

Professionalism in public service is important for two reasons. It can enhance the quality of services and welfare to benefit taxpayers. It also helps civil servants buld new careers based on the expertise they earned during their government work. When they are armed with professional expertise, they won’t have to rely on personal connections to those of higher rank to find post-retirement jobs. They also can devote themselves entirely to the public service with less influence from political changes.

Civil servants can be compared to the crew on a ship navigating the country. The ship cannot sail smoothly and arrive at its destination safely if the members are disturbed. The stability of the civil community is necessary for the progress of the nation. Government officials must become independent from the changes in the governing power that occur every five years. We must gather the wisdom to create a bureaucratic environment in which public servants can devote themselves to a particular field for 10 to 20 years.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.