Low pay, long hours and changing values fuel exodus from public service

Social Affairs

Published: 04 Apr. 2024, 15:53 Updated: 04 Apr. 2024, 17:29

Low pay, long hours and changing values fuel exodus from public service

Applicants wait for their grade nine civil servant test to start on March 23 at a test site in Yongsan District, central Seoul. [MINISTRY OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT]

A 25-year-old grade nine civil servant turned in her public official ID card last October, resigning from her position at a county office in North Chungcheong.

She prepared for two and a half years to get her public official job, but she left because she felt a strong determination that “this wasn’t her path.”

The exodus of disillusioned young public officials is accelerating.

The number of civil servant resignees who worked under five years surged more than double in five years, from 5,670 in 2018 to 13,566 in 2023, according to a report by the National Assembly Research Service received from the Government Employees Pension Service.

Last year, 3,020 officials resigned within a year after their appointment.

The resigned grade nine civil servant, now a YouTuber, said that, after working as a civil servant for over two years, the insults she heard from office visitors are what she remembers the most.

In her first position on a civil support team in 2021, she often heard people asking, “Why did you put such a useless person here?”

Last year, she changed her division, but still, nothing was different.

She worked 97 overtime hours during her first month as a public official and 70 during her second month.

As a result, she earned 2.5 million won ($1,853) a month with overtime payment included. Without her overtime payment, she earns 1.85 million won monthly.

“I experienced hyperventilation when I was working, and I couldn’t move on with my daily life,” she said. “I cried every day while commuting. I even thought of dying by smashing my car into a guardrail.”

After she resigned, she decided to go to Japan on a working holiday visa, which she recorded the procedure and uploaded on YouTube.

She even exploited the reality of being a public official.

She is currently working at a hotel restaurant in Hokkaido.

“People ask me if I regret my decision, but I can strongly say I don’t. I wanted to convey to civil servants, who are being gaslighted that they will be unhappy if they resign, that they can be happy. That’s the reason why I’m doing YouTube.”

Resigning due to low pay
On social media, it is not difficult to find videos of former officials sharing their resignation experience as civil servants. They share why they left and what they do after their resignation.

“The type of work one could do was limited based on their level, and [in my case] I was thrust into work without a proper handover process,” a YouTuber who resigned after eight months of being appointed a national public official in 2022 said. “I also questioned the excessive protocols and whether they were necessary.”

The JoongAng Ilbo surveyed 30 young public officials resignees who worked for less than five years and resigned during the past five years.

The survey asked the officials why they resigned, and duplicate responses were allowed.

According to the survey, 21 respondents pointed to low wages, topping the list of reasons, followed by organizational culture with 20 and work overload, including malicious complaints, with 15.

A former civil servant saying ″I cried every [SCREEN CAPTURE]

The respondents prepared an average of 17 months to become a civil servant and worked an average of 30 months in their position.

Their monthly wage difference between their first and their last payment was 280,000 won on average.

“I transferred to a private business company because I thought that I couldn’t support my children’s studies as much as I like with the payment I received as a public official,” a resignee, who once was a grade nine civil servant at an office of education, said.

This year, the basic wage for grade nine civil servants in their first year is 1,877,000 won before tax, according to the Ministry of Personnel Management.

Their monthly average wage is about 2.5 million won when considering other additional payments, such as bonuses for good attendance, holidays and one’s performance.

According to the Korea Enterprises Federation, the yearly salary for a new conglomerate employee with an undergraduate degree in 2020 was 50.84 million won before tax.

When considering the recent inflation rate over the past four years, the gap between the salary of the new conglomerate employee and this year’s public official widens.

For the past five years, the wage increase rate for first-year grade nine civil servants has been only 14.3 percent.

“This is only about one-tenth of the wage increase rate of military soldiers, which was 131 percent,” Prof. Kim Jung-in of Suwon University’s Public Administration Department said. “The morale of public officials will inevitably drop when they earn less than military soldiers from next year.”

A grade nine civil servant working at a provincial hall said, “A reality check hits when I hear that a sergeant earns 1.65 million won a month with food, clothing and a place to sleep provided for free, while a civil servant earns 1.9 million won a month with no support.”

Current status of resignees
The survey also tracked the current status or occupation of the 30 resignees and found that it differentiated according to one’s previous grade as a civil servant.

In Korea, people can apply to become civil officials for grades nine, seven and five — the higher the level, the lower the number.

For grade seven and five civil servant resignees, six of seven unemployed resignees were preparing or already attending law school.

“The difficulty of the public service aptitude test (PSAT) and the legal education eligibility test (LEET) are similar,” a resignee who went to law school said. “But the wage difference between passing the PSAT and the LEET can be six times when becoming a lawyer.”

Preparing for a job was the most common response among grade nine civil servant resignees, with five respondents.

Among those who found a new workplace, eight went to private sector businesses, four established their own business, and two went to state-owned companies or institutions.

“I can lead my own work, and the equal organizational culture, centered on one’s performance, felt more progressive than being at a public post,” a resignee, surnamed Nam, working at artificial intelligence (AI) data-related company, said.

Perception change in Korean youths
The change in Korean youth’s perception of jobs is also a factor in the resignation of young civil officials.

According to Statistics Korea, government institutions topped the list of most preferable workplaces among youths and adolescents between the ages of 13 and 34 in 2009, at 28.6 percent. State-owned companies followed with 17.6 percent and conglomerates with 17.1 percent.

Last year, however, the order turned over with conglomerates coming at No. 1, registering 27.4 percent, followed by state-run companies at 18.2 percent and government institutions at 16.2 percent.

Such a trend was also shown in the competition rate for this year’s grade nine civil servants, rating 21.8 to one, hitting its all-time low in 32 years.

The rate for those who took the written test for grade nine civil servants on March 23 stood at 75.8 percent, its record low in three years.

This year, the competitive rate for grade five civil officials was 35.1 to one, the lowest in five years.

The competition rate for civil officials is less than half of the competition rate for private company recruitment at the second end of last year, which stood at 81 to one, according to the data collected by the Federation of Korean Industries of 500 companies.

“While there may be a high level of competition for civil service positions, the competition rate has actually dropped recently due to several factors,” Choi Byung-yun, a researcher at the Korea Institute of Public Administration, said. “These include low payment, a rigid organizational culture, and receiving malicious complaints, all of which have led potential applicants to perceive the limitations of the job.”

BY KIM SUN-MI, LEE BO-RAM, JANG SEO-YUN, PARK JONG-SUH, LEE AH-MI, KIM JI-YE [kim.jiye@joongang.co.kr]