Concern is mounting over personnel failures in the Lee Jae-myung administration. Five ministerial nominees have withdrawn in the 15 months since the government took office, including Justice Minister nominee Kim Seung-won and Ministry of Gender Equality and Family nominee Yong Hye-in of the second cabinet, over qualifications that fell short of public expectations and inadequate vetting. It is evidence that the vetting systems of the Presidential Office, the government and the ruling party are malfunctioning. On top of that, the Prosecutors' Office (prosecution service) has been abolished and the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency and the Public Prosecution Office were launched on the 2nd of this month, but both agencies remain without heads. President Lee Jae-myung has bowed his head, pledging to re-examine the personnel system. Lee Keun-myung, chairman of the People Research Institute and a former Samsung executive who served as the first minister of personnel management, said the president's personnel debacles stem from insisting on "people he trusts" rather than elevating "people with ability." "If that temptation cannot be shaken off, personnel disasters can recur at any time," he said.
— What is at the heart of the Kim Seung-won and Yong Hye-in cases?
△ A hole has opened in the Presidential Office's personnel system. It needs to check whether a proper system is in place and whether there are experts capable of running it. The rules and procedures already exist in abundance. A national talent database has been built, and recommendations can come through multiple channels. The key is that whichever channel is used, the personnel gateway must be unified. There must be a structure in which a single gateway examines and screens candidates by the same standards and takes responsibility for the outcome. The Kim Seung-won and Yong Hye-in cases and the disputes over the qualifications of second-cabinet ministers are one facet of a flawed personnel system. It is quite possible that vetting was rushed for lack of time, or that a person chosen higher up was accepted without any real filter. The Presidential Office should not dismiss this as a one-off mistake but examine closely whether the personnel system is working and whether those in the personnel chain are competent.
— The president's personnel philosophy matters.
△ The system holds up only when the president has unshakable personnel principles. That is what allows aides in charge of personnel to recommend the right person for the right place without looking over their shoulders. Above all, the president must distinguish between "people he trusts" and "people with ability." He has to shake off the temptation to suddenly elevate someone he trusts, whose ability has never been tested, merely because they worked together in the past or share some connection. It is the same logic as not being able to pick someone for the national team just because you played neighborhood soccer together. Haven't we seen countless cases in past administrations where setting aside capable people in favor of trusted ones brought on personnel disasters? A culture is also needed in which capable people who do good work keep working even when the government changes.
— There are loud calls to reform the confirmation hearing system.
△ It should move toward testing the ability to carry out policy. Hearings as they stand have split into "my side and your side" and degenerated into a tool of partisan fighting. The public should be able to assess the ability and qualifications of candidates for public office through hearings and judge whether they are fit, but even that opportunity is being taken away. It would be more efficient to create a separate body to vet ethical standards such as corruption, tax evasion and improper solicitation. Separating the vetting of job competence from that of ethics would raise the level of hearings a notch. In addition, since lawmakers also hold public office, there is a need to build a vetting framework comparable to that for ministers. One option would be to establish ethics criteria, require self-reported disclosures, and restrict eligibility when statements turn out to be false.
— How do you view lawmakers doubling as ministers?
△ The basic philosophy of the National Assembly Act is a ban on concurrent posts. Only the prime minister and members of the State Council are written in as exceptions. That can be seen as a privilege lawmakers granted themselves while writing the law. It inserts an element of parliamentary cabinet government into a presidential system. Whether proportional or district, it is advisable to reconsider lawmakers holding ministerial posts. If a minister of a particular ministry carries out policies favorable to his own district and then runs in that district after leaving office, could that be called fair? There is ample room for conflicts of interest. Britain and Japan, with parliamentary cabinet systems, allow concurrent posts, but the United States, a presidential system, does not. Banning concurrent posts requires amending only a single provision of the National Assembly Act.
— What makes a successful business leader?
△ The scale of the vision and the ability to execute are the core. Capable chief executives excel at seeing markets that do not yet exist, then pulling together talent, capital and technology to make them real. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has spent his life commercializing the questions he raised in his university papers. The Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, founded in 1979 by Panasonic founder Konosuke Matsushita, has served as an academy producing politicians and other core national talent in Japan. Business figures and social leaders must have the foresight to design a nation's future in advance. Now, while semiconductors are propping up the growth rate, is precisely the time for our companies and government to find and invest in growth engines aimed at the post-semiconductor era.
— Conditions for business are not easy.
△ The problem is an environment that makes companies shrink back. Not many people in the National Assembly speak for business. By contrast, there are growing cases of lawmakers from labor backgrounds and those tilted toward unions churning out bills that restrict companies and favor unions. When governments and legislatures in major countries are rolling up their sleeves to support their companies, can we really secure competitiveness? The deep-rooted dogma of "privileges for big business" is also a problem. Other countries offer all manner of benefits, including subsidies and tax breaks, when our large companies build plants or invest, while we write off support for big business as privilege. It is a self-inflicted move that drives investment and hiring overseas on our own. We need to ask ourselves whether South Korea is embracing companies or pushing them out.
— There are many union-leaning bills and policies.
△ Protecting workers' rights is an important value. At the same time, management rights and investors' rights must be respected alongside them. The standard for labor policy should not be taking one side but creating sustainable jobs. Even a policy that looks good for workers at first glance is hard to call good for workers in the long run if it dampens corporate investment and new hiring and ultimately shrinks jobs. Labor policy now needs the balance of being designed with labor rights protection, corporate competitiveness, youth jobs and the global investment environment all on the table. The Ministry of Employment and Labor in particular is tilted toward labor and has failed to show that it takes employment seriously. It is a mismatch between employment and labor.
— Regulatory reform is slow.
△ Gulliver, in the classic novel "Gulliver's Travels," was not brought down by one thick rope. He was tied down by countless small ropes until he could not budge. Our companies are in the same situation. Fixing regulations a little at a time, one by one, is not enough. The principle has to change. We should shift to negative regulation, permitting everything except what is banned, and make rules automatically subject to review after a set period. The law is not keeping pace with the speed of technological change in advanced industries. We should test deregulation in special zones and examine whether it can be extended nationwide if it works. Regulatory reform should be approached as a matter of national competitiveness, not as a privilege for business.
— Reform of public institutions is also urgent.
△ Simply cutting headcount should not be called reform of public institutions. Reform suited to the age of artificial intelligence is needed. AI and digital systems can take over a considerable share of administrative work. Work and organizations need to be redesigned and personnel reassigned. If we demand productivity gains from private companies while the public sector keeps its old organizations and staffing intact, can we persuade the public? Structural reform is hard to sustain if sacrifice is demanded only of others. The public sector leading by example is the starting point of reform. Pushing the relocation of public institutions to the provinces on the political slogan of balanced regional development also calls for a careful weighing of the actual benefits.
— The so-called Yellow Envelope Act has caused much harm.
△ The intent of a law and its actual effects must be distinguished. If the scope of employer responsibility is left too unclear, legal uncertainty in labor relations inevitably grows from a company's standpoint. In our industrial structure in particular, where prime contractor and subcontractor relationships are tangled, it must be clearly defined where employer responsibility ends and management judgment begins. There needs to be continued monitoring, with objective data, of the changes appearing on the ground in investment, employment and labor disputes, with corrections made when problems are confirmed. It feels late at this point, but even now safeguards to minimize side effects should be put in place.
— The dispute over profit-share bonuses is not a small matter either.
△ Rewarding workers amply when results come in makes for a good company and sound personnel management. But we should be wary of a method that unconditionally pays out a fixed share of operating profit as bonuses hardening into a social standard. If a large portion is distributed as bonuses first simply because operating profit was high, the incentive for global investors to invest disappears. Conversely, a company that fails to reward workers properly when they deliver outstanding results cannot keep its talent either. The spread of profit-share bonuses also runs counter to the Lee Jae-myung administration's agenda of resolving class and income polarization.
— How should the extension of the retirement age be handled?
△ The direction itself — that people must work longer in an aged society — cannot be avoided. The question is whether it is right to apply a single number, "retirement at 65," uniformly to every company and occupation. Extending only the retirement age while leaving the seniority-based pay system untouched makes a heavier labor-cost burden on companies and a drop in new hiring unavoidable. Rather than extending the retirement age, it needs to be approached from the perspective of "continued employment." Those with the ability and the will to work should be able to work past retirement age, but the wage system should be adjusted to match job duties and productivity. Employment arrangements should also be kept open in various forms, including rehiring, fixed-term contracts, selective working hours and specialist positions.
He is…
Born in Seoul in 1952, he graduated from Joongdong High School and Sungkyunkwan University with a degree in chemical engineering, earned a master's in business administration from Ajou University and received an honorary doctorate from Kangwon National University. After joining Samsung Corning, he spent more than 30 years in personnel and organization at Samsung Group, including stints at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, Samsung SDS and Samsung Electronics, and served as chief executive of Samsung Fiber Optics in 2009. His expertise in personnel earned him a listing in 2010 in Marquis Who's Who, one of the world's three major biographical directories. In November 2014 he was appointed the first minister of the newly established Ministry of Personnel Management, leading public-sector personnel reform until June 2016. He has served as vice president of the Korean Academy of Personnel Management, adjunct professor at Sogang, Ajou and Kangwon National universities, and distinguished professor at Sungkyunkwan University.
