By Seonghyun Jang
The public duty personnel system
was introduced after the abolishment of the previous alternative military
service system in 1995. The public duty personnel service is a system that
makes people who turned out to be not appropriate for serving active duty by a
conscription examination to do an alternative service instead of being on
active duty. In other words, the public duty personnel system was introduced in
order to treat people judged unfit for the military service equally with
others, not because of a pure necessity for the alternative duty. Due to this,
the supervision of public duty personnel service is very weak. Therefore, CFOI analyzed
the proposal for improving the supervision of public duty personnel system in
order to find out how Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission of Korea
took action on this issue.
First of all, the clause on
enhancing the supervision of public duty personnel was mentioned to restrict
the personnel’s unpunctuality, additional jobs, education activities; entering
university, getting a degree and as it is consistently shown on the press, the
commission of crimes.
Cases of the public duty personnel’s degradation of working discipline
(Investigated by Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission of Korea)
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• Kim ○○, a public duty worker at ○○ district office, was supposed to be discharged from his duty on May 13th, 2012. But it was found that he took the university entrance exam (performance test) in November, 2011 and entered ○○ University of Art on March 2nd, 2012. He kept his name on the register of the university without informing the district office nor Military Manpower Office. This has been pointed out as doing educational activities while on the alternative duty. • Min ○○, who works at the ○○ Child Center, is constantly late (20~40 minutes) in the morning. The supervisor at the child center asked him several times to be on time but it didn’t make any difference. So this has been reported to the person in charge of the supervision in ○○ city. • ○○ Gu (working office) has issued warnings to 14 people absent at the quarterly working and basic quality education for the public duty personnel and 8 latecomers caught at the sudden inspection. |
As
a more well-known case to the public, PSY has been criticized for participating
in more than 50 events and activities while serving as the industrial technology personnel.
In addition to this, Shin Seong-rok, an actor who worked at a child library through
public duty personnel system, once got in a trouble for lying down on his job.
In order to prevent things above,
Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission of Korea recommended Military
Manpower Office to make regulations and establish the minimum guideline on the
public duty personnel service. An electronic time card was also suggested to
enhance the supervision on duties. The electronic time card won’t be a burden
as it only cost 500,000 won for administrating 4-500 people.
http://blog.daum.net/mma9090/5522
The fact that the public duty personnel are negligent on their duties is
not only the problem of the public duty personnel. It is because the
institutions that have the public duty personnel are negligent on supervising
them. The government is operating a military service supervision portal to oversee
the public duty personnel. However, the institutions are not utilizing it properly.
Public officers who are in charge of the public duty personnel have to write
down the working status of their personnel every day. But they often skip writing
for a long time or in many cases, they do not write it at all. Due to this, trainings
and consultations through the portal is not working as well.
< Status of action on weak supervision and dereliction of duty (Unit:
person)>
|
Total |
Working |
Public |
|||||||||
|
Total |
Accusation |
Castigation |
Warning |
Caution |
Rectification |
Total |
Accusation |
Warning |
Caution |
||
|
2012.9 |
628 |
524 |
1 |
|
125 |
278 |
120 |
104 |
|
98 |
6 |
|
2011 |
913 |
789 |
|
|
186 |
334 |
269 |
124 |
|
124 |
|
In order to solve this problem, Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights
Commission of Korea recommended to specify in concrete the reasons of disciplinary
punishment and to let the public duty personnel know accurately what kinds of
behavior are not allowed. As for social welfare facilities, the punishment is
not effective. Therefore, in this case, Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights
Commission recommended to cancel assigning people and to relocate them.
|
※ The Military Service Supervision Portal is a system that enables the online notification of personal information transfers between the working office and MMA, application of working status and checking its results, investigation on the supervisors’ administration and supervision, previous notification, notification and result of education. It is only accessible to people with a certificate, |
Lastly, there is the enhancement of restriction on people working at social
welfare facilities. The people judged unfit for the military service because of
their mental disease or sex crime records are not allowed to work at social welfare
facilities (orphanage, nursery school, nursing home). However, it was revealed
by the inspection of the Board of Audit and Inspection that these people can also work at the aforementioned facilities
when applying their working places online. Therefore, Anti-Corruption &
Civil Rights Commission of Korea recommended them to clearly state themselves
as a person with restricted selection.
|
￭ Negative report on the operation of the restriction system on working institutions (The Board of Audit and Inspection, 2012.6) Only after 2010.3.15, there are 36 assigned to the reservist duty due to the mental illness and 12 others assigned to the reservist duty due to the imprisonment who all are currently working at the facilities for the infant, child, disabled and seniors (○○ local MMA etc.) |
The public duty personnel service is
a system that can arouse a huge criticism from citizens when it is not properly
supervised. If the public duty personnel neglect their job, a strong
criticism can be raised concerning the fairness with the people on active duty
and the weak supervision may produce numerous victims under the current
situation in which more than 50 thousands of public duty personnel are present.
Taking this in their mind, the government needs to reorganize the system as
soon as possible.