government law
Phase 3: Under the Act on the Education and Training of Government Employees (from 1973 to the present)
The GETA was eventually repealed, giving way to the passage of the Act on the Education and Training of Government Employees (AETGE) in 1973. The new Act ushered in a number of changes. First, the rather declaratory provisions in the GETA on the duty of supervisors to train their subordinates were clarified and specified. Article 10 of the AETGE, for instance, states that the head of each administrative body is required to ensure government employees receive job-related training at least once every five years; the article also states that heads are obligated to enforce on-the-job training (OJT) plans to help maintain the morale and productivity of government employees. Article 14 states that the outcomes of OJT are required to be taken into account when making personnel decisions. The AETGE required government employees to receive training from a number of sources including the Central Civil Service Training Institute, the specialized training organizations of central administrative agencies, and regional and local training organizations, as well as through OJT.
Even prior to the introduction of the AETGE, however, the Korean government had begun, in 1972, to enhance the job-specific training of government employees and offer intensive training for managers and the newly hired. Interestingly, the Korean government devised a systematic plan for commissioning the diplomatic training of government employees to external agencies located both in Korea and abroad. In other words, the scope of government employee training was expanded to include agencies and organizations outside the government apparatus. This involvement of non-governmental training agencies and the choices that government employees now had in terms of different types of training organizations marked the most significant changes during this era.
In 1982, the Korean government announced the Five-Year Plan for the Development of Government Employee Education and Training. The main features of the plan included the creation of new agencies to provide enhanced job training for high-ranking government employees at the Grade 3 level or above; the refinement and specialization of trainers and instructors; the dispatch of government employees to other organizations for training; and the requirement of pre-training of the newly hired as part of the conditions of their official and full employment in civil service. Of these, the most notable changes were the diversified scope of training modes (now that government employees could be dispatched to organizations to receive training) and the pre-training of newly hired government employees as part of the conditions for full employment. In 1993, the Korean government began to provide director-level officials at the levels of Grade 2 and 3 with long-term training (one year) on policy matters. In Korea today, training and education are no longer the exclusive domains of lower- and middle-ranking government employees.
Source: Korea Institute of Public Administration. 2008. Korean Public Administration, 1948-2008, Edited by Korea Institute of Public Administration. Pajubookcity: Bobmunsa.
