Posted January. 08, 2004 23:35,
The National Human Rights Commission of Korea is pushing on with a proposal for a policy which outlines amending the limitation on age for employment of government employees and the graded age limit system.
It plans to draw up a concrete draft during the first half of this year through a consultation with the concerned ministry and office, including the Civil Service Commission (CSC).
It also revealed on January 8 that it is writing a proposal for the anti-differentiation in age limit of public servants, with the point of amending or abolishing the limitation on age for employment of government employees and the graded age-limit system which is applied according to their class.
According to the proposal under consideration, the age limit of applying for examinations to become a ninth grade, fifth grade and seventh grade government employee, which are 28, 32 (30 for Foreign Service examination), 35 (34 for foreign administrative examination) respectively, should be abolished or loosened.
It also suggested that the current graded age limit system, which is 60 to government officials higher than the fifth grade, 57 to ones lower than the sixth grade, and 50-59 to ones in skilled occupation, should be combined to 57 or 60, or that a new system which gradually decreases wages after a certain age regardless of the grade should be introduced.
It brought on expert committees who studied abroad since last October and composed a task force to make out a proposal, and recently dispatched a researcher to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in the U.S. to collect precedent examples of a developed country.
However, severe criticism is expected because the graded age limit system was judged as constitutional in the Constitutional Court under the reason that there are positions that require administrative ability and experience, and also the limitation on age for employment of government employees is the root that the structure of government employees is based upon.
In regard to this, a Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs source said, I heard about the ongoing discussion at the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, but it is hard to make our position clear, adding, I merely think that an age-limit to some degree is necessary in order to realize the constitutional career government employee system.