The government recently raised the ceiling on the number of central administrative employees by 20,000 to nearly 300,000. The measure was taken to back President Park Geun-hye’s campaign pledge to hire more police officers, firefighters and welfare workers to help strengthen public security and tighten the social safety net.Now it seems only a matter of time before the number of public employees at central and regional governments surpasses the 1 million mark. If inevitable, more civil servants

The Japanese government’s approval this week of new versions of textbooks laying claim to Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo suggests again how hard it is to expect Tokyo to face up to historical truth, which should be the basis for cultivating friendly partnership with its neighbors.According to Seoul officials, 15 of the 21 newly approved high-school textbooks describe Dokdo, a group of rocky outcroppings in the waters between the two countries, as Japanese territory. Some of the controversia

The resignation on Monday of Han Man-soo, President Park Geun-hye’s nominee to head the Fair Trade Commission, triggered an outpouring of criticism of the president’s appointment style and calls for punishment of her secretaries responsible for making background checks on her nominees.Even leaders of the ruling Saenuri Party now say enough is enough. They have joined the main opposition Democratic United Party in blasting Park’s unique style of making personnel appointments. The DUP went further

This year promises to be a tough year for Kim Duk-joong, the new head of the National Tax Service, as he is charged with collecting more taxes than before at a time when the economic slowdown is making a dent in government revenue.Kim also faces the task of rooting out corruption among tax officials. The need for house cleaning is all the greater as he is set to step up crackdowns on tax cheats to attain the tax revenue target. During a parliamentary hearing on Monday, Kim raised the alarm by di

The measure taken by the Justice Ministry last week to ban former intelligence chief Won Sei-hoon from leaving the country has been viewed by many people as signaling a repeat of what the nation used to see after a power transfer. The former director of the National Intelligence Service, who is under investigation for interfering in domestic politics while in office, is known to have canceled a plan to embark on an overseas trip Sunday.Though his associates said he was scheduled to return home a

To limited fanfare, South Korea, China and Japan kicked off the first round of negotiations on a trilateral free trade deal in Seoul on Tuesday. The three-day talks, devoted mainly to discussing details including the method and scope of the trade negotiations, opened a tough and complicated process that is expected to take more than two years to complete.In November, the three Northeast Asian nations agreed to launch the trade talks, based on the outcome of a decade-long feasibility study. But t

President Park Geun-hye has started the process of building trust with North Korea by allowing a private organization to provide a humanitarian aid package to the isolated country. Last Friday, the Ministry of Unification permitted the Eugene Bell Foundation, an aid organization that has long provided humanitarian services to the North, to ship some 680 million won worth of medicine for treatment of tuberculosis patients in the North.The approval was the first granted by the Seoul government sin

One of the political reform pledges made by both the ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition Democratic United Party during the presidential election campaign was to stop nominating candidates for elections in the basic units of local government ― provincial cities, counties and districts of metropolitan cities. Now they face an early test of their commitment to political reform as by-elections are to be held in five constituencies on April 24 to elect new local government heads or fill vac

President Park Geun-hye, finally giving up on her defense minister nominee, has decided to retain the minister from the previous administration. Her decision speaks volumes about her flawed approach to selecting candidates for high public posts. On Friday, Kim Byung-kwan withdrew from his nomination as defense minister, paving the way for President Park to retain Kim Kwan-jin as her first defense minister. Kim, a Cabinet member from the previous administration, had been delaying his departure pe

Given the remarks by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Beijing is staying the course in its relations with Pyongyang despite North Korea’s Feb. 12 nuclear test. Spokesman Hong Lei was quoted as saying that the Chinese government had made no change in its position on North Korea though it had signed up to new U.N. sanctions against the nuclear test.He made no departure from the policy China had been maintaining toward North Korea when he called for a dialogue among the parties concerned. He s

It is the job of the South Korean unification minister to improve relations with North Korea, aiming at an eventual Korean reunification. Still, it was nothing less than inappropriate for a new unification minister to put an emphasis on the resumption of inter-Korean dialogue at a time when Pyongyang was threatening to turn South Korea into a “nuclear sea of fire” and launch a “second Korean War.”True, new Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae did mention the high level of tension that had been esc

In a widening sex-for-favors scandal, Vice Justice Minister Kim Hak-ui tendered a letter of resignation on Thursday. While denying being involved in the scandal, Kim said his name being mentioned in connection with it made it impossible for him to continue to do his work as a vice minister.But his resignation reaffirmed that background checks by the Park Geun-hye administration on those selected for top public posts were seriously flawed. The presidential office, though informed of his alleged i

The massive computer network failures at top TV broadcasters and major banks on Wednesday are another painful reminder that the nation still remains highly vulnerable to cyber terrorism even after a series of similar attacks from North Korea in recent years.According to reports, government investigators are analyzing the malicious programs they found on the crashed computer systems of the victimized companies, which included three TV broadcasters ― KBS, MBC and YTN ― and three banks ― Shinhan, N

After a long delay, President Park Geun-hye has picked a nominee to lead the Constitutional Court along with two new justice candidates to sit on the court’s nine-member bench. Park nominated Park Han-cheol, who has served as an adjudicator of the court since 2011, to become its chief justice, a post that has been left vacant for 60 days since former chief justice Lee Kang-kook retired in January.She also picked Cho Yong-ho, chief of the Seoul High Court, and Suh Ki-suhk, head of the Seoul Centr

With few days going without news of murder or other felonies, many Koreans have begun to doubt the long-held perception that they live in a relatively safe society. A recent report backed up their doubt with some alarming comparative statistics.The report released by the Korea Development Institute, a state-run think tank, showed the country’s homicide rate of 2.2 per 100,000 people exceeded the OECD average of 2.16 per 100,000. Korea had the ninth-highest murder rate among the 29 surveyed membe