NongHyup said on the 11th that the NongHyup Reform Committee drew up its own reform plan to fully redesign overall operations through its fourth meeting the previous day. The plan includes strengthening controls on elections that use money and overhauling the personnel system across the board.
NongHyup plans to establish a system to reimburse election expenses in the election for the federation president and to make policy debates and joint regional campaign speeches mandatory to foster a policy-centered election culture. It will also introduce an "automatic election fraud monitoring system based on thresholds" to block illegal campaigning in advance, such as door-to-door visits or offering money or valuables. Under this system, an automatic alert is sent to the election management body when anomalies exceed a certain threshold. Sanctions for violating election law will be significantly strengthened, including expulsion of members and forfeiture of deposits, and legal revisions will be pursued to extend the statute of limitations.
In the personnel institutional sector, systems will be refined to raise both fairness and expertise. The reemployment eligibility period for retired executives and employees will be limited to one year after retirement to block the revolving-door hiring practice by retirees that had repeated every election season. While keeping the principle of internal promotion for executive managers, NongHyup will actively recruit outside experts in areas requiring specialized skills to establish a competency-based personnel system.
The Personnel Recommendation Committee will diversify channels for recommending outside members and expand the number of recommending Commissioners to at least double to enhance operational credibility. It will also make public recruitment of candidates mandatory when recommending executives and use outside professional institutions to objectively verify candidates' capabilities. On the Nominating Committee of subsidiaries under the financial holding company, participation by Commissioners affiliated with the federation will be completely barred, and the ratio of outside directors will be raised to about 60% to strengthen the independence of personnel decisions at affiliates.
In the internal control institutional sector, a "pan-NongHyup compliance committee" will be created to strengthen the control tower function for ethical management. The compliance committee will be composed mainly of outside experts, oversee ethical management across NongHyup, and continue to supervise the implementation of reform tasks even after the NongHyup Reform Committee concludes its activities.
The independence and expertise of the audit organization will also be strengthened. The method of selecting the Chairperson and Commissioners of the cooperative audit committee will be standardized to match that of the audit committee to enhance independence, and job experience will be added to the requirements for appointing outside experts to the audit committee to ensure expertise. The board will also introduce an "independent director system" to strengthen transparency in governance. Unlike existing outside directors, independent directors will have the authority to place internal control-related items directly on the board's agenda, enabling the board to function as a substantive management oversight body.
The National Agricultural Cooperative Federation plans to draw up a phased implementation roadmap through a meeting on the 24th of this month. Kang Ho-dong, president of the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, said, "We will closely communicate with the government that is pushing NongHyup reforms to newly define the direction of NongHyup's development and become a NongHyup for farmers."