Ko Gi-dong, former Vice Minister of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, has received a ruling allowing him to re-employ as a part-time advisor at Korea Management Association Consulting (KMAC). Additionally, Yeo Won-jeong, former Minister of Personnel Management, has been cleared to work as an advisor at a securities firm.
The Government Employees Ethics Committee disclosed the results of the '2025 Employment Review for Retired Public Officials' on the 5th.
Under the Public Officials Ethics Act and its enforcement decree, public officials above grade 4 who have a duty to register their property, executives of public-related organizations, and employees of specific public-related organizations must undergo employment reviews in advance if they plan to work for an institution subject to employment review within three years of retirement.
This employment review was conducted for a total of 90 cases. Out of these, one case that was deemed relevant to their previous work was classified as 'employment restriction,' and four cases were ruled as 'employment disapproval.'
Employment restriction applies when it is determined that there is a relevance between the work of the department or institution to which the individual belonged before retirement and the work of the prospective employment institution. A person who retired in July of this year from the Financial Supervisory Service, holding a grade 2 position, received such a notification while trying to re-employ as the head of the audit department at Hanyang Securities.
Employment disapproval is issued when there are no special reasons that permit employment approval. Here, special reasons refer to cases where employment is needed to strengthen national competitiveness or serve the public good, where expertise can be demonstrated through specialized knowledge related to the field of employment, and where there is little likelihood of exerting influence after employment.
Two individuals who retired as inspectors from the Korean National Police Agency attempted to work as specialists at law firm Yulchon and Dongin but received a judgment of employment disapproval. Additionally, a former grade 6 employee of the National Tax Service, who intended to re-employ at a tax corporation, and an environmental researcher from the Ministry of Environment, who aimed to join the Korea Testing & Research Institute (KTR), also received the same decision.
Moreover, the Ethics Committee has requested fines from the jurisdictional court for eight cases where individuals employed themselves arbitrarily without prior review.