Based on its ex officio investigation of the Civil Service Commission (CSC)’s employment standards that impose a maximum age limit of 28 on applicants for an open competitive examination selecting the ninth grade public officials, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) recommend to the chairman of the CSC that improvements be made regarding the provisions on the ninth grade officials in the Government Employee Employment Examination Ordinance which serves as rationale for the age limit.
On June 8, 2005, the NHRCK’s Discrimination Remedy Committee decided to conduct an ex officio investigation regarding government employment restrictions based on a person’s age and educational background, which are being adopted by 24 government agencies including the CSC. At the time, the NHRCK had received more than 80 complaints of age or education-based discrimination in the selection process for government and public enterprise employees. An increasing number of issues had been raised in regards to the age ceiling concerning the hire of government officials. These issues concerning the employment of government officials come amidst a general clamor to rectify the rampant age-based discrimination that exists throughout Korean society encompassing private as well as public enterprises.
Pursuant to Appendix 4, Article 16 of the Government Employee Employment Examination Ordinance, the CSC limits eligibility for the open competitive examination for the selection of the ninth grade public officials to those aged 18-28. For employment of government officials at grades sixth and seventh, applicants must be between 20 and 35 years of age. In the case of the fifth grade officials, eligibility is restricted to applicants between 20 and 32 years of age.
The NHRCK initially conducted a review of the age limit pertaining to prospective the ninth grade public employees among the age limitations applicable to employment of various government officials. The NHRCK concluded that the maximum age limit of 28 imposed by the CSC on applicants for the position of the ninth grade public officials failed to comply with the bona fide occupational qualifications adopted by each country regarding age, i.e. relevance between age and fundamental duties, costs and duration of training, reasonable period of time before expected retirement age, vocational training experience or career, excessive burden of providing accommodations, etc.
Behind the NHRCK’s recommendation was the rationale that a particular age, in this case the age of 28, could not serve as an absolute criterion for determining a person’s competence and qualifications relevant to a grade nine position within the government. As well, the maximum age imposed on aspiring grade nine municipal and provincial government employees is 32 in most cases and as high as 37 in some. Furthermore, industrialized nations, with the exception of Japan, do not have similar limitations in place.
Accordingly, the NHRCK determined that the CSC needed to correct the age limit imposed upon applicants for an open competitive examination to select the ninth grade public officials because it constituted a form of irrational age-based discrimination that is unjustifiable and unreasonable. In the future, the NHRCK plans to continue to undertake ex officio investigations as well as complaint investigations concerning age-based discrimination in the recruitment processes of other government agencies and public enterprises.
