Appropriate Dress Code Also Issued

By Do Je-hae
Staff Reporter

Civil servants will be banned from engaging in collective activity to express opposition against government policies. They will also be denied the right to wear any form of attire that bears political messages.

A set of revisions on the conduct of government officials will become effective next month, officials with the Ministry of Public Administration and Security said Tuesday.

The measures, however, have been labeled as infringements on the basic freedom of expression by human rights organizations and unionized civil servants.

"Public officials are citizens endowed with the basic right to voice their opinions. Restraining such rights constitutes an infringement of freedom of expression," an official at the National Human Rights Commission said.

A union of public servants recently published an ad in a local daily, condemning the Lee Myung-bak administration. "Coming from government officials whose first priority is to serve the people, such political activities are inappropriate," said Kim Jin-soo, a director with the Ministry. "We believe that the revisions will establish a proper code of conduct and the political neutrality of public officials."

The revisions ban public officials from engaging in any group activity aimed at hampering the policy-making process. They will be prohibited from wearing vests, armbands, headbands and other forms of attire inscribed with political slogans.

The measures are expected to have a significant impact on the future course of action of unionized civil servants, who have had uneasy relations with the government in recent months.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government said Monday its disciplinary committee had decided to dismiss the chief of an integrated civil servant union, tentatively called the Korean Government Employees' Union (KGEU), for taking part in an anti-government rally in July.

The decision to dismiss Yang Sung-yun, a low-ranking employee at the Yangcheon-gu Office, is expected to further escalate the conflict between the government and unions.

Yang, 46, was elected last week as the head of the KGEU, which recently came into being as the result of a merger of three separate unions representing government workers.

Conflict has been mounting between unionized civil servants and the government, especially after the KGEU was labeled an illegal organization by the labor ministry in October.

The ministry said the KGEU was an illegitimate entity, as it had defied the government's repeated orders to ban fired workers from union membership last month.

With 115,000 members, the consolidated civil service union is the third-largest industrial group under the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), the more militant of the country's two umbrella labor organizations.

Tension between public workers and the government escalated after three unions representing civil servants voted to join the KCTU in September.

The regional offices of the KGEU were recently forced to shut down as part of the Lee Myung-bak administration's clampdown on unionized civil servants.

jhdo@koreatimes.co.kr