By Kim Ji-myung
This argument may look like playing the devil's advocate against the much publicized and praised practice of "blind interviewing" or "blind hiring" or even "background-blind hiring," challenging one of the aggressive Moon government's policies.
The Presidential Office has recently announced that six specialists were recruited through a blind recruitment method, which resulted in employing six ladies. According to the announcement, their positions are: employment statistics expert, translation/interpretation expert, cultural interpreters (2 persons), video expert, and photo editor. It even added that the Ministry of Personnel Management evaluated their blind recruiting process as "the most exemplary of all the blind recruitment cases."
Well, no one would raise an objection against the righteous purpose of providing a chance for "fair competition" in job interviews by removing potential biases based on the personal information of the applicant.
As early as 2003, the national Human Rights Commission strongly recommended the business community to recruit people based purely on work-competence related information. But of course, recommendations seldom change customs and practices.
This HRC made an authoritative ruling that rejecting a short, handicapped applicant for a police position was against the law. It happened that around that time, the lively scene of physical testing for police recruitment was aired, showing healthy men and a few women applicants run the test course carrying several sacks of sands. If the job of a police officer requires one to chase, catch and control a criminal by force, physically incapable people should not be employed for such a mission, in my view. They should be given other chances for positions that suit their competence.
A recent newspaper article criticized Korea for being "notorious for its intrusive hiring practices" because job applicants were demanded to reveal not only sensitive personal information, such as weight, height, and marriage status but also their parents' jobs and income levels.
Yes, this has been the practice in Korea. When I was in elementary school, on the first day of the new class year, the teacher checked the number of pupils whose parents owned their own houses (or rented), had telephone lines, TV sets, what kind of cars they drove, and the like. Some pupils from poor families might have felt embarrassed or ashamed but it was taken as a necessary process for the school to understand their pupils.
Is it violation of privacy to ask personal questions in Korea? Maybe it is now. But for thousands of years, Koreans had not developed a sense of privacy. There was no need for such a concept when they were born into an extended family and lived there until death.
A tip of "privacy" could be critical as to decide life and death of the person in the West. For example, there was time if one was found to be a Jew, that private information would bring her or him to death.
On the contrary, in Korean culture, if a person was left alone in privacy, it often meant isolation without being taken care of. The Koreans still greet people saying "Hi, have you eaten?" which could be none of their business by the Western standard.
According to "Admonitions on Governing the People: Manual for Administrators" written by Jeong Yagyong in 1818, not only the administrator but all of the villagers should work on the problem if there was a grown man or woman who was not married or a widower living alone.
In traditional Korea, the whole village, or even the country, lived like in an extended family. It takes time to adopt and apply institutions from other parts of the world, although Korea has developed and achieved its own style of democracy and prosperity faster than others.
I hope the writers and journalists would be more mindful of cultural and historical differences between Korea and the United States, from where Korea borrows many modern systems. And there is no all-good or all-bad system. Blind interviewing in the United States has a goal different from Korea, which is to hire a diverse workforce.
This is not to deny the advantages of blind hiring but to point out that the practice of asking "intrusive" questions has not necessarily meant an illegal, anti-egalitarian approach, connected with some form of corruption. Don't dismiss the past across the board to praise the present.
The writer is the chairwoman of the Korea Heritage Education Institute (K*Heritage). Her email address is Heritagekorea21@gmail.com.
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The Presidential Office has recently announced that six specialists were recruited through a blind recruitment method, which resulted in employing six ladies. According to the announcement, their positions are: employment statistics expert, translation/interpretation expert, cultural interpreters (2 persons), video expert, and photo editor. It even added that the Ministry of Personnel Management evaluated their blind recruiting process as "the most exemplary of all the blind recruitment cases."
Well, no one would raise an objection against the righteous purpose of providing a chance for "fair competition" in job interviews by removing potential biases based on the personal information of the applicant.
As early as 2003, the national Human Rights Commission strongly recommended the business community to recruit people based purely on work-competence related information. But of course, recommendations seldom change customs and practices.
This HRC made an authoritative ruling that rejecting a short, handicapped applicant for a police position was against the law. It happened that around that time, the lively scene of physical testing for police recruitment was aired, showing healthy men and a few women applicants run the test course carrying several sacks of sands. If the job of a police officer requires one to chase, catch and control a criminal by force, physically incapable people should not be employed for such a mission, in my view. They should be given other chances for positions that suit their competence.
A recent newspaper article criticized Korea for being "notorious for its intrusive hiring practices" because job applicants were demanded to reveal not only sensitive personal information, such as weight, height, and marriage status but also their parents' jobs and income levels.
Yes, this has been the practice in Korea. When I was in elementary school, on the first day of the new class year, the teacher checked the number of pupils whose parents owned their own houses (or rented), had telephone lines, TV sets, what kind of cars they drove, and the like. Some pupils from poor families might have felt embarrassed or ashamed but it was taken as a necessary process for the school to understand their pupils.
Is it violation of privacy to ask personal questions in Korea? Maybe it is now. But for thousands of years, Koreans had not developed a sense of privacy. There was no need for such a concept when they were born into an extended family and lived there until death.
A tip of "privacy" could be critical as to decide life and death of the person in the West. For example, there was time if one was found to be a Jew, that private information would bring her or him to death.
On the contrary, in Korean culture, if a person was left alone in privacy, it often meant isolation without being taken care of. The Koreans still greet people saying "Hi, have you eaten?" which could be none of their business by the Western standard.
According to "Admonitions on Governing the People: Manual for Administrators" written by Jeong Yagyong in 1818, not only the administrator but all of the villagers should work on the problem if there was a grown man or woman who was not married or a widower living alone.
In traditional Korea, the whole village, or even the country, lived like in an extended family. It takes time to adopt and apply institutions from other parts of the world, although Korea has developed and achieved its own style of democracy and prosperity faster than others.
I hope the writers and journalists would be more mindful of cultural and historical differences between Korea and the United States, from where Korea borrows many modern systems. And there is no all-good or all-bad system. Blind interviewing in the United States has a goal different from Korea, which is to hire a diverse workforce.
This is not to deny the advantages of blind hiring but to point out that the practice of asking "intrusive" questions has not necessarily meant an illegal, anti-egalitarian approach, connected with some form of corruption. Don't dismiss the past across the board to praise the present.
The writer is the chairwoman of the Korea Heritage Education Institute (K*Heritage). Her email address is Heritagekorea21@gmail.com.
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