Financial regulator criticized for unfair recruitment

By Kim Tae-gyu

The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) was found to have committed wrongdoings in recruitment in 2014 when Governor Choi Soo-hyun was in charge.

The FSS recently sent an email to its employees to disclose the results of an internal investigation on the recruitment issue and admitted that there were irregularities in hiring an attorney, a son of former lawmaker Lim Young-ho.

However, the organization has come under criticism for having failed to dismiss the younger Lim. It also did not investigate former Governor Choi, who started a career as a bureaucrat the same year as the former lawmaker.

When the FSS employs lawyers, internal rules stipulated that they should have at least one year of experiences but the requirement was scrapped in 2014.

Back then, Lim had just graduated from law school and among newly employed lawyers he was the only one with no practical experience. FSS Deputy Governor Lee Sang-koo, who is suspected of being responsible, resigned recently due to the scandal.

“We carried out an audit beginning late October into some alleged unfair acts. There is circumstantial evidence that Lee changed criteria and scores of candidates several times,” the FSS said.

The FSS plans to come up with disciplinary measures against those who responsible but the punishment will not affect the junior Lim or former Governor Choi.

“We do not have any right to investigate former chiefs,” an FSS official said.

Choi was supposed to work as an advisor for the FSS until the end of this year but he quit last month.

Choi took office just after President Park was inaugurated in late Feb. 2013 but he prematurely resigned from the top job in Nov. 2014 in the wake of various incidents including a massive leak of people’s private data by financial firms.

During his 20-month term, Choi was famous for a relentless push on financial companies to prevent scams and fraud by their employees. As such, the fraudulent recruitment angers people more.

The elder Lim was a lawmaker between 2008 and 2012 as a member of the minor opposition Liberty Forward Party, which was merged with the Grand National Party, now the governing Saenuri Party, in 2012.

The bureaucrat-turned-politician proactively took issue with U.S. buyout fund Lone Star’s acquisition and disposal of the Korea Exchange Bank, now a part of KEB Hana Bank.

He now works for Korail, the country’s railroad operator, as a supervisor.