[Viewpoint] All Quotas Are Discrimination

Choi Jun-seon, Honorary Professor at Sungkyunkwan University School of Law

The essence of all quotas is discrimination. The Commercial Act, revised last year, requires that at least one audit committee member of a listed company be separately appointed. This is to allocate that one or more positions to minority shareholders. During this shareholders' meeting season, five KOSPI-listed companies including Hanjin, Kumho Petrochemical, Korea & Company, and Sajo Group are already engaging in a vote battle to separately elect audit committee members. From next year, the Capital Markets Act also mandates that among the directors on the board of listed companies with total assets of 2 trillion won or more, at least one female or male director must be appointed. In addition, the 'Amendment to the Act on the Operation of Public Institutions' and the 'Amendment to the Commercial Act,' which require a certain number of directors to be allocated to employee representatives, have been submitted to the National Assembly.

Forcing a certain number of directors to be allocated to specific groups like this is a kind of quota. And quotas discriminate by disadvantaging capable individuals and favoring less capable ones. A company is a private organization optimized for business operations. There is little legal basis to force the structure of a board of directors by law. How to choose the board structure is up to each company, and the government has no need to interfere.

Nevertheless, such quotas are increasing. When the proportion of faculty members from a particular school is excessively high in a university, the Ministry of Education imposes various disadvantages on that university. Law schools must have at least 20% female professors, and students must be selected with at least 7% from socially vulnerable groups. On February 19, the National Assembly's Education Committee held a plenary session and processed the 'Amendment to the Act on the Promotion of Local Universities and Balanced Regional Talent.' According to this bill, specialized graduate schools such as medical, pharmaceutical, medical professional graduate schools, and law professional graduate schools located in local areas must mandatorily select a certain percentage or more of students from the corresponding region. The rationale is regional balanced development. What was previously a recommendation is now changed to a mandatory requirement by law.

The main purpose of faculty selection is not to evaluate candidates' academic achievements to guarantee a comfortable livelihood. It is to ensure that they teach students well and contribute to the school and humanity through outstanding research. The criteria for faculty selection should be how suitable they are for this purpose. For law school students, the criterion should be whether they possess a full legal mind; for corporate directors, whether they have high entrepreneurial spirit and the potential to deliver excellent performance; for doctors and pharmacists, whether they have a compassionate heart for patients and sufficient ability to hone excellent medical skills.

All quota systems are products of politics. Since quotas are not naturally occurring, they must be enforced with coercive power to be achieved. The catchphrases are always equality, fairness, justice, and consideration for socially disadvantaged groups. Politicians aim for this because such emotional slogans help conceal their hypocrisy.

However, quotas force individual rights to yield to the rights of society as a collective. They prioritize the rights of specific groups over individual rights under the vague reason of social consensus. Especially in companies, competition and innovation are survival conditions. Quotas deprive some of the freedom and right to hire talent through competition.

Discriminating against individuals, collapsing the fundamental principle of modern jurisprudence?the freedom of contract?and ultimately infringing on the freedom of the people, this is the greatest harm of the quota system.

[Choi Jun-seon, Honorary Professor, School of Law, Sungkyunkwan University]