Jeju International Convention Center's Consecutive 'Hiring Corruption' Controversies

Number of Interviewers Varies for Final Interview Candidates

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters (Jeju) Reporter Park Chang-won] The Jeju International Convention Center (hereinafter referred to as the Center) faced allegations of unfair competition due to a difference in the number of interviewers between successful and unsuccessful candidates during the final interview of the ‘1st Jeju Public Institution Integrated Recruitment’ held last year.

According to the Jeju International Convention Center on the 9th, the Center formed a panel of five interviewers for the integrated recruitment last June, consisting of four external personnel and one internal personnel.

The Center’s personnel regulations stipulate that if there has been a direct superior-subordinate relationship, it is considered a conflict of interest, and such interviewers are prohibited from participating in recruitment interviews.

However, it is known that one of the final candidates, Mr. A, and interviewer Mr. B had previously worked in a direct superior-subordinate relationship within the Center’s MICE Planning Office.

On the day of the interview, the Center recognized that Mr. B was ineligible as an interviewer and allowed two of the three final candidates to be evaluated by all five interviewers as planned, while Mr. A, who had a direct superior-subordinate relationship with Mr. B, was evaluated by only four interviewers excluding Mr. B.

As a result, Mr. A, who was evaluated by four interviewers, was ultimately selected.

The Center’s final interview evaluation calculates the average score by summing the scores of three interviewers after excluding the highest and lowest scores from the five interviewers. However, the successful candidate Mr. A was evaluated without Mr. B, who had a direct superior-subordinate relationship, effectively receiving an average score from only two interviewers and passing.

When forming the panel, the Center should have thoroughly checked for any issues in accordance with personnel regulations but failed to do so. Furthermore, when a violation of the regulations occurred, the Center should have urgently replaced the problematic interviewer, but instead took the awkward measure of excluding Mr. B only from Mr. A’s interview.

Regarding this, attorney Kim Jeong-hee pointed out, “Having a different number of interviewers evaluating candidates in a public recruitment is grounds for invalidating the successful candidate and filing a civil damage claim. Since Mr. B, who has a relationship with candidate Mr. A, could potentially give the lowest scores to other candidates, excluding only the related candidate from the interview evaluation violates the ‘disqualification’ and ‘recusal’ regulations.”

Meanwhile, the Jeju Provincial Government’s Tourism Policy Division, the supervisory agency, began an investigation following this newspaper’s report on recruitment irregularities (June 3, 2021, Jeju International Convention Center Experienced Staff Unfair Recruitment ‘Corruption Suspicion’), but without verifying any documents, they stated based solely on the Center’s explanation that “there is no problem with the ‘recusal regulation’ regarding conflicts of interest among interviewers during integrated recruitment.”