[Exclusive] Police Recruitment to Adopt 'Question Bank' System... Nationwide Unified Interviews

Abolition of Oral Examination for Gyeongchae and Reorganization of Selection Fields
Gradual Implementation to Prevent Confusion Among Examinees

The police officer recruitment exam, which has repeatedly raised issues regarding gender equality and procedural fairness, is expected to undergo significant revisions. The newly established Police Talent Selection Officer, temporarily appointed in this year's regular superintendent personnel reshuffle, will take the lead in improving the recruitment system.

According to a comprehensive report by Asia Economy on the 31st, the National Police Agency is pushing for a complete overhaul of the entire police recruitment process. To this end, it recently created the Talent Selection Officer position at the superintendent level and decided to operate it temporarily until January 2025.

On the 5th, students at Mega CST Police Dormitory Academy in Anseong-si, Gyeonggi-do, are looking at a bulletin board displaying the names of students with excellent academic and physical fitness scores. Photo by Jinhyung Kang aymsdream@

◆ Lowering the difficulty of the written exam and conducting nationwide simultaneous integrated interviews = First, for the written exam, the initial hurdle in police recruitment, the introduction of a 'question bank' and the 'Public Service Aptitude Test (PSAT)' is being considered. The police written exam has caused confusion among applicants due to its inconsistent difficulty levels. In particular, last year's second police officer (junior officer) written exam included many high-difficulty questions requiring interpretation of specific or detailed case examples, drawing criticism that it was "harder than the superintendent candidate (lieutenant) exam." In fact, the cutoff score for the second written exam last year was an average of 167.5 out of 250 points nationwide (50 points for the Constitution, 100 points each for Criminal Law and Police Science), which was 30 points lower than the first written exam cutoff (197.5 points) that same year. Conversely, this year's first written exam was easier, with the passing score around the 220-point range. Despite being a large-scale national exam aimed at selecting candidates above a certain level, the difficulty adjustment has failed repeatedly.

Accordingly, instead of the current method where examiners create questions each time like the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), the police plan to lower the written exam difficulty by adopting a 'question bank' system, where many questions are pre-made and some are selected. They also plan to introduce the Public Service Aptitude Test to replace discriminatory power. The PSAT is an aptitude test conducted by the Ministry of Personnel Management for civil servant recruitment, assessing qualities required of public officials. It excludes memorization-based questions and mainly consists of items evaluating literacy skills such as verbal reasoning, data interpretation, and situational judgment. It is currently applied to exams such as the Foreign Service Exam, Administrative Exam, Legislative Exam, and the national level Grade 7 exam. Additionally, the introduction of nationwide simultaneous integrated interviews is being pursued. Currently, interviews are conducted in two stages (group interview and individual interview) and separately by each provincial police agency; the new method will integrate these stages and conduct them simultaneously nationwide.

◆ Abolishing oral exams for experienced hires... revising selection fields and exam subjects = For the experienced competitive recruitment (경채) that selects experienced professionals and experts in fields necessary for police work, the practical evaluation conducted through oral exams will be abolished and replaced with document screening to enhance objectivity. There is also consideration to eliminate some fields such as tax accounting and cybercrime, which appoint candidates at the lieutenant level, and to revise exam subjects. However, changing selection fields and exam subjects requires amending the presidential decree, the 'Police Officer Appointment Decree.'

Regarding the physical fitness test, which raised gender equality issues, a rotational physical fitness test applying the same standards for men and women will be fully implemented from 2026. The rotational physical fitness test requires candidates to wear a vest weighing 4.2 kg and consecutively perform obstacle running, pole hurdles, pulling and pushing, rescue, and trigger pulling events, passing within a set time to qualify. If the completion time is 4 minutes 40 seconds or less, the candidate receives an 'excellent' rating and passes; exceeding this time results in failure. However, those who finish between 4 minutes 40 seconds and 5 minutes 10 seconds receive a 'normal' rating and may pass in order of fastest times if the target number of successful candidates is not met.

◆ Gradual implementation considering candidate confusion = The police plan to prepare detailed implementation measures and release specific guidelines in the fourth quarter of this year. Even if the final plan is confirmed by the end of this year or early next year, a grace period may be provided to avoid confusion among applicants. Previously, when the subjects for the junior officer open recruitment written exam were changed in 2019, a two-year grace period was given, and the changes were applied starting last year. Considering this, the new system is expected to be applied as early as late 2025 or early 2026.