[Inside Chodong] Are Government Ministries the Property of an Administration?

The United States established its current federal government framework in 1789. While the U.S. is known for its strong, almost monarchical presidency, there have been few major organizational changes in its government over the approximately 240 years since its founding, except for the creation of the Department of Veterans Affairs in 1989 and the Department of Homeland Security after the 9·11 terrorist attacks in 2001. When new administrative demands arose, the U.S. typically responded by adjusting the functions of existing departments or reorganizing sub-agencies, rather than undertaking large-scale restructuring. The Government Efficiency Office, a new entity established during the second Trump administration, was also launched as a temporary organization, not a formal department, and is scheduled to exist only until July 2026. In Japan, too, the only significant change since the Meiji Restoration was the transformation of the Ministry of Finance from the former Ministry of Treasury as part of the 2001 central government reorganization.

Unlike the U.S. and Japan, which prioritize the stability of government organizations, South Korea has seen repeated attempts at government restructuring with every change in administration. Depending on the new administration’s policy objectives, entirely new ministries have been created, or existing ones have been repeatedly split and merged. Several ministries, such as the Ministry of Knowledge Economy and the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, disappeared after the end of a single five-year presidential term. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety changed its name three times in just four years, illustrating how some ministries undergo frequent renaming while their organizational structure remains unchanged. The administration that carried out the largest reorganization among single-term governments was the Lee Myung-bak administration. The Ministry of Economy and Finance, which is currently facing criticism under the Lee Jaemyung administration for its "ministerial dominance" and is undergoing a separation of its budgetary functions, was also created during this period. The Lee Jaemyung administration is reportedly preparing a much more extensive reorganization plan than those of the previous Yoon Suk-yeol and Moon Jae-in administrations, including splitting the Ministry of Economy and Finance and overhauling the financial sector.

Frequent restructuring of ministries undermines the continuity of government operations and incurs significant costs. The expenses associated with securing office space, moving, reprinting nameplates and business cards, and changing all official government forms are considerable for newly established ministries. There are also substantial social costs, such as the need to completely rebuild working relationships and counterparts, and confusion among policy stakeholders regarding which ministry is responsible for which issues. When organizations are split, the number of positions inevitably increases, and once a bureaucratic organization expands, it is difficult to reduce its size again. A Ministry of Economy and Finance official I spoke with recently said, "When the budget office was separated from the Ministry of Finance and Economy during the DJ administration, it left with about 100 people, but when it was later reintegrated, it had grown to over 250 people."

The bigger problem is that discussions about organizational restructuring have shifted from strengthening ministerial competitiveness to serving political purposes. Under the five-year single-term presidency, the Democratic Party and the People Power Party alternate in power. When one side wins an election, it reverses the changes made by the previous administration and uses ministry reorganization as a symbolic tool to drive government reform. For this reason, ministry restructuring is concentrated at the beginning of presidential terms. Sometimes it takes as little as 10 days, and at most just over two months. Because these reorganizations are led by a small group of committee members without sufficient analysis of ministry functions and operations, many short-lived ministries have been created, and there has been persistent criticism that these changes fail to gain broad public support.

The new administration has taken office amid an unprecedented national crisis caused by the imposition of martial law and extreme political strife. Now is the time to focus on restoring the damage caused by more than half a year of leadership vacuum and to address national tasks directly linked to the people's livelihoods and the country's future, such as the economy and tariff negotiations. In this situation, is it appropriate to prioritize large-scale ministry restructuring? Is it impossible for Korea to have government ministries that last 100 or 200 years, like those in the U.S. or Japan? If the current government reorganization is truly "for organizational efficiency," the first step should be to break the practice of reshuffling government ministries at the whim of each administration. Government ministries are not the property of any administration.