"'Sham Review, Council Sidestepping'... Integrated Education Office Draws Heavy Criticism at Audit"

Organizational review to conclude in July 2027... leaving just five months for restructuring
Assemblymember Kim Jinnam criticizes: "This amounts to entrusting the organization's future to outsiders"

The Jeonnam-Gwangju Integrated Special City Office of Education, set to launch in January 2028, has come under heavy criticism for relying solely on an external organizational review without even conducting a comprehensive survey of workloads at its two offices in Jeonnam and Gwangju.

At an administrative audit by the Education Committee of the Jeonnam-Gwangju Integrated Special City Council on November 4, Assemblymember Kim Jinnam (Democratic Party of Korea, Suncheon 5) asked Choi Boyoung, director of the Planning and Coordination Office, "Do you have data comparing the division of responsibilities and actual workloads of the same or similar departments at the two offices?"

Director Choi replied that the information was available only to the extent that working-level staff had identified it, effectively acknowledging that the Planning and Coordination Office had not conducted a comprehensive survey.

Assemblymember Kim Jinnam criticized Chief Planning and Coordination Officer Choi Boyoung over the education office's comprehensive survey of its workload. Provided by the Jeonnam-Gwangju Integrated Special City Council.

The education office is currently preparing to sign a contract for an organizational restructuring review. The review is scheduled to run from November 2026 through July 2027, leaving only about five months between the completion of the findings and the actual integration in January 2028. This has raised concerns that the restructuring will be rushed.

Assemblymember Kim said, "A review is not about asking experts to decide the organization's future for us. If you present the findings of a review conducted without providing actual workload data, it is only too predictable that staff will push back and call it a 'sham review.'" He went on to warn, "Compared with the local government integration, the education office may seem quiet, but in reality, the ticking of a 'time bomb' is drawing closer."

Assemblymember Kim also took issue with an earlier statement by Noh Junghyun, director of the Future Citizens Education Division, that working-level teams held weekly consultations and had found common ground on many issues. "I was startled by how it was presented as though the integration were going exceptionally smoothly," he said.

Noting in particular that travel expenses incurred in the name of preparing for the integration totaled tens of millions of won, he called on the Planning and Coordination Office to investigate thoroughly whether departments with unusually frequent business trips lacked the authority to make decisions on their own and were instead passing responsibility around or engaging in power struggles.

He also strongly urged the office to draw up a phased implementation plan, provide real-time reports at weekly meetings chaired by the superintendent of education, and make a draft of the organizational restructuring public and gather feedback in the first half of 2027.

Director Choi replied, "Standards have already been established for matters that are easy to agree on. We are now at the stage where we have to make major decisions, even if they are uncomfortable. We will review organizational restructuring, personnel matters, work practices, and organizational culture together as a package."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.