Promotions tied to international school and investment projects spark suspicions of liability-shielding personnel moves; disciplined officials returned to posts under Mayor Yoo Jeong-bok's eighth term; former section chief says he has evidence of manipulated evaluations and rigged recruitment, and plans to submit it to the Board of Audit and Inspection and prosecutors; critics say repeated internal reshuffling has crowded out outside expertise; questions remain whether the incoming ninth-term administration will break the pattern
Fresh questions are surfacing over personnel practices at the Incheon Free Economic Zone Authority during the tenure of former Commissioner Kim Jin-yong, who led the agency under Incheon Mayor Yoo Jeong-bok's eighth-term administration.
A pattern has emerged in which officials who handled international school projects and large competitive bids were transferred to other departments — with promotions — shortly after lawsuits or project controversies arose, fueling suspicions that the moves amounted to reward-based reassignments designed to shield those involved from accountability.
The controversy has deepened with specific testimony alleging that officials previously disciplined for unlawful conduct were reinstated to positions of responsibility, and that performance evaluations were manipulated and recruitment criteria tailored to place particular individuals in targeted posts. The allegations center on repeated, allegedly unfair personnel decisions within the authority's Investment Attraction Headquarters and show no sign of fading.
**Sudden resignations mid-lawsuit, then promotions — a recurring pattern**
The most recent controversy stems from a lawsuit over the selection of a preferred negotiating partner for an international school project on Yeongjong Island, with plaintiffs alleging the competitive bidding process was unfair.
Shin, a grade-7 fixed-term civil servant who appeared in court as a key witness, submitted his resignation just five days after testifying on May 22. He subsequently moved to a grade-6 position in a different department within the same Investment Attraction Headquarters through an open recruitment process — effectively a promotion.
Inside and outside the authority, the move has drawn suspicion as a reward-based personnel action intended to prevent internal disclosures, and as a form of liability-shielding by removing the official most directly associated with the disputed process.
An identical pattern occurred in 2022. When litigation arose following a competitive bid for a separate project, Kang, a grade-7 fixed-term official who had handled the work, resigned and was subsequently promoted to a grade-6 post in another department within the same headquarters.
Critics say the two cases are carbon copies of each other — and that such moves differ fundamentally from the recruitment of outside specialists for specific fields.
Ahn Do-hyeon, a former section chief at the authority's Service Industry Attraction Division who holds a doctorate in science and technology policy, said the same structural problem keeps repeating itself. "When an issue arises, the person in charge is moved, and over time the records and lines of responsibility become dispersed," he said. "This is not an isolated incident — it is a systemic personnel problem."
**Grade 7 to grade 4 in just eight years — a disciplined official's meteoric rise, and a six-month delay to meet eligibility requirements**
The allegations do not stop there. Ahn, drawing on his own experience at the authority, has raised broader accusations of organized and recurring personnel misconduct within the agency.
At the center of the favoritism allegations is a section chief surnamed Kim who holds an open-recruitment fixed-term post under the Investment Attraction Headquarters.
Kim was appointed at grade 7 in 2016, reached grade 5 in 2021, and was promoted to a grade-4 section chief post in January 2024 — a rise that took just eight years.
For a typical civil servant, advancing from grade 7 to grade 4 normally takes 15 to 20 years, making Kim's trajectory highly unusual.
Kim also has a disciplinary record: in 2019, the Incheon city audit office sanctioned him for violating the duty of diligence under the Local Public Officials Act, in connection with a land sale contract amendment involving Neo Fashion Hyungji.
**Allegations of a rigged recruitment process for the successor post**
Ahn has alleged that the entire process by which Kim was appointed as his successor was engineered to benefit a predetermined individual.
In July 2023, a recruitment notice for the section chief post was issued with unusually short notice and no prior announcement or outreach, creating conditions that favored an internal candidate over outside specialists, he said.
What made the process particularly unusual, Ahn said, was the timeline: the evaluation was completed in August 2023, but the final selection was not announced until January 2024 — far beyond the one-to-two months typical for internal appointments.
"The point at which Kim would have met the 'three years at grade 5' requirement for appointment to a higher grade fell in early 2024," Ahn said. "The authority held back the announcement for six months to let him meet the eligibility threshold."
Ahn said that when Mayor Yoo called him by phone to ask about candidates for the post, he explicitly advised against appointing a specific individual — but the appointment went ahead regardless.
**'They manipulated my evaluation to push me out' — Ahn's account**
Ahn also alleged that his own departure from the authority was engineered through manipulated performance evaluations, designed to remove him and install a preferred replacement.
"The evaluation I was initially told about and the final evaluation were different," he said. "I confirmed that the commissioner — who has no personnel authority — had instructed that I be given the lowest possible rating." He said he agreed to resign only after being promised a fair review, and ultimately left with a final A rating.
At the time, rumors circulated internally that former Commissioner Kim Jin-yong and colleagues who had previously been disciplined alongside him on corruption-related charges were being lined up for promotion to headquarters director and section chief positions. Those individuals communicated through a secure messaging app — Telegram — and systematically excluded Ahn from meetings and certain work assignments, he said.
During the period when Ahn was being pressured to resign, subordinates distributed press releases under their real names containing false accusations against him, in what he described as an organized defamation campaign.
Ahn said he was subsequently cleared of all charges brought against him by the authority and former Commissioner Kim, receiving a finding of no grounds for prosecution in every case. He said he plans to file a counter-complaint against them for false accusation.
The head of the Investment Attraction Headquarters, also surnamed Kim, has a similar disciplinary record — he was sanctioned over the same Neo Fashion Hyungji land sale contract issue when he was a section chief. He returned to the authority as a special adviser under Commissioner Kim Jin-yong during Mayor Yoo's eighth term, then was promoted to headquarters director just three months later, a pace that drew widespread comment within the civil service at the time.
Former Commissioner Kim Jin-yong's own record is also notable. The Incheon city audit office had flagged him as a subject of an internal corruption investigation over allegations of preferential treatment in a land contract and pre-sale arrangement involving Neo Fashion Hyungji on Songdo, and he was unable to take voluntary retirement as a result. Despite that record, Mayor Yoo appointed him to lead the authority again in the eighth term.
**A broken personnel system — outside experts shunned, resentment runs deep**
The repeated return of disciplined officials and the rapid promotion of well-connected insiders while investigations were ongoing have generated intense frustration among career local government officials at the authority and long-serving fixed-term specialists who have worked in their fields for years.
The pattern of hiring non-specialists — including people with backgrounds in biotech and other new industries — for roles in international school development and investment attraction, apparently to secure promotions rather than to fill genuine expertise gaps, has also hampered the authority's ability to attract high-caliber outside talent.
Ahn said he has secured recordings that document pressure from the commissioner to alter evaluation results, as well as evidence that Mayor Yoo was personally involved in deliberating over the appointment and that the recruitment process was designed with a specific individual in mind.
He said he plans to submit the materials to the Board of Audit and Inspection, police and prosecutors in the near future, calling for a transparent investigation.
"This is not about damaging any individual's reputation," Ahn said. "I am disclosing the facts for a public purpose — to stop the same flawed personnel decisions from being repeated over and over, with no one held accountable." He added that the authority could only reclaim its standing and contribute to Incheon's development by bringing in objectively vetted outside experts through genuine personnel reform, rather than continuing to operate through opaque, backroom decision-making.
Whether the allegations of rigged appointments, reward-based promotions and the reinstatement of disciplined officials that recurred throughout Mayor Yoo's eighth term will carry over into the incoming ninth-term administration — or whether the Incheon Free Economic Zone Authority will use the transition to rebuild a transparent personnel system and restore public trust — remains to be seen.
gilbert@heraldcorp.com
