Former Financial Supervisory Service officials who moved to cryptocurrency exchanges last year have shifted their post-retirement destinations toward law firms this year, as the digital asset market has fallen into a slump.
The trend coincides with tightened post-retirement employment screening by the Government Ethics Committee, which has broadened restrictions on where FSS retirees may work.
According to the Ministry of Personnel Management's Public Service Ethics System, three of the 27 FSS retiree employment cases reviewed in the first half of this year were denied or restricted — up from one out of 28 cases in the same period last year.
Last year, only a single Grade 2 official seeking a position at the Korea Insurance Development Institute's training division was rejected. This year, all rejections came at once during the April review.
Former Deputy Governor Kim Mi-young was nominated to head the Korea Credit Information Services but was denied approval in the employment review. Two Grade 3 and 4 officials who sought positions at Coupang Inc, which had been embroiled in a data leak controversy, were also barred from taking the jobs. Two additional officials who requested confirmation of their employment eligibility were placed on hold.
In May and June, all seven cases reviewed received approval or were cleared for employment.
The number of FSS retirees moving to law firms rose to eight in the first half of this year, up from five in the same period last year. At least one official who had initially sought a position at Coupang Inc redirected to a law firm instead.
Moves to virtual asset exchanges, which numbered four in the first half of last year, fell to zero this year. Last year, exchanges including Dunamu and Bithumb had put through employment reviews for multiple senior-level FSS alumni — two executive and team-leader level officials at Dunamu and two managing-director level officials at Bithumb — but no such cases emerged this year. The virtual asset industry's downturn, combined with a stall in legislative discussions on related regulations, appears to have dampened demand for officials with financial regulatory backgrounds.
Movement toward asset management firms and capital companies increased. While no FSS retirees moved to asset managers in the first half of last year, four cases — involving Samsung, KB, BNK and Samsung SRA — cleared review this year. Three officials also moved to capital companies, including Meritz, BNK and Woori Financial.
ehkim@heraldcorp.com
