Suwon Mayor Yeom Tae-young Indicted for Dereliction of Duty

Suwon Mayor Yeom Tae-young has been indicted for dereliction of duty by a city civil servant over a 2012 civil service performance evaluation program called "Communication Training."

Choi, a civil servant with Suwon City, filed a complaint against Mayor Yeom with the Suwon District Prosecutors' Office on the 31st for dereliction of duty.

In his complaint, Choi stated, "Mayor Yeom had the obligation to follow proper procedures and objective standards in conducting disciplinary actions against civil servants according to the Local Civil Service Act and other laws, but instead pursued what was called 'Communication 2012 Training' without objective criteria, leading two civil servants to take their own lives."

He added, "The National Human Rights Commission of Korea recommended improvements to a similar system implemented by Seoul City on grounds of human rights violations, yet Mayor Yeom failed to implement any of these recommendations whatsoever," arguing, "This is clearly a dereliction of duty."

Previously, Suwon City conducted "Communication 2012 Training" in 2012, in which 43 employees identified as causing operational inefficiencies and damage to their administrative units and organizations were selected and sent to specialized training institutions.

Among the employees who received this training, Park took his own life in September 2012, while Yu was found dead on the 2nd of last month, with an autopsy confirming suicide.

In a phone conversation with this publication, Choi stated, "I believe this civil servant communication training is no different from a modern version of the Samcheong Education Camp," referring to a controversial military-run reeducation program. "There is no such coercive training under the Local Civil Service Education and Training Act, and given that civil servants must maintain their reputation for their livelihoods, I filed the complaint against Mayor Yeom out of dismay at the city mayor's lack of any official apology whatsoever."

In response, a Suwon City official stated, "This training was conducted only once to refresh the organizational atmosphere in the fifth term of the popularly elected administration, and it is difficult to accept the raising of this issue during a local election period," and "It is also difficult to acknowledge a causal relationship between employee deaths and the communication training."

Meanwhile, Kim Yong-nam, a preliminary candidate for Suwon mayor from the Saenuri Party, issued a statement on the day, stating, "Suwon Mayor Yeom Tae-young should immediately abolish the communication training."

Candidate Kim stated, "Concerns existed from the start of the communication training that evaluator subjectivity could be involved in the participant selection process and could encourage factional alignment in the civil service. In the case of general-level official Lee, a sixth-grade civil servant selected as a participant, the selection reason was written in just one line: 'Insufficient sense of responsibility and passion, such as avoiding assigned duties.'"