 Culture and Education; the Bureau of Legal Affairs, the Ministry of Justice; the Bureau of Transportation, the Ministry of Transportation; the Bureau of Military Affairs, the Ministry of National Defense. The bureaus of police affairs, agriculture, commerce, financial affairs, postal service, and public sanitation were similarly changed. The seven departments were converted into seven offices, including the Public Personnel Administration Office, the Local Administration Office, the Food Administration Office, the Price Administration Office, the Public Property Management Office, the Foreign Affairs Office, and the General Management Office. The ministries of civil engineering and labor were added and the Local Administration Office was closed down later, bringing the organization to 13 ministries and six offices in total. Throughout Phase 2, the USAMGIK also strengthened and centralized its functions and powers.
Source: KLRI, 1971, 179.
In June 1947, the USAMGIK was renamed as the South Korean Interim Government, and the Organizational Reform Committee (ORC) was newly created. The ORC reorganized the administrative system into 13 ministries and one special bureau (in the place of the six abolished offices), and also additionally created the Personnel Committee and the Central Economy Committee, the latter of which was put in charge of overseeing the Price Administration Office and the Food Administration Office. This new organizational structure remained intact until the official government of the Republic of Korea finally came into being in August 1948 (Kim, 1996, 228). The main objective of this third phase of administrative reform was to enhance the government’s control over economic aspects by introducing the two new offices.
The USAMGIK initially judged it more economical and rational to maintain the governance structure of the Government General of Joseon, from which it pursued incremental changes later on. This inherited structure also provided the context in which the USAMGIK sought to introduce a limited measure of democracy into Korea, particularly by dividing the Korean government into three branches, including the South Korean Transitional Legislature and the Supreme Court (with the appointment of the Chief Justice). In its last days, the USAMGIK made more frequent and complex attempts at reform, expanding the overall organization significantly. Yet it also retained the tendency toward centralization by expanding the central administrative organization to a greater extent than its local counterparts.
It was indeed under the USAMGIK that the pattern of centralization began to accelerate in Korea, with the central administrative organization expanding, the number of province-stationed civilian agents (not part of the tactical forces) increasing, and the former Government General tasks of local administrations being transferred to the central government. While the USAMGIK retained the relatively decentralized administrative structure of the Government General of Joseon until April 1946, the trend of centralization was afoot in almost all ministries and offices by 1947. Local administrative organizations that had formerly served as buffers between the central government and local units were all but abolished by April 1946. Local administrations thus turned into local offices of the USAMGIK without any independent legislative powers or say in central policymaking (Mead, 1951, 80-81, as quoted in Kim, 1992, 25). Local administrations thus lost the power of self-government.
Though the USAMGIK inherited the Government General of Joseon’s administrative structure (under Decree 21 of November 2, 1945), it did make some changes to it. Decree 60 issued on March 24, 1946, called for the abolishment of local legislatures and school councils at the levels of provinces, towns, eup, myeon, and islands. The USAMGIK also re-drew administrative districts, rearranging counties, villages, myeon, eup, and cities near the 38th Parallel border (under Decree 22 of November 3, 1945), and separated Seoul from the province of Gyeonggi-do, turning the former into a special (capital) city and granting to it the same range of functions and powers as those granted to provinces (under Decree 106 of 1946). The Charter of Seoul was closely modeled after the charters of American cities, and represented the first official attempt to introduce at least a measure of self-government in Korea. The USAMGIK also renovated other administrative offices including those of provincial governors, the Mayor of Seoul, vice mayors, county mayors, island magistrates, eup and myeon leaders, and the like, and redesigned special administrative units reporting directly to central government agencies.
[1] The USAMGIK decided to keep the administrative organization of the Government General of Joseon intact, finding such a system not only rational and practical, but also capable of providing a standard policymaking and implementation system for governing civilian affairs (Mead, 1951, 76).
In the early months the USAMGIK’s reliance on the Government General of Joseon extended beyond organizational structure to include the latter’s bureaucrats, laws, rules, decrees, public announcements, and official records. Between October and December, 1945, almost 75,000 bureaucrats of the Government General were on the USAMGIK’s payroll, including some re-hired bureaucrats (Kim, 1992, 194). KDP members also occupied key positions in the government, particularly in advisory councils and in the ministries and departments of central and local administrative organizations, exerting a great influence.
The USAMGIK applied a series of criteria in recruiting additional personnel (Kim, 1996, 238-242). First, candidates had to be proficient in the English language, well-educated, and pro-America, and were expected to support liberal values. Second, Koreans with any ties to communism were excluded at the outset. The USAMGIK insisted on these principles as essential to the U.S. fight against the Soviet Union and communism, and dutifully excluded members of the Korean Communist Party and their sympathizers from its expanding organization. As the KDP naturally provided the greatest pool of candidates meeting these criteria, the USAMGIK filled numerous positions in its organization with members of that party. Between December 1945, when the USAMGIK began to appoint American leaders to ministries and departments along with their Korean counterparts, and March 1946, when indirect rule began, several KDP members were appointed to important positions and departments in the USAMGIK, as shown in Table 4-3.
The Administrative Advisory Council (AAC) set the basic rules and principles of the USAMGIK’s personnel recruitment policy. Military Governor Archibald Arnold set up the AAC on October 5, 1945, and 11 Korean citizens sat on the Council. Of these 11 members, all but two (Yeo Unhyeong and Cho Mansik) were members of the KDP. The USAMGIK also recruited KDP members to a great number of high-ranking posts in local organizations, the military, and the police administration in an attempt to enhance the legitimacy of its rule.
It was not until March 29, 1946 when the Military Governor’s Staff was renamed and converted into the Public Personnel Administration Office that the USAMGIK began to introduce American elements into the personnel organization and policy. The Rules on the Functions of the Public Personnel Administration, proclaimed as Decree 69 on April 20, 1946, officially endorsed the meritocratic principle, and charged the newly created office with preparing and developing the civil service system and elements of scientific public personnel management in post-liberation Korea (Kim, 1992, 261).
In the process of redesigning the public personnel administration system, the USAMGIK introduced a series of modern American measures without much regard for the tradition and reality of bureaucratic practice in Korea. The American elements introduced during this period included the position classification system, the meritocratic principle, and the open competition (examination) system. The position classification system, in particular, marked a fundamental shift in the public personnel administration system from the days of the Government General of Joseon. Bureaucratic positions were divided into four types: clerking, administrative, and financial (CAF) positions; professional and technical (P&T) positions; training, defense, and storage positions; and specially appointed positions. In addition, the USAMGIK instituted various other measures to enhance the meritocratic nature of civil service, including the performance scoring and evaluation system; general duty standards; remuneration and promotion criteria; and preliminary, on-the-job, and promotion training.
While these new measures were introduced with positive and innovative outcomes in mind, they failed to produce the intended effects since Korean society was still in the throes of extreme ideological conflict ignited after the country’s liberation. These measures were not only imposed in a top-down manner without much regard for Koreans’ willingness or traditions, but there was also a dearth of people trained and capable of seeing them through (Kim, 1996, 292). The legal requirements of open competitive examinations and other such recruitment measures were not strictly observed, as the USAMGIK itself appointed the majority of officials by decree. This practice, intended to block communist infiltration into the government organization, eventually led the KDP to monopolize key positions.
Nevertheless, the American elements of the public personnel administration introduced in Korea by the USAMGIK during this period did eventually generate radical changes. The principles of democracy and merit in public personnel administration would inspire policymakers in the First Republic of Korea to devise a more professional and efficient system of career bureaucracy in the later years.
To root the concept of liberal democracy in Korea, a nation ruled by a king for the preceding five centuries and then by Japanese colonialists, the USAMGIK introduced various features of American democracy, including legislation, elections, and party politics. The ostensible goals of these changes were the liberalization of Korea, the democratization of its political organizations, and the eventual realization of an autonomous and independent Korean nation. In fact, however, the USAMGIK’s harsh anti-communist stance in the name of democracy inhibited Koreans’ right to