Ministry of National Defense Republic of Korea

Doubling the number of counselors specializing in sexual harassment and harassment this year

Increasing female soldiers to 8.8% by 2022

Sports, cultural and resort facilities owned by the military opened to the public

Introduction of an ombudsman system to strengthen public monitoring function

The Ministry of National Defense has allocated 1 billion and 50 million won from its budget to expanding the career education and job counseling it provides to soldiers. It has also decided to almost double the number of female workers above manager-level at ministry headquarters compared to last year by 2022.

“We have established an 'Action Plan for Innovation of the Ministry of National Defense' with the aim of recovering its relationship with the public through participation and trust of the people,” a Ministry of National Defense spokesperson said on May 17th. 

The ‘Action Plan for Innovation of the Ministry of National Defense’ is a follow-up to the ‘overall plan for advancing government innovation’ announced at the Government Innovative Strategy meeting hosted by President Moon Jae-in on March 19th. The Ministry of National Defense spokesperson continued, “We have selected 15 key challenges and 36 action tasks based on the following three government innovative strategies; Realization of social value, Participation and cooperation, and Restoration of trust through innovation of old practices. We will be keeping step with the stream of pan-governmental innovation of public areas, and will push forward to systematically innovate with the aim of building a Ministry of National Defense that works together with the people.” 

First of all, we will be actively researching a number of projects associated with the innovation of the Ministry of National Defense. These will include supporting job-seeking activities by young soldiers, establishing safe working conditions for female soldiers, protecting soldiers' human rights, and constructing military facilities in cooperation with communities, and will be increasing the budget to reinforce defense management that is focused on social value. Accordingly, the budget for counselors specializing in sexual harassment will be increased, from 930 million won last year to 1.4 billion and 50 million won this year. The percentage of women above the manager level at the Minister of National Defense's headquarters, which was only 11.5% last year, will be gradually increased to 23% by 2022. As well, there will be a gradual increase in the number of first-appointed high-ranking female workers: the percentage of female soldiers, which reached 5.5% last year, will be increased to 8.8% in 2022. 

A new initiative is also being launched to open the public resources owned by the military to the public. Defense policies will be made in cooperation with the people, including the Gov.3.0 Design Group that participates in policy making, the Defense Human Rights Monitoring Group that participates in forming military human rights policies, the Participatory Group associated with Defense Information Disclosure that is involved in efforts to improve the quality of public disclosure, and the Mother's Soldier Feeding and Clothes Monitoring Group that is engaged in improving the quality of food and clothes for soldiers. In addition, sports, cultural, and resort facilities owned by the military will be open to the public, and any information among the defense statistics information that may attract the people's attention will be registered with the Korean Statistical Information Service and applied to various areas.  

Finally, the Ministry of National Defense plans to recover the public's trust by actively innovating old practices. To this end, an institutional infrastructure is being formed that can eradicate self-interested actions and abuses of power, in addition to the introduction of an ombudsman system to strengthen public monitoring of graft and corruption.  

To eliminate the problem of sexual violence, education to raise awareness of sexual harassment will be strengthened and the number of counselors specializing in sexual harassment will be nearly doubled this year (from 23 persons to 44 persons). An organization dedicated to the prevention of sexual violence in the military will be established by 2021. 

To create an efficient working system, various attempts will be made in four areas; ‘simplifying work,’ 'improving work processes,’ ‘reinforcing cooperation and communication,’ and ‘innovating the workplace.’ A group working on financial reform in national defense, which was formed with the aim of prevent financial waste and met once each quarter, will now be operated once a month.

“Along with defense reform, innovation is what the people want, and is an unavoidable trend of the times. We will devote our full energy to innovating the Ministry of National Defense in order to make changes which can be felt by the people,” said Seo Joo-seok, Deputy Minister of National Defense directing the innovation of the Ministry of National Defense.

By Yeong-Sun, Lee < ys119@dema.mil.kr >
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