Parliament endorses bill on nat'l diplomacy academy

SEOUL, June 29 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's National Assembly approved a bill Wednesday that calls for establishing a state agency charged with recruiting and training career diplomats, Seoul's foreign ministry said.
Following the endorsement, the ministry will select candidates for the so-called national diplomacy academy starting in the second half of 2013, after holding the decades-old foreign service exam for the last time early that year, the ministry said in a statement.
A relevant draft bill was submitted to the parliament in February following two years of deliberation by experts in the private and public sectors. It came in response to criticism that the current recruitment exam relies heavily on rote-centered written tests and is unfit for discovering talented diplomats.
Under the plan, the academy will produce its first career diplomats in 2014 after training and screening the selected candidates for one year.
In addition to training future diplomats, the new academy will be charged with developing South Korea's mid- to long-term foreign policy, the ministry said.
Also on Wednesday, the National Assembly passed a separate bill calling for a stricter evaluation of foreign service officials. The legislation comes as part of the ministry's efforts to restore its tainted image in the wake of a series of scandals, the worst of which led to the resignation of former Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan. Yu was forced to quit in September over the unfair hiring of his daughter for a mid-level post in the ministry.
The strengthened measures will include evaluating and training diplomats who do not meet the standards of a foreign service official and even dismissing those who show no improvement. To ensure a fair and open hiring system, the ministry will also fill 20 percent of its overseas posts with private sector experts and civil servants from other ministries.
hague@yna.co.kr