The world of civil servants who are smart but incompetent has been
No book has ever exposed things so accurately and sharply.

Confession of a former secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism

“I worked for the South Korean government for 10 years,
“I quit that pointless thing on my own.”

A bombshell book about the Korean public service and civil servants has been published.
This is a book written by Noh Han-dong, a former secretary who passed the civil service examination and worked at the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism for 10 years before resigning of his own accord.
He vividly exposes the government and bureaucracy from the perspective that only an insider with a long career in the public sector can have, and deeply criticizes the "lie of working for the country" that its members use as a shield for their personal gain and survival.
It comprehensively examines the characteristics of the public service, which are filled with listless routines and frustrations, fake labor and useless rules, structural inefficiencies, and mechanisms for avoiding responsibility.

The shadow and aftermath of the 'blacklist of the arts and culture world' incident that included author Han Kang, the reason why the unfair contract scandals of 'Cloud Bread' and 'Black Rubber Shoes' failed to lead to fundamental measures to protect creators, the performance evaluation system that is entirely focused on pleasing superiors rather than solving practical problems, and even criticism of the civil servant-style wordplay such as 'Organizational Culture Refresh (F5),' which was created as a measure to overcome the system...
The author's criticism of public office, which crosses both inside and outside the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, is extremely sharp and explosive.
It provides a comprehensive overview of both institutional and cultural domains, and provides a comprehensive understanding of micro and macro factors.
While examining the issues of policy, budget, personnel, and laws in detail, it reportage-wise restores the atmosphere that causes a sense of helplessness and frustration among civil servants.

Civil servants are very smart.
So it's very incompetent.
That systematic incompetence is not the problem of individual civil servants.
The biggest problem is the inertia and structure of the public service society, which hides its incompetence and helplessness with the plausible excuse of “working for the country.”
Although the author was fed up with it and gave up his civil service life, he still cannot hide his deep affection for the organization.
He wrote this book with the belief that for a better tomorrow for the Republic of Korea, accurate criticism of the limitations and abuses of our public service system, where over a million people work, is necessary.
Noh Han-dong truly believes in the power of bureaucracy and administration to move our society forward.
He didn't stop 'working for the country', he just stopped 'lying'.

Young civil servants who once shone with dreams of success and the ambition to solve societal problems with their own hands are initially disappointed by reality, but after a while, they become accustomed to organizational logic.
It's partly because the public sector is so full of nonsense that they don't have the time to think about and implement what's truly necessary, but it's also because they soon realize that if they just endure the passage of time without solving any problems, a predetermined promotion and a reasonable amount of fame will follow.
--- From "Prologue: A Society Ruled by Public Cynicism and Private Passion"

I will explain in detail later, but even from the perspective of an ordinary person like me who studies well and has a way of thinking that relies on the customs of our society, the public service society is an extremely strange society.
It was systematically incompetent, structurally irrational, and yet there was no will to point it out or fix it internally, and like the 'Emperor in Wonderland', it flattered its superiors to a ridiculous degree.
In such an atmosphere, it was only natural that most bureaucrats repeatedly failed in their goal of improving the country and society.
--- From "Part 1: The Strange World of Public Service, Chapter 1: A Life on a Different Dimension"

The public sector was helpless when it received the order to implement the blacklist, but even after the punishment and investigation were over, it considered it a virtue to refrain from responding as much as possible.
Even in private, it was extremely difficult to find anyone who expressed anger about the blacklist, expressed the injustice of having to do something they didn't want to do, or made a serious reflection on the matter.
It's as if everyone has promised to forget the incident.
After some time had passed and I had learned more about the public sector, I realized that such silence was actually closer to resignation and cynicism.
Civil servants are dedicated to the public good and work for the country's development? That's the romanticism of someone who doesn't understand society.
--- From "Part 1: The Strange World of Public Service, Chapter 2: I Was Lucky"

But the world is full of problems that cannot be covered in a one-page report.
These are issues where the cause of the problem is unclear or where various factors are intertwined, and where solutions also require a lot of discussion.
However, government reports, even when dealing with such issues, adhere to the principle of 'just keep it simple and to the point'.
To ensure that everything can be neatly contained in one report, the problem, cause, and solution are organized into two or three contexts and coordinated to intentionally flatten the reality.
In the process, the complex realities of interest that make it difficult to see the thread are intentionally replaced with a few simple contexts.
--- From "Part 1: The Strange World of Public Service, Chapter 3: An Ordinary Person"

Let me emphasize again that the standard for performance evaluation and promotion in the public sector is not 'what you did and how well you did it', but 'who you assisted and how closely.'
This system, which is entirely focused and preoccupied with pleasing superiors rather than solving practical problems, forces civil servants to adopt conservative and evasive attitudes, hindering the creation of new ideas and overall innovation within the organization.
Ultimately, in an environment where compliance is valued more than performance, individual abilities cannot be fully utilized, and the development of the entire organization is bound to stagnate.
--- From "Part 1: The Strange World of Public Service, Chapter 6: The Sorrow of the Final Exam"

The public service is packaged under the ideal of "working for the country," but a closer look reveals an "abnormal world" where the true meaning of public interest is obscured and countless inefficient practices are commonplace.
Civil servants choose this path with the determination and ideal of serving the public interest.
But as time passes, that pledge wears down as it clashes with the reality of public service.
As long as the public sector continues this vicious cycle, the claim that we truly work for the country will be nothing more than an empty slogan.
--- From "Part 1: The Strange World of Public Service, Chapter 7: On-Call"

In this structure, the smarter the bureaucracy, the more fiercely they learn that prioritizing organization and obeying orders are the most advantageous survival techniques.
In other words, the obvious conclusion is that it is better to focus all your attention on reading the intentions of the organization and superiors rather than trying to understand the position and feelings of the policy target and focus on the field.
As a result, bureaucrats develop an arrogant attitude of viewing policy targets as mere materials for their own success.
No matter how polite and courteous you appear on the outside, you cannot hide the arrogant way you treat people, saying, "I am right, and you must follow."
--- From "Part 2: The Clever but Incompetent Bureaucrat, Chapter 8: I Am Right, and You Must Follow"

Central government officials are reprimanded for reducing the budget by streamlining the structure of support projects.
This is because each ministry is doing its best to increase the budget for its respective field.
For example, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has long been a 'culture
The goal was set at '2% of the budget'.
The goal is to increase the ratio of the culture, arts, sports, and tourism budget to the national budget, which is currently in the early 1% range, to 2%, the level of advanced countries.
How would a boss view an employee who voluntarily and thoughtlessly cuts the budget when doubling it to achieve a goal would not be enough?
--- From "Part 2: The Clever but Incompetent Bureaucrat, Chapter 10: The Secret of the Budget"

Whether or not he is aware of the deep-seated situation in the public sector, the president gives stern instructions to high-ranking officials, including ministers, to visit the field more actively whenever the opportunity arises.
But already, high-ranking officials are meeting with the field and the crowds.
Unfortunately, the time spent preparing well-written scripts for them is also wasted on the practitioners who need to meet the actual field.
And bureaucrats choose easy isolation and incompetence over hard communication.
There is no vicious cycle like this one.
That's why I can't stop laughing whenever I see news reports of the president's stern instructions.
--- From "Part 2: The Clever but Incompetent Bureaucrat, Chapter 11: The Wise Answer to a Foolish Question"

As a first-class civil servant with not much time left in public office, you have to do whatever it takes to make your presence known.
To rise from a general civil servant to a political vice minister, one must catch the eye of the administration, including the Office of the President and ministers, unlike previous promotions.
When I passed the civil service exam and started working as a civil servant, the once-in-a-lifetime career I had dreamed of was right in front of me, so I couldn't just blow that opportunity by a hair's breadth.
This is not simply a matter of honor, as where you end your public service career determines the 'level' of the position you can take after retirement.
--- From "Part 2: The Clever but Incompetent Bureaucrat, Chapter 13: Parkinson's Law"

Ultimately, the relevant budgets must be reduced to prevent policy research services and committees from operating for the purpose of delaying time and diluting responsibility.
This is because the nature of public organizations is that if there is no budget, you cannot do something even if you want to.
However, because civil servants cleverly incorporate research services and committee operating budgets into various business expenses, it is not uncommon for outsiders to be unable to know where and how much of the relevant budget is reflected even if they examine each budget item breakdown one by one.
There are countless cases where even the Ministry of Strategy and Finance officials who review the budget are unaware of it.
It is virtually impossible for external parties, such as the National Assembly or the media, to fully grasp this.
--- From "Part 2: The Clever but Incompetent Bureaucrat, Chapter 14: The Art of Bureaucracy"

Why does the public sector falter and become unstable? Why do policies fail because they lack a sense of direction? Officials answer that it's because the political winds are too strong.
This is a complaint that every time the ruling power changes, they control even the smallest administrative actions and force civil servants to line up, so they have no choice but to follow suit.
It's not that civil servants have no soul, but they have to pretend to have no soul to survive.
But does the public service have a soul in the first place? As mentioned earlier, if the ministry in charge had a strong philosophy regarding national language policy, the entire ministry wouldn't have oscillated so drastically between "K" and "K" depending on the minister's inclinations.
But how can you not be shaken if you don't have a soul and a philosophy that you believe is right?
--- From "Reasons for Failure in Part 3, Chapter 15: Between Kay and K"

The fundamental problems of the public sector become more apparent in the series of responses to the incident.
While governments waste their administrative power on unimportant matters and struggle with useless tasks unrelated to policy goals, they fail to bring about the changes that are truly needed.
The populist behavior of politicians who are adept at creating good-and-evil dichotomy further complicates the situation.
They try to stimulate public sentiment and strengthen their political positions through short-term issues, but in the process, government and public service resources are endlessly wasted.
The 'Ronaldo no-show' and the 'controversy over coach Sun Dong-ryeol' were not just noisy incidents.
It was a symbolic incident that clearly revealed the vicious cycle of the government moving away from the essence of its work.
--- From "Reasons for Failure in Part 3, Chapter 17: Ronaldo and Seon Dong-yeol"

If there is any truth to the hypothesis that the book crisis originated from the supply side of the publishing industry, it is also clear that the government budget for fostering the publishing culture industry is too small.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism's budget to support publishers and bookstores is approximately 56 billion won as of 2024.
This is about one-tenth of the previously mentioned reading budget of approximately 500 billion won.
It also doesn't compare to the position that publishing holds in a country's culture.
For example, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism's annual budget for supporting the sport of soccer alone is approximately 50 billion won.
No matter how important soccer is to Koreans, isn't it difficult to compare its status with the publishing industry, which is the foundation of a country's culture?
--- From "Reasons for Failure in Part 3, Chapter 19, 'Our Society is Writing the Epitaph of a Book'"

More than ten years have passed since the Cloud Bread incident, but nothing has changed in the Copyright Act to protect creators.
If we take away its original function of protecting creators, what will remain of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism?
Frankly, it would be better for other ministries or local governments to handle the support and subsidy execution for the industry.
However, public organizations are not easily eliminated or replaced even if they do not perform their original functions.
There are times when shocking events occur and public opinion becomes increasingly critical, but the public sector and bureaucracy know all too well through repeated learning that if they can just avoid the winds of change, they don't have to do anything.
So instead of a long-term, systematic approach to solving the problem, hasty measures to avoid the situation are prevalent.
--- From "Reasons for Failure in Part 3, Chapter 20: The Lie That Creators Come First"

Why have the systems introduced to reform the public service, despite their good intentions, failed to produce significant results in practice or even worsened the situation? Above all, it's because they overlooked the resistance of bureaucrats at various levels and the system's path dependency.
The department store-style alternatives put forth by some media and scholars are also dangerous in that sense.
As the saying goes, "It's like burning down a house to catch a flea," reckless attempts to root out visible evils without carefully considering the impact they will have on the public sector run the risk of destroying even the goodwill of the bureaucrats who have been supporting the public sector.
--- From "Part 4: Finding a New Path, Chapter 21: What to Change and What to Leave Behind"

When bureaucrats gain expertise through these institutional changes, the effect goes beyond simply improving the quality of policies.
Because expertise is the greatest weapon to resist unfair instructions from superiors.
Even if you are a superior, it is difficult to blindly push through wrongdoings against subordinates who are armed with a broad understanding of reality and solid logic.
One of the reasons why unfair orders are easily given in our country's administration is because true administrators with both practical and theoretical knowledge are rare.
In short, to enhance the professionalism of bureaucrats, the practice of the Z-shaped rotational job system must be improved and unnecessary rigidity in personnel policies must be relaxed.
--- From "Finding a New Route in Part 4, 'There's No Need for All 22 Chapters to Cycle in a Z Shape'"

Many of the problems in the public sector stem from here.
Bureaucrats have little authority and are only responsible for the results, so they naturally become apathetic about their work.
For most civil servants, except for the highest-ranking officials who desperately need to reach out to the political world to advance to political positions, avoiding anything that might lead to accountability becomes a superior strategy.
And this leads to government incompetence.
Because ultimately, work is done by people.
Young civil servants feel more than helpless in this situation; they feel frustrated.
As a career bureaucrat, I entered the job with the ambition of dedicating my life to the public interest, but in reality, I don't have much to decide on and am just being pushed around here and there.
--- From "Part 4: In Search of a New Route, Chapter 24: Jupiter or Hercules?"

Are our government bureaucrats truly a sleazy bunch? Given the limitations of my personal experience, it's difficult to make a blanket judgment about the entire civil service, which numbers around a million people. However, the vast majority of civil servants, including those in central government ministries and local governments, support society in various ways through their respective duties, making it by no means a sleazy bunch.
They are usually responsible for tasks that require social intervention, have the legal authority and means to perform their tasks, and are well aware of this.
In other words, to the question, "Does the world have any meaning?", we can answer that the work done by civil servants is not meaningless, unnecessary, or harmful.
--- From "Part 4: Finding a New Path, Chapter 25: We Must Define Precisely What the Problem Is"

If we want to reform the public service and create a competent government, we must do everything we can to reduce the fake labor of bureaucrats.
We must put all our past practices and work on a firm footing and carefully examine whether they are truly necessary for the country.
For example, we must thoroughly examine whether there are any routine and useless meetings that are unrelated to policy decisions or content, or whether there are any practices of endlessly repetitively creating the same content by simply changing the framework due to someone's impatience.
And all tasks that are not recognized as necessary must be eliminated.
The public sector is a place where fake labor overwhelms real labor, so we must thoroughly examine the necessity of work to the point where we wonder if this is even possible.
--- From "Part 4: Finding a New Path, Chapter 26: The Usefulness of Bureaucrats"

But on the other hand, do bureaucrats truly strive to do their jobs well even in difficult situations? Or are they nurturing talent with the skills to navigate difficult situations? I believe neither.
Civil servants who are accustomed to simply supporting the wishes of their superiors, relying on information provided by others, and neglecting real work are the result of the incompetent system of the public service, regardless of the difficult policy environment.
I am deeply sorry to say this to my former colleagues, but just as I do not trust the ability and good intentions of politicians, I do not trust those of bureaucrats either.

--- From "Epilogue: We Are All Crossing the West Sea Bridge"