Foreign Ministry Employees Accused of Taking Overseas Training Benefits and Resigning, Some Leaving the Day After Training Ends

[Financial News] The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) sends employees overseas for training each year using substantial public funds. However, cases have continued to emerge in which employees resign after completing their training without fulfilling their mandatory service obligations. Although the government has recovered funds from some former employees, opportunities for overseas training that could have gone to other talented personnel were lost.
In the past, many former MOFA employees have found new jobs handling overseas government relations for major law firms or companies, drawing on their strong language skills and expertise in international exchanges.
According to data MOFA provided to Lee Gi-heon, a member of the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee from the Democratic Party of Korea, on the 5th, MOFA sends about 35 employees overseas for training each year to countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, China and Japan. MOFA covers their tuition, living expenses and medical insurance premiums, with the related annual budget totaling 4.3 billion to 4.7 billion won.
However, four employees resigned without fulfilling their mandatory service obligations after completing overseas training over the past three years. Half of them resigned less than a month after their training ended. In one case, a foreign service official who had trained in the United States and the United Kingdom for about two years resigned the day after the training ended. In another, a senior foreign service official who had trained in the United States for about one year resigned just 26 days after completing the program.
Under Article 42 of the Enforcement Decree of the State Public Officials Human Resources Development Act, the mandatory service period is twice the length of the overseas training. When employees fail to fulfill that obligation, MOFA has recovered the training costs already paid in proportion to the remaining mandatory service period. Over the past three years, training costs were recovered from four employees who failed to complete their mandatory service, totaling 334.1 million won.
Lee Gi-heon criticized the practice, saying, "The government spent taxpayers’ money to send these employees overseas so they could become talent who would serve the national interest, but they instead built their personal careers while ignoring their mandatory service obligations. This represents a double loss: it deprived other talented people of opportunities and squandered the budget that had been invested."
Lee also said, "MOFA must verify candidates’ willingness to serve from the selection stage and establish measures to prevent such cases from happening again."

[email protected] Kim Kyung-soo Reporter