South Korea’s Constitutional Court ruled on Feb. 27 that “the National Election Commission (NEC) is not subject to audits by the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI), as it is an independent constitutional body, not an administrative agency.”
The court deemed the BAI’s investigation into the NEC’s alleged nepotism in hiring practices “unconstitutional.” Critics argue that this decision grants the NEC immunity despite allegations of corruption in election management in the last presidential election and recent hiring irregularities.
In delivering its verdict on the NEC’s jurisdictional dispute petition against the BAI, all eight Constitutional Court justices unanimously agreed that “the BAI’s audit of the NEC’s hiring practices and personnel management violated the independence of the commission’s independence as guaranteed by the Constitution and the Election Commission Act.”
“The BAI’s authority to conduct audits serves as an internal control mechanism for administrative agencies and does not extend to independent constitutional bodies such as the National Assembly and the NEC,” the court stated. It also cautioned that allowing a presidential agency to audit the NEC could undermine public confidence in the fairness and neutrality of election management.
The BAI launched an audit investigation into the NEC’s hiring practices on May 2023 following allegations that the children of high-ranking NEC officials had received preferential treatment in the commission’s job recruitment process. The audit, which took place over a year and nine months from June 2023, examined the NEC’s personnel management practices.
The NEC challenged the audit by filing a jurisdictional dispute petition with the Constitutional Court, claiming that the investigation “infringes on its right to independently conduct affairs,” including personnel decisions such as hiring and promotions.
The BAI strongly criticized the ruling, pointing out that it has “conducted audits on the NEC every one to three years, and the commission has previously accepted the results.” The court’s ruling now limits the BAI’s authority to accounting inspections on the NEC while barring all other audits, “which is hard to accept,” the BAI said.
Shortly before the court’s decision, the BAI released its audit report on the NEC. According to the report, of the 291 job recruitments the NEC’s central and 17 regional offices conducted over the past decade, the commission was found to have committed a staggering 878 violations. Not a single hiring process was free of misconduct.
