정부위원회제도의 법리적 검토

The various administrative committees that have been established and operated within the government are not consistent with the principle of the governmental structure set forth in and sought by the Constitution. Moreover, either they have no legal basis, or the legal basis is sometimes poor. Accordingly, the Act on the Establishment and Management of Councils, Commissions, and Committees under Administrative Agencies (“Administrative Committee Act”) was enacted in 2009. Note, however, that the Administrative Committee Act was implemented less than a year ago, and the administrative committees are still not better understood. Furthermore, several inconsistencies were found between the Administrative Committee Act and other acts and general rules such as the “Government Organization Act” and the “General Rule on the organization and fixed number of administrative agencies.”Therefore, this paper shall deal with several problems of government committees. First, according to the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, government committees are divided into administrative committee, advisory committee, and decision committee. Note, however, that the Administrative Committee Act does not clearly stipulate such classification as used by the ministry. Second, there is a need to create a legal basis for the rearrangement of the overlapping committees that were established in the past. Regulations for the committees are mostly set forth by the acts concerned; therefore, uniform rearrangement seems impossible under the circumstances. Third, the committee members' term of office is defined and provided, but there is no definite regulation as to their consecutive reappointment. The regulation needs to mention, as a minimum, that the members may be consecutively reappointed. Finally, a supervisory system needs to be established to monitor the activities of the committees. Under the current law, there is no organization or committee that can watch and monitor the activities of the committees. The law only contains the provision that says the activities of the committees may be reported or supervised, but the supervisory agency or committee that can watch and monitor the administrative committees periodically or occasionally needs to be established.