감찰기구의 연혁에 따른 직무감찰 권한범위와 그 발전방안

The Constitution gives the Board of Audit and Inspection (the “BAI”) the responsibility for job inspections on civil servants. While the BAI, as the Supreme Audit Institution, currently conducts both for job inspections and financial audits on civil servants, back in 1948 – when the Korean Government was established - these responsibilities were respectively assigned to the Board of Audit (for financial audit), and the Commission on Inspection (for job inspections). While the former maintained its structural identity until being merged into the BAI in 1963, the latter kept being scrapped and recreated. These shifts led to changing inspection responsibilities and authorities, finally taking the present form of job inspection of the BAI. This thesis aims to analyze these changes, and deduce the meaning, limitations and directions for authority and functional improvement of job inspection. As a chronological overview, the first audit institution was the aforementioned Commission on Inspection (the “COI”). At the beginning, the CoI had the authority to inspect illegality or corruptions of civil servants and request relevant document submission and opinion statements, and determine appropriate dispositions against perpetrators. The successor Inspection Committee’s authorities were made meaningless because job inspection was limited to civil servants’ corruptive behaviors while on duty, and separate requests for document or independent disposition determination was impossible. The recreated CoI, initially, could order evidence submission and interview witnesses, and make direct disposition, inspecting misconducts of civil servants and agencies while on duty. In the legislative amendment after the 1961 military coup, job inspection focused more on misconducts of civil servants and agencies, whose legislative history suggests the role of the Audit Institution was expanded to aggressively promoting improvement of administration, from detecting corruptions of civil servants. The above demonstrates that the focus of inspection on civil servants shifted from individual corruptions to non-compliance and inefficiencies of civil servants and agencies. This culminated in the declaration in the BAI Act of the purpose of job inspection, the improvement and promotion of administration. Thus, the focus of the BAI’s inspection should be less on personal corruption, and more on government policies and performances. To achieve such goal, systematic complementation is needed, allowing individual laws to designate job inspection targets, reinforcing document request authorities to avoid denials to such requests, and strengthening the enforcement of disposition authorities.