Performance Appraisal and Performance-Related Pay in Government: The Case of South Korea

Abstract

Many OECD countries began to move from the single pay scale toward more flexible pay arrangements that have pay for performance, and not pay for seniority. The purpose of this study is to review the case of South Korea on pay flexibility in the Korean civil service. Since a performance evaluation is a key element in performance management system, performance appraisal systems in the Korean Central Government are first elaborated, followed by discussion of two performance-related pay systems (performance-related pay for higher-level officials and performance-related pay for middle- and lower-level officials) used in the Korean central government. After that, the impact of pay flexibility in government, policy implications, and concluding remarks are presented.