This Year's Largest Civil Service Exam... Health Authorities on Alert

On the 12th, one day before the largest civil service open competitive written exam of the year, a quarantine company official is conducting COVID-19 disinfection at Yeouido Yoonjung Middle School, the exam site. Photo by Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Reporter Moon Hyewon] Amid concerns over the spread of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19), the largest-scale civil service open competitive written examinations of the year will be held simultaneously on the 13th.

According to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and the Ministry of Education, the 2020 local government civil servant and local education office civil servant (education administration and other local government officials under the superintendent of education) 8th and 9th grade open competitive recruitment exams will be conducted nationwide in 17 cities and provinces from 10:00 AM to 11:40 AM for 100 minutes.

The local government civil servant exam will be taken by 240,531 candidates at 593 test centers, and the local education office civil servant exam will have 55,338 candidates at 109 test centers. The average competition ratio is 10.4 to 1 for local government civil servants and 13.6 to 1 for local education office civil servants.

Combined, the number of applicants approaches 300,000. Considering the usual absentee rate of around 30%, it is expected that about 200,000 candidates will take the exams at 702 test centers nationwide.

This is the largest scale for civil service open competitive exams since the COVID-19 outbreak. Previously, about 12,000 candidates took the national civil service 5th grade open competitive exam and the first round of the diplomatic service candidate exam held on the 16th of last month, and about 50,000 candidates registered for the police officer open competitive exam held on the 30th of the same month.

As a large number of people move and gather, the government has prepared quarantine measures to block infections inside the test centers, including mandatory mask-wearing, social distancing between candidates, hand sanitizing and temperature checks upon entry, and isolation testing for suspected cases.

To this end, the capacity per test room, which was about 30 people, has been reduced to 20 or fewer to secure a distance of at least 1.5 meters between candidates. Additionally, 11 quarantine officers have been assigned to each test center to manage on-site quarantine conditions.

Candidates must wear masks at all times except when verifying their identity after the exam starts. Since masks are not provided at the test centers, it is recommended that candidates prepare their own masks and bring extras in case of loss or damage during use. Candidates who do not wear masks or are judged to be high-risk with clear signs of infection suspicion during entry may be disqualified from taking the exam.

There are three candidates who applied for separate testing locations due to self-quarantine. One local government civil servant candidate from the Gyeonggi region and one local education office civil servant candidate from Incheon will take the exam at home. The remaining candidate, a local government civil servant from Gyeongbuk, will take the exam at the closed Pungcheon Middle School.

This is not the first time home testing has been conducted due to infectious diseases. During the 2015 MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak, some local governments such as Seoul and Daejeon implemented home testing.

The Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Human Resources Development Service also held the national technical qualification written exams for engineer, industrial engineer, and service categories at 251 test centers nationwide on the same day. Approximately 58,000 examinees took the exams, with 27,000 of them from the Seoul metropolitan area where COVID-19 is spreading.

The Ministry of Labor and the Service ensured that examinees maintained a distance of at least 1.5 meters in the exam rooms and mandated mask-wearing during the exams.

The written exams for industrial engineers and others will also be held on Sunday, the 14th, at 211 test centers nationwide. There are 59,000 candidates, with 23,000 from the Seoul metropolitan area.

These exams were originally scheduled for last month but were postponed to this weekend due to the extension of social distancing measures.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.