Barrier Lowered for Top-Level 'Professional Engineer' Qualification After 16 Years... Work Experience Requirement Reduced by Up to 4 Years

The government will reduce the work experience requirements for the highest levels of the national technical qualification system—the Professional Engineer and Master Craftsman exams—by up to four years. This measure aims to lower entry barriers for young people to obtain higher-level qualifications and to better reflect the demands of the industrial field.

On April 15, the Ministry of Employment and Labor announced that it would issue an advance notice of legislation for the “Amendment to the Enforcement Decree and Enforcement Rules of the National Technical Qualifications Act.” This revision is the first overhaul of the national technical qualification eligibility system in 16 years since 2010, focusing on fundamentally improving the system, which has been criticized for excessive work experience requirements.

Kim Younghoon, Minister of Employment and Labor, is explaining measures to shorten the processing period for occupational disease industrial accident compensation at the Ministry of Employment and Labor briefing room in the Government Complex Sejong on the 1st. Photo by Yonhap News.

The current national technical qualification system consists of several tiers: Craftsman, Industrial Engineer, Engineer, and then Master Craftsman or Professional Engineer at the top, with work experience required at each stage. In particular, the Professional Engineer is the highest grade in the national technical qualification system and refers to top-level technical personnel with advanced expertise and abilities in design and analysis in their respective fields.

With the revision of the enforcement decree, the work experience requirement for taking the Professional Engineer and Master Craftsman exams will be reduced overall by two to four years. The pure work experience requirement will be shortened from nine years to seven years. The experience required after obtaining the Craftsman qualification will be eased from seven years to five years. For those who acquire the Industrial Engineer qualification, the experience required to apply for the Professional Engineer exam will be reduced from five years to three years; for those with the Engineer qualification, it will decrease from four years to two years. For those with related academic backgrounds, university graduates will see requirements drop from six years to three years, and graduates from junior colleges from seven to eight years down to four to five years. For the Master Craftsman, the experience requirement after obtaining the Industrial Engineer qualification will be lowered from five years to three years, and after obtaining the Craftsman qualification, from seven years to five years.

This revision institutionalizes the discussions from the “National Qualification System Development Forum” held on April 3. At that time, experts pointed out that the Professional Engineer and Master Craftsman exams required excessively long work experience, thus restricting young people from entering these fields. In response, the government decided that it was necessary to rationally adjust the experience-based eligibility structure to a competency-based system.

The amendment to the enforcement rules includes measures to increase the utilization of the Work-Learning Dual System qualification. The number of occupational categories in which the Work-Learning Dual System qualification is recognized as a national technical qualification will be expanded from seven to sixteen. As a result, those who have obtained the Work-Learning Dual System qualification in fields such as automobile maintenance, information processing, baking, career counseling, and landscaping will be able to receive recognition for the equivalent national technical qualification without having to prepare for a separate exam. This aims to eliminate inefficiencies whereby trainees who have already demonstrated job competencies in the field must acquire the same qualification again to be recognized in the labor market.

Additionally, new qualifications and revisions will be introduced to better reflect industrial field demands. Four new qualifications will be established: Master Aesthetician, Architectural Structure Engineer, Robot System Integration Industrial Engineer, and Robot System Integration Craftsman. In particular, the introduction of qualifications in the robotics field is seen as a response to automation and digital transformation.

Existing qualification categories will also be extensively reorganized. The exam subjects for 39 categories, including Interior Architecture Craftsman, will be revised to focus on job functions, and some categories will see adjustments to the written/practical test format or subject composition. Emphasis has been placed on increasing field applicability and practical relevance by reflecting the National Competency Standards (NCS). Support for obtaining qualifications linked to military technical training courses will be expanded. For those who complete technical training at military educational institutions and serve for a certain period in related fields, a system exempting them from the written exam for the Craftsman qualification will be extended to include the Navy, with partial adjustments also made for the Air Force.

Kim Younghoon, Minister of Employment and Labor, stated, "The core of this revision is to provide a ladder of opportunity so that capable young people are not blocked by excessive experience requirements and can challenge themselves to obtain higher-level qualifications."

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