NTS chief marks first year with bold personnel shake-up, breaking seniority norms

National Tax Service Commissioner Lim Gwang-hyeon has carried out his second senior civil servant reshuffle ahead of his first anniversary in office on July 23, placing a premium on expertise and future readiness over seniority. The shake-up puts key personnel at the forefront to lead the NTS through a rapidly changing tax administration environment shaped by AI, international taxation and virtual assets.

The standout appointments are Lee Seong-geul as head of the NTS headquarters investigation bureau and Kim Young-sang as head of the Seoul Metropolitan Tax Office's Investigation Bureau 4. The moves are widely seen as a direct expression of Lim's personnel philosophy — evaluating people solely on competence and results, not the outdated convention of seniority.

According to government sources Monday, the NTS on Friday promoted a total of eight officials to the senior civil service — five who entered through competitive state exams (four through the administrative exam, one through the technical exam) and three through non-exam tracks (two from the National Tax College, one through a Grade 7 open recruitment).

An NTS personnel official said: "The typical path to a headquarters bureau director post had been to serve successively as a regional bureau director in Busan, the central region and Seoul before moving to headquarters. This time, however, we took the bold step of placing three first-time directors directly into core headquarters bureau posts that oversee all seven regional tax offices and 133 tax offices nationwide."

Nam Woo-chang, director of information management; Ryu Chung-seon, director of international tax management; and Ko Young-il, director of individual taxation, are the three officials appointed directly from first-time director positions to key headquarters roles.

Nam, who entered through the technical exam, has built deep IT expertise over 14 years in the computing field after being appointed as a computing administrator, with experience spanning various tax source areas. He is considered the right person to drive the NTS's ongoing "AI transformation of tax administration."

Ryu entered through the Grade 5 open recruitment and has developed strong external negotiation and communication skills through postings at the NTS, the tax policy bureau of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Supreme Court and the Korea Institute of Public Finance.

Ko Young-il joined through a Grade 8 special recruitment and is credited with introducing the government's first virtual asset private custody system and helping build an electronic linkage framework between the NTS and five major exchanges. He is considered well placed to oversee virtual asset taxation, which takes effect next year.

Inside and outside government circles, Lee Seong-geul and Kim Young-sang are widely regarded as the central figures of this reshuffle. The headquarters investigation bureau director is the control tower for tax investigations nationwide —a pivotal post. The role oversees the full scope of investigation work, from planning audits and selecting targets to countering international tax evasion and gathering and analyzing tax evasion intelligence. Lim himself previously served as investigation bureau director.

A look at the careers of past investigation bureau directors shows that experience as a regional tax office investigation bureau director was virtually a universal prerequisite. Most had accumulated multiple stints as regional investigation bureau directors — enough to be called seasoned investigation specialists — before rising to senior positions.

Lee, by contrast, took a markedly different path. His only regional investigation bureau experience is a single term as head of Seoul's Investigation Bureau 4. Even his appointment to that post — known in business circles as the "grim reaper of the corporate world" — drew attention at the time as an unconventional choice.

Lee has lived in the same single home in Sejong's Cheonmaeul neighborhood since the NTS relocated to Sejong in 2022, and is regarded as a model of the clean-handed public servant the Lee Jae-myung administration seeks. He does not trade stocks and holds only a KODEX 200 ETF — the same index fund President Lee Jae-myung invested in through a lump-sum deposit.

An NTS official said it is common practice for large corporations to make every effort to cultivate relationships in advance with likely candidates for the Seoul Investigation Bureau 4 director post. "After Commissioner Lim took office, the appointment of Lee Seong-geul as Seoul Investigation Bureau 4 director in last year's senior civil service reshuffle was seen as a move that caught the business community completely off guard," the official said.

Against that backdrop, many observers see Kim Young-sang's appointment as Seoul Investigation Bureau 4 director as a continuation of the same logic. Kim, who passed the 46th administrative exam, was elevated to the senior civil service less than a year after his promotion to deputy director.

The deputy director promotions also drew notice for breaking the glass ceiling — three of the eight newly promoted deputy directors are women. Lee Seon-ju (innovation policy), Oh Mi-sun (investigation 2) and Choi Ji-eun (Daejeon office, voluntary compliance) are the trailblazers.