KJC Korea
Journal Central

It has passed ten years since modern records and archives management in our country launched. During times, it has dramatically developed in the fields of law, institution and education. However a study on the definition of records and archives was non be studied enough compared to development of various research fields. In fact the reason why study on the definition was non fulfilled is that some aspects such as historical, informational, archival perspective have been coexisting without order in Korea. This situation is the biggest barrier that archival science is to a disciplinary field. Historically, ‘archivium’ in Latin language had developed in starting of its means place, then whole entity of documents and those organic relations. In this point, archives is rigidly separate to material of Historical science which covers all of recorded. Unlike information which is produced in the process of intended themes and following its outputs like books, documents in archival science is made in the natural process of work. In addition, historical archives which finished the current and semi-current stage and transfer to the institute of permanent conservation after the process of selection so that it is historical and cultural value to satisfy its purpose of making. This changed trend is based on the Second World War and necessity of North American society which needs to effciency and transparency of work. In Korea, records and archives management has been dominantly affected by North American society and become a subject of not arrangement but of classification, not of transferring but of collection. It is also recognized as management of onformation on the all recorded or documents not as an whole documents and all organic relations. But the original type of recognition is the only technology, it cannot have dignity as a field of science.

Lots of cultures, memories, histories of the local life have disappeared. Some sectors of universities and religion have keep their records in manuscript archive only. On the other hand records of public sectors were at least able to be managed by the records management law. Citizen's groups and academic bounds were also roles to get public records strong. However can we just describe whole body with only public records? As records management law a record of private sector which has value of preserving can be managed under national protection. Yet establishment of local archive is not obligate. Only stressing on public records is like what dictatorial government acted in past years. It is what we ignore diversity and request of community. We need to move our view that we have focused on public and central sectors to private and local sectors. Local records management based on locality could help to complete the entire puzzle. The way complete the puzzle is various and wide spheres including from cultural space to being extinct village. Locality is defined as the property in certain area or distinctiveness of locals. Establishing production strategies is as important as collecting records produced over the past years for local archiving. Local archiving has to be regionally conducted in phase. Moreover common wealth and recognition of communities are reflected in the acquisition process. In next to archiving local organizations and private records according to collection policy, methodology on local archiving needs for archive management and use in various public and private fields. This methodology could be possible by building a local archive networking tool. It is true that Local archiving is not familiar and clear yet. If we can turn the effort for public records we have made to endeavor for private sectors, we might expect big fruits in private sectors. We easily emphasis on globalization or internationalization, our daily lives start on our villages. Setting aside our small communities, such a puzzle of the whole would never be completed. This is good time to begin finding lost puzzle for future. The key that can find lost puzzles be held in archiving localities.

Records are the social memory storage including collective memory about region, it is impossible to put into and represent all aspects of society with only public records. Japan showed the possibilities of cooperative collecting and the positive records producing and collecting efforts between organizations, even if it was not accomplished by systemic documentation strategy. Some characteristics were found out when this case was reviewed, it is as follows. To begin with, it is the cooperation and share in collecting. Especially, the activities of private organizations look better than public organizations and the cooperative collecting efforts lead to transmit much more social memory and historical records to next generation. Secondly, it is the positive records producing and collecting. The private organizations also left many records of various activities of those one accord. They recognized that recording experience and leaving behind is the survivors' responsibility. We cannot help recognizing the growth of a sense of duty and historical consciousness to record their own experience with undergoing big disaster, earthquake. Thirdly, there was no limit when it comes to the collecting scope. All records related with people and place in disaster area were the target for collecting just like slogan, 'Let's transmit records to next generation as much as possible', 'Common records and resources deserve leaving, because it is important life's information proving situations of the time. We were able to confirm the high will and enthusiasm about 'how, what and why do we transmit something of society to next generation' in this case.

Assemblypersons' activities have organizational and individual nature. The activities of assemblypersons and their assistant staffs become a motive for major work performance of Korean legislature, and are also critical public services affecting contemporary political history, history of political parties and history of assemblyperson's hometown. Moreover, their activities are also characterized by work performance in favor of assemblyperson's personal interests to effectively communicate his or her achievements during term of office to electors with a view to winning reelection after the end of 4-year term of office. Assemblyperson's organization produces various types of record in the performance of these works. From the viewpoint of public archive as a product of assemblypersons' public service performance and from their own personal viewpoints, they can create their own identity by arranging their personal records that can demonstrate their own political philosophy, policy orientation, achievements during term of office, and personal features. In addition, their personal records can have much more values and significance in the sense that those records are available to electors to make it possible to highlight their own images in objective and reliable manner. Conclusively, this study underlined that the efforts for assemblypersons and their assistant staffs to keep their records well could be helpful to streamline their internal works and be also helpful for personal interests of assemblypersons. And this study proposed procedures and methods for deducing and screening a list of production archives to meet a viewpoint of streamlined internal works and needs for keeping personal records, ultimately with a view to giving practical helps for these works.

The national records management system of the Korean Government has been developed in a close relationship with changes in the administrative system. The national records management system established immediately after the establishment of the Korean Government, began to be reformed as a system with a new feature during the quick transition of the administrative system during the early 1960s. Particularly this new system holds an important meaning in that it began to cope with the mass production system of records and was established on the government level for the first time since the establishment of the government. Also this was a basic framework that defined the records management pattern of the Korean Government for the later 40 years. Therefore, this study aims to identify the origin and the meaning of the national records management system established during the early 1960s. At the time of establishing the government, the administrative system of the Korean Government was not completely free from the framework of the administrative system of the Chosen General Government. This was mainly because the Korean Government had no capability to renovate the administrative system. This was not an exception also for the national records management system. In other words, the forms and preparation methods of official document, an official document management process, and the classification and appraisal system used the records management system of the Chosen General Government without any alteration. Main factors that brought about the reform of the national records management system as well as the change in the Korean administrative system during the early 1960s, were being created in Korean society, starting from the mid 1950s. This resulted from the growth of Korean Army, public officers, and students of administrative science as being the intrinsic elites of Korean society through their respective experience of the US administration. In particular, the reform of the creation, classification, filing, transfer, and preservation system shown during the introduction of a scientific management system of the US Army in the Korean Army was a meaningful change given the historic developing process of Korean records management system history. This change had a decisive effect on the reform of the national records management system during the early 1960s. As the Korean Army, public officers, and students of administrative science, who had posted growth beginning in the mid-1950s, emerged as administrative elites during the early 1960s, the administrative system of the Korean Government brought about a change, which was different from the past in terms of its quality, and the modernization work of documentary administration pursued during the period, became extended to the reform of the national records management system. Then, the direction of reform was ‘the efficient and effective control’ over records based on scientific management, which was advanced through the medium of the work that accommodate the US office management system and a decimal filing system to Korean administrative circumstances. Consequently, Various official document forms, standards, and the gist of process were improved and standardized, and the appraisal system based on the function-based classification were unified on the government level by introducing a decimal filing system.

Local governments in Korea, sixteen in total, shall establish local government archives to and manage preserve their permanent archives to comply with the Public Records Management Act amended in October 2006. National Archives of Korea(NAK) directed the local governments to recruit legally qualified archivists by the end 0f 2006 and to plan on the establishment and operation of the local government archives by the end 2007. However, none of the government archives was established by far. Government officials in NAK and the local governments raised the limits of the budget and human resources. What is more serious is that they don't concern why the archives are necessary and what missions and functions the archives should have. In this paper, I summarized the present situation and problems in establishing the local archives, and what we will do to establish normal government archives. First, local governments should establish "local government records commissions" and employ qualified archivists. The local government records commission should comprise concerned and qualified members. The records commission, as a policy and decision-making body, should make plans and implement the plans to establish the local archives, establish professional training programs to produce qualified archivists, promote local archives community activities, determine operational issues, and make a long-term development plan satisfying local demands. Second, the local government archives share existing repositories of NAK. Third, after the establishment of the archives, the local archives should perform normal records and archives management of the local governments as records acts mandate, do general records surveys and appraise the records created in the local governments. The local government archives should collect valuable local archives including private archives, and arrange and make usable them to provide access. They also promote and coordinate various cultural heritage community activities related to the local archives.

Legislation and enforcement of the Presidential Records Management Law was an important turning point in Korean archival management history. In the past, the notion of presidential records was vague. The law was a starting point of establishing presidential records management. The Presidential Records Management Law provides the definition of presidential records and its scope, and establishes the protection of presidential records through restricted access to the records. The key to the law is to enable a president freely to produce records and transfer them to the next administration without omission. In other words, it aims to stop the practice that presidential records are produced but never be left. But, 'disputes over the release of presidential records' and the disclosing of access-restricted presidential records presented a crisis to national records management as well as the prospect of presidential records management, even if they were 'legal procedures.' The instability of presidential records management could give a serious impact on the national records management and its operation. Amid this situation, it is required to review the presidential records management system and provide recommendations for improvement, even if the enforcement of law has just started. The most urgent things in improving presidential records management are to secure its independence, specialty, and to complement restricted access to presidential records. For securing independency, presidential records management should be done by a separate organization other than the National Archives of Korea while for promoting specialty, a newly established organization could serve as a professional archive. And for complementing restricted access to the presidential records, the access should be more limited. In other words, more discretion is needed in permitting access. And more specific regulations should be applied to the permitted records. However, these regulatory actions may not have effects unless independency is not secured. Thus, more fundamentally, independency of the National Archives of Korea should be first established.

This study examines current states of Professionals of records management after 「Records Management of public instituition Act(공공기관의 기록물관리에 관한 법률)」was enacted in 1999. The law forced to arrange records manager in Records Center. However the hire of Professionals of records management became in earnest in 2005. Records Manager among the research officials was established in 2005 February in the Participatory Government. Because of this regulation, in 2005 July, Professionals of records management were arranged in each of 45 central department for the first time. Going through many trial and error, Professionals of records management contributed to systemizing record management of center department and office. According to 「Public Records Management Act(공공기록물 관리에 관한 법률)」totally revised in 2007, sixteen major cities and its public office of education decided to employ Professionals of records management until the end of 2007. In addition, minor cities which consists of people over 150,000 and public office of education which consist of the number of students over 70,000 are supposed to have Professionals of records management until 2008, but it is not accomplished yet. Furthermore, when recruiting professionalists of records management, it is necessary to employ not as a contract or a part-time employee or but as a regular or a full-time worker. Especially, if the specialists of record management were employed as a part-time employee, they would not concentrate on their work because of their unstable social positions. It means that changes from a contract worker to a regular employee are needed without further delay. At first, records managers who were recruited at the Central Department in May 2007 had various kinds of difficulties and experienced trial and error. These days, however, they show their expertise with finding their own works. Someday in Korea, the records manager is expected to be a professional career with their know-hows and active movements.

The greatest mission of archival community lies in collecting records to document past and present Korean society and in safeguarding them to pass over to the next generation. For the last decade, Korean archival community has actively pursued this mission and accomplished it to the certain extent. A series of events occurred during the last year urged the community to regretfully accept that the so-called accomplishment was by no means satisfactory. The present study aims to review what has been achieved against what should be if the community is to be truthful to the fundamental mission. It begins with addressing attributes of electronic records. To be specific, attributes of electronic records as ‘records’ are compared against those as ‘digital objects.’ Current state of long-term preservation of electronic records is reviewed. Suggestions follow in terms of four directions: establishing a policy framework based on principles of electronic records management, building integrated electronic records management system, researching and developing functionalities for long-term preservation, and finally, knowledge transfer and coordination.