• Journal of Korean Society of Archives and Records Management
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.129-140
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• 2003

The ultimate goal of preserving and maintaining the records is to use them practically. The effective use of records should be supported by the reasonable recordskeeping systems and access standards. In this report, I examined the Korean laws and administrative systems related to the public records access issues. After I pointed out major problems of the access laws, the Government Information Opening Act (GOIA), and the problems in practices, I suggested some alternatives for the betterment of the access system. The GIOA established "eight standards of exemption to access" not to open some information to protect national interests and privacy. The Public Records Management Act (PRMA) applies to the archives transferred to "professional archives." The two laws show fundamental differences in the ways to open the public records to public. First, the GIOA deals with the whole information (the records) that public institutions keep and maintain, while the PRMA deals with the records that were transferred to the Government Archives. Second, the GIOA provides with a legal procedure to open public records and the standards to open or not to open them, while the PRMA allows the Government Archives to decide whether the transferred records should be opened or not. Third, the GIOA applies to record producing agencies, while the PRMA applies to public archival institutions. One of the most critical inadequacies of the PRMA is that there are no standards to judge to open the archives through reclassification procedure. The GIOA also suggests only the type of information that is not accessible. It does not specify how long the records can be closed. The GARS does not include the records less than 30 years old as its objects of the reclassification. To facilitate the opening of the archives, we need to revise the GIOA and the PRMA. It is necessary to clearly divide the realms between the GIOA and the PRMA on the access of the archives. The PRMA should clarify the principles of the reclassification as well as reclassifying method and exceptions. The exemption standards of the GIOA should be revised to restrict the abuse of the exemption clauses, and they should not be applied to the archives in the GARS indiscreetly and unconditionally.