• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
• /
• no.21
• /
• pp.283-322
• /
• 2009

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.