The evaluation process for awarding duty-free licenses will be led by nongovernment experts instead of the Korea Customs Service in order to improve fairness and transparency, according to the Finance Ministry on Wednesday.

The Strategy and Finance Ministry released the first round of revisions to the duty-free license evaluation process, with the changes reflecting criticisms of biased and unfair evaluations in the past, as revealed by the Audit Board in July. 

Since last year, the Korea Customs Service, which is tasked with awarding duty-free licenses, has been hit with allegations of political bias in its secretive evaluations.

Under the new process, the committee that will evaluate duty-free operators’ bids for new licenses will consist entirely of nongovernment experts whose names will be made public. In addition, the evaluation criteria and weight of each criterion will also be made public before the final award, and each bidder’s score will also be made public once the final decisions are made.

The evaluation committee will also be changed to a one-year standing committee. In the past, it had been created by members randomly selected from a pool of experts, and then immediately dissolved once an operator was chosen.

This is only the first round of changes to the highly controversial duty-free evaluation process. The final revisions -- to be decided by a special task force after holding hearings and taking into account processes used in other countries -- are expected to be announced in mid-2018 and applied starting in 2019.

Last week, Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon told reporters that the first round of revisions would be announced earlier in order to be applied to the evaluations for awarding the duty-free license at Coex in southern Seoul. The five-year license is currently held by Lotte Duty Free and is set to expire on Dec. 31.

The license will be up for bidding starting Friday until Nov. 20, with the final announcement to be made by the end of December. Although duty-free license bidding traditionally lasts about six months, the Coex license will be decided in just three months to prevent a gap in operation, putting pressure on duty-free operators.

“To be honest, a month and a half is an extremely tight schedule for preparing a bid,” said an official with one duty-free operator. “Most operators will probably be cautious in bidding not only because of the scrutiny but also because circumstances can change again once the next round of revisions is announced next year.”

By Won Ho-jung (hjwn@heraldcorp.com)