One of the first steps President Park Geun-hye and her government took after the Sewol ferry disaster in April was to put the brakes on revolving door appointments.

This was because collusive links between retired officials who moved to the private sector they had regulated and their former colleagues in government offices turned out to be one of the root causes of the maritime calamity that claimed more than 300 lives.

The government moved fast to tighten the rules on revolving door appointments, including the Civil Service Ethics Law. As a result, the revolving door is now firmly shut to more retired government employees than ever.

Then what about the “parachutists,” political appointees who land coveted jobs at state-run enterprises and public corporations? As it turns out, Cheong Wa Dae continues to drop the parachutes indiscriminately, as if to fill many of the posts that otherwise would have gone to retired government employees.

This practice is still rampant, especially in public corporations and state-controlled enterprises, including those in the financial sector.

For instance, the positions of auditors and outside directors at major public financial institutions have gone to political appointees. They include the Industrial Bank of Korea, Export-Import Bank of Korea, Korea Technology Finance Corporation, Korea Exchange, Korea Deposit Insurance Corporation and Korea Asset Management Corporation.

These political appointees are former and active politicians close to the president and the ruling party ― those who participated in the last presidential campaign for Park, former lawmakers and those who lost recent elections.

Few of them have professional experience or expertise in the financial sector. Even the auditor’s seats at such commercial financial services firms like Woori Bank and Daewoo Securities are taken by these unqualified political appointees only because the government holds some stake in them.

It would be too much to expect them to do their job properly. To be brutally honest, it would be better to reopen the revolving door for former government employees, because they at least know more about the industry than the parachutists.

Park often said one of her jobs as president is “normalizing the abnormal.” That should include cutting the tradition of sending political appointees to public corporations. Not all their offices should be the spoils of her election victory.