In accordance with the Professional Engineers Act, the Ministry of Science and Technology must establish and operate a Monitoring Committee which provides criteria and procedures for mutual acceptance between nations in issuance of Int.P.E.¡¯ licenses.
Therefore any Professional Engineer having an lnt.P.E.¡¯ license would automatically qualify for APEC and International Register of Professional Engineer/s
There is an agreement in place between a number of APEC countries for the purposes of recognizing ¡°substantial equivalence¡± of professional competence in engineering. APEC countries can apply to become members of the agreement by demonstrating that they have in place systems which allow the competence of engineers to be assessed to the agreed international standard set by the APEC Engineer agreement.
The economies which have been assessed as having the systems in place to operate an APEC Engineer Register include Australia, Canada, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and the United States. Other economies are participating in the project but have not as yet had their assessment statements approved.
Registration on the KPEA register with APEC Engineer ensures that professional engineers in Korea have the opportunity to have their professional standing recognized within the APEC region thereby contributing to the globalization of professional engineering services. This is of particular benefit to engineering firms that are providing services to other APEC economies but it also adds value to individuals who may wish, at some stage, to work in these economies.
Each member economy of the APEC agreement has given an undertaking that the extra assessment required to be registered on the local professional engineering register will be minimized for those registered under the APEC Engineer agreement.
The Korean APEC Engineer Register began operating from April 1, 2001. Since then 1,322 people applied and 1012 people were accepted in 2001, and 115 people applied and 89 people were accepted in 2002.
However, operation of new registration has been suspended from 2003 until now, due to the revision process of Professional Engineers Act and etc. Only the operation for the renewal of registration has been continued and 55 people have renewed their registrations as of April 30th, 2007.
The revised Professional Engineers Act has changed the principles of the membership of the Monitoring Committee. Therefore, the administration of the M.C. has been transferred to KPEA from Human Resources Development Service of Korea as of 1st April, 2007.
Some of the members are expected to be replaced with new ones after the decision of the related enforcement decree & rule which will be decided on July 27th, 2007 with more details of the membership rule.
The Engineers Mobility Forum agreement is a multi-national agreement between engineering organizations in the member jurisdictions which creates the framework for the establishment of an international standard of competence for professional engineering, and then empowers each member organization to establish a section of the International Professional Engineers Register. The standard of competence applied is the same as for the APEC Engineer agreement. Most of the APEC agreement members are also members of the EMF agreement, but the latter is truly global so that countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland and South Africa have become members of EMF even though they cannot join the APEC agreement.
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