hankyoreh

“A core of economic democracy is reformation of chaebol. Separation of finance and industry is the most important task, so that chaebol cannot control the whole financial system.”

Economic democracy is one of the key issues in December’s presidential election. Byun Hyung-yoon, emeritus professor of Seoul National University, offered a clear solution to this problem. ‘The privileged say that if chaebol are regulated, the economy will not grow and be ruined. But, this is their excuse to monopolize the benefits of economic growth.”

Professor Byun is the pioneer who settled the modern economy in Korea. He has many followers who are called the School of Hakhyun. Professor Byun recently published a book,‘Cool Head Suffers from Warm Heart’. He talks about his life and thoughts at his office in the Seoul Institute of Economics and Social Science with a former student, Yoon Jin-ho, a professor at Inha University.

Professor Byun has criticized mainstream economics for focusing on growth and laissez-faire principles. He spent his entire career to make economic tradition in Korea that focuses more on distribution than growth.

Justice and distribution, balanced development and self-supporting economy is the core of his belief in economic democratization.

He said, “That economic democracy is the zeitgeist of today is clear, but the core of this is not clear yet." Byun emphasized that chaebol reform is at the center of economic democracy. This shows that the opinions of his students who are famous as supporters of economic democratization are under his influence.

The thing he criticizes most is society’s deeply-rooted insistence on economic growth as the most important thing.

This allows the rich to control society and decide how wealth will be distributed. “The premise of economic growth should be that everyone in the society shares the benefits that come from it. The governments of Lee Myung-bak and Park Chung-hee always prioritized economic growth. Their policies made the rich richer, but did not evenly distribute profits.

His idea is that for the equal distribution of benefits, the economic power concentrated on chaebol should be decentralized. Separation of finance and industry is the minimum requirement for that.

He talked about his special experience criticizing Park Chung-hee’s high price policy to his face, when he said to him that the policy of economic growth leaned on the high inflation policy sacrificing ordinary people’s lives and exacerbated income inequality.

Professor Chang Ha-joon of Cambridge University, who has clashed with professor Kim Ki-won and Lee Byung-chun over the idea of the ‘practical use of chaebol'. Professor Byun advised, “They are different from each other, so we have rearrange chaebol so that they continue as one group.”

“We are not trying to bring down chaebol, but to make them do what they must do. If chaebol gave up their octopus-like expansion, that would be desirable. But we cannot expect that. So some institutional mechanism for the regulation on chaebol is necessary.

On the December presidential election, he said, “It’s important that politicians who can execute economic democratization take power. The issue of economic democratization could be solved if the opposition wins the election. Many policies during the governments of Kim Dae-joong and Roh Moo-hyun drew backlash from the established, and now we have retreated to Lee Myung-bak administratiom. Economic democracy is not that simple, so that it can’t be realized with just a few policies. We need to vote for those who can actually make it happen in the next ten or twenty years.”

He chose Alfred Marshal, a renowned British economist, as his academic role model, and Yanaihara Dadao as his role model in life. “Marshal stated that economics is part of the research about humankind. I always kept this idea in mind and it was the base of my economics. Also, I hope that people say that I lived like Japanese Professor Tadao Yanaihara (1983-1961) who did not succumb to power and was upright as a teacher, scholar and professor.”

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