hankyoreh

The Korea Development Institute

Unilateral, uncommunicative and massively corrupt - these were some of the stinging assessments of structural reforms by the administration of former president Park Geun-hye made by experts from various fields who participated in a debate organized by the government-funded Korea Development Institute (KDI) on Apr. 4 called “Structural Reform over the Past Four Years: Results and Reflection.” In Jan. 2014, Park announced her three-year plan for economic innovation, along with what she called the “474 Vision” of using four major structural reforms in the public sector, labor, finance and education to achieve an economic growth rate of 4%, an employment rate of 70% and per capita income of US$40,000.

“Park did not succeed at reforming areas that require public participation and social consensus, such as labor reform,” concluded Kim Ji-hun, director of the KDI’s economic information center, on Apr. 4. “With South Korea rapidly losing its engine for growth, there was an obvious need for structural reforms to replace the existing growth model. But a three-year plan was not nearly long enough to harmonize the interests and positions of the various stakeholders.”

The government launched the Korea Tripartite Commission of Labor, Management and Government during Park‘s first year in office, through which it promoted dialogue for labor reform, and in Sep. 2015, it reached a consensus on shorter working hours and on making the labor market more flexible. But the government subsequently provoked resistance from organized labor with a unilateral attempt to revise labor legislation.

Criticism was also voiced about reform of the public sector. “There were some tangible results in increasing the efficiency of poorly managed government agencies, but this is only reform of the public sector in an extremely narrow sense. We still have a long way to go in regard to transparency and public trust in the government and public institutions,” said Kang Jeong-seok, director of the strategy and coordination office of the Korea Institute of Public Administration.

By Heo Seung, staff reporter

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