KJC Korea
Journal Central

This study empirically analyzes the changes in the government size and functions of Korea after globalization. Concerning this topic three strands of universal theory have been advanced. The first one is the 'neo-liberalism' theory that envisages the overall government size will decrease. The second is the 'neo-Marxism' theory that posits repression and social welfare functions will increase and thus the overall government size will not decrease. The third one is the 'social democracy' theory that presupposes the function of industry promotion will decrease but the functions of education, R&D, and SOC will increase, thus the overall government size will not decrease. Analyses show that any single universal theory does not satisfactorily explain the changes in the government size and functions in Korea. The neo-Liberalism theory is far from the facts. The neo-Marxism and social democracy theories are only partly valid. These results imply that in Korea, the forefront of the previous Cold War, its particular institutional characters such as the trend of the defense cost and the path dependence of government-driven economic growth should be significant explanatory factors for the changes in the government size and functions.

This study empirically analyzed the processes and types of 'drift' in Quangos, focussing on the Korea Rural Community and Agriculture Corporation(KRCAC). If we consider Quangos through the perspective of NPM(New Public Management), existence is justified only through realization of the organization's founding aims, and the changing social objectives: those that fail must be terminated. But as Flinders(2005) has observed, agencies, once formed, are difficult to terminate. KRCAC, examined in this study, is a typical example. KRCAC, without securing the autonomy and uniqueness vital to agency independence within the whirlpools of the political environment, thave repeatedly suffered conversion and distortion of goals, therefore 'drifting'. Review of these issues resulted in the following findings: types of drift can be explained by merger and termination, different types of drift are induced in different manners, and that the key player are different in differing types.

The popularity of formal mentoring programs within organizations has grown considerably. Today many companies and government organizations in the world have formal mentoring programs in place. Korean companies also replicating these programs increasingly. This study empirically examined the possibility of successful introduction and diffusion of mentoring program within Korean Central government organizations. It is based on the survey data obtained from 284 respondents currently working at the central government. The questions were designed to assess perceived effects and barriers of mentoring. The results suggest such possibilities.

This study aims to obtain fundamental information in order to come up with direction for future administrational management by analysing the correlation between the quality of administration and the qualities of officers, and the relative importance of a primary factor which is comprised of the qualities of officers. To achieve this goal, we first examined the previous studies and theories concerning the quality of administration and the qualities of officers, and then sent out a questionnaire to the group of officer and some resident(customers). After analysing the selected datum, we could find out the following; Firstly, the qualities of officers in both the group of officer and the customer has the structure of three factor such as intellectual, behavioral and value element. Secondly, in the correlation between the quality of administration and the qualities of officers, the group of officer was allied in the order of behavioral element, intellectual element and value element. But the group of customers was related in the order of intellectual element and value element. Namely, the behavioral element was not statistically significant. Thirdly, when we analysed the relative importance composed of the officer's qualities, there were some differences between the two groups in accordance with a personal or official character. In integrating these results, we finally figured out that the group of officers had the relative importance in the order of expert knowledge, accumulation of experience, moral norm, ability for reconciliation and value hierarchy while the group of customers had it in the order of expert knowledge, moral norm, accumulation of experience, ability for reconciliation and value system.

Public administration applies the multidisciplinary theories of social and natural science to government operations. Biology and psychology, for example, represented as 'ecology' and 'behaviorism', have had significant impacts on the field of public administration. The contribution of Darwin's evolutionary theory has provided a revolutionary paradigm effecting to social science at large as well as biology. However, research based upon evolutionary perspectives have done little in the field of public administration. This study attempts to apply theories of evolutionary psychology to public administration and suggests such policy alternatives as family, woman, decentralization, and social contract.

The purpose of this study is to suggest the proposals for enhancing the effectiveness of the response activities of emergency response organizations which must make prompt and successive decisions in urgent situation. For this research we have analyzed the emergency management case of the fire in Daegu subway, which occurred in February 2003, causing hundreds of casualties. The four main functions of response organizations were rescue operation, emergency medical care, information management and preparedness. The results of the analysis indicate that the problems of emergency management during the subway fire were as follows: 'little understanding of the disaster', 'defects of disaster management system', 'unorganized unified command system', and 'insufficient experience of emergency response organization'. The case study also suggests some policy implications to solve these problems, which are 'improvement of individual safety capability', 'reinforcement of systematic cooperation system', 'establishment of support system of emergency response organization'.

The inspection and enforcement responsibility on polluting facilities, which had been shared between the national and the local government since 1994, was fully delegated to the local government in 2002 after long debates. The debates have been advanced by proponents and opponents to devolution. Proponents argue that local governments are better able to understand and meet the needs of their communities by tailoring regulatory solutions to local needs and concern, while opponents contend that local governments are reluctant to enforce strong regulation because environmental protection is considered to impose economic cost on the local industry. This study aims to inform this debate by providing empirical support for some of these arguments with the case of Gyeonggi Province. The impact of decentralized environmental regulation on Gyeonggi Provincial government's enforcement efforts was analyzed in terms of change in enforcement level, environmental management capacity such as budget, effective and quick response to the problem, policy experiment or innovation, and private-public partnership in monitoring activities, and environmental quality. The analysis showed that decentralization contributed to improved environmental management of the Gyeonggi Provincial government rather than lax enforcement. However, the current enforcement responsibility between province and municipalities still needs further improvements.

The cost-benefit analyses of public policies have been dealt carelessly in the past due to the difficulty in being able to illustrate the public benefits in monetary value. For an efficient reformative policy for the public transportation to be implemented, the benefits and costs resulting from the policy implementation must first be analyzed. The efficient supply of public goods can be achieved when the marginal cost of public transportation service equals the marginal benefit of the individuals. But the benefits following the reformation of public transportation is a non-market good, which makes its valuation difficult. To solve this problem, this research applies the contingent valuation method (CVM) that measures the value of non-market goods in an attempt to measure the value of the reformation of public transportation service in Jeju region.

This study examines the practices of preliminary feasibility study on national R&D programs with a focus on the application of policy analysis criteria. The Korean government introduced R&D pre-feasibility study to enhance fiscal efficiency in 2006 and the Korean large telescope development project was selected as the first case of R&D feasibility analysis. Project plans were assessed by three criteria: technical analysis, economic analysis and policy analysis. Overall evaluation on the results of the three criteria was made using the AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) technique. Each of the three criteria had priority values of 0.450, 0.217 and 0.333, respectively. The policy analysis had more priority than the economic analysis. However, it revealed problems in making decisions based on objective data and also in applying sub-criteria such as national priority, operational system and risk factors with consistency. A more empirical and structured approach is required to prevent discretionary application of the policy analysis.

This study is for the purpose of testing what affect the anti-prostitution Act is having on the prevalence of prostitution in Korea. With the results of poll survey and the crackdown data of prostitution by police, was made a comparative study between pre and poster-legislation in three areas: the demand change of buying sex, the number of prostitutes and the rate of sexually violent criminals. According to the analysis results, after implementations of the act, the demand for the prostitutes sharply decreased because the subsequent stricter enforcement and penalties for soliciting sex in formerly tolerant social atmosphere changed dramatically. The analysis also showed that such claims as the tightening control on prostitution could bring about a decrease in economic activity related to prostitution and spark the unexpected rise of sexually violent criminals, were unreasonable. However, the rates of prostitution through internet showed marked increase, the total sales of commercial sex trade decreased by 3.1% compared with 2004 and the number of women engaged in prostitution in the red light districts was reduced to 35%. Therefore, in contrast with previous studies which the government's strict regulations led to the spread of prostitution are erroneous. This study empirically demonstrates that the anti-prostitution Act has contributed on positively curbing prostitution.