KJC Korea
Journal Central

The Participatory Government (PG henceforth) has been generally recognized as the most enthusiastic and strongest willed government about decentralization reform in Korea. However, the overall performance of the PG’s decentralization policy was disappointingly unsuccessful, notwithstanding some remarkable achievements including the launch of Jeju Special Self Governing Province and the introduction of direct democratic institutions at the level of local governments. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate and extract lessons from the PG’s decentralization policy. To this end, the paper begins with the arguments for decentralization reform in Korea. The paper continues to overview the background triggers, the operating framework, and the road-map of the PG’s decentralization policy. The fourth section of the paper addresses a series of counterattacks of the National Assembly against the PG’s decentralization initiatives. The fifth section of the paper evaluates the performance of the PG’s decentralization policy. The sixth section discusses the lessons learned from the PG’s decentralization reform experience. Finally, the paper concludes with suggesting a checklist for decentralization policy leadership.

Sports betting enterprise is a typical speculative business which is now consistently expanding in Korea. But with this unlawful sports betting market is considerably extending. So Korean government revised the National Sports Promotion Act to concretize punishment provisions and strengthen punishment on unlawful sports betting enterprise in February 2012. The purpose of this study is to analyze effect of revision of the National Sports Promotion Act on illegal acts connected with sports toto. Using Winters additive model, this study estimates sales of Sports Toto in case of non-revision of the National Sports Promotion Act and compares estimate sales with real sales to analyze effect of punishment strengthening policy. The result of analysis is that the policy effect might be the 47.4% of sales in off-line Proto and the 21.6% of sales in on-line Proto. And the 44.6% of total sales might be the policy effect. Therefore, the results showed that the punishment strengthening policy in the National Sports Promotion Act would decrease the illegal acts in Sports Toto.

Concerned with the redundancy and inefficiency of Korean social integration policy for immigrants, this paper compares the service delivery systems of social integration policy in Australia, England, and Germany. A series of international comparative analyses shows that the three countries have in common exclusive government departments and government-wide mediation mechanisms for immigrant social integration policy, and that their service delivery systems are built on a firm foundation of the cooperation between central and local governments. Based on the principles for building service delivery system and the results from the international comparative analyses, this study offers several policy alternatives. First, the exclusive government department and the cooperative governance structure for immigrant social integration policies are necessary. Second, formation of consultative group for immigrant early-adaptation program and Korean language education program is required. Finally, an information and idea sharing database system covering from planning stage to evaluation and feedback stage to minimize the redundancy and inefficiency of social integration programs should be built as soon as possible.

Culture and arts enrich the life of human beings. However, depending on the social environment, a huge gap to enjoy the cultural arts exists, in the case of people with disabilities, it is even greater. Culture welfare policy is policy tools that bridge the gap and realize the cultural rights. In this study, we analyze the meaning of the cultural rights and the needs of cultural welfare policy. And we classify its types by the role of the disabled in The Support Program of Art & Cultural Enjoyments and evaluate its efficacy by the survey participants and audience. Based on survey, the participants with disabilities very satisfies the program, the program participants appeared and showed a large positive effect due to the participation of program. Awareness for people with disabilities, which can change even if the instrument can be the Disabled cultural arts performances and exhibits of the audience who watched about the value of arts, culture, people with disabilities, and was highly appreciated. This implies that continued government support and attention is needed because more people with disabilities in order to receive the benefits.

To examine what affected the intensity of political participation, we conducted an online survey of activists who had worked in presidential election camp for the main opposition presidential candidate Moon Jae-in of United Democratic Party (UDP). Findings are as follows: First, low-income activists were more active in campaign work. Given that campaign work was time-comsuming work, it was not certain whether their more free time resulted from no income activity or their economic prosperty. Second, activists joining more associations whose members had similar sociopolitical backgrounds were more active in campaign work, which may suggest that interaction with like-minded others encourages their participation by strengthening their political views. Third, as the external efficacy of activists became lower, the intensity of their participation was enhanced, which might suggest that in a special time like presidential election, the political energy such as political discontent could turn into active participation. Last, activists who thought their ideological positions were more close to that of Moon Jae-in were more active in campaign work. I think that this paper will contribute to understanding of political participation through exploratory analysis on intensity of participation, which has received only minimal attention.