KJC Korea
Journal Central

This study aims at setting up the menus for the successful regulatory reform governance in Korea. It first reviews the performance of the regulatory reform during the Kim Dae-Jung administration. It is shown that the future of the regulatory reform in Korea is highly uncertain. To reveal the proper ways and means of the successful regulatory reform in Korea, this study establishes the prescriptive references for the regulatory reform governance. This references depends on the systematic analysis of the experiences of the major OECD countries. The major tasks for the regulatory reform governance in Korea include (1) the substantial networking of the regulatory reform system with the other governmental reform systems, (2) enhancing the transparency and openness of the regulatory governance, (3) developing the mechanism for the active interactions among the bureaucracy, NGOs, and the other interest groups, (4) the substantial use of the RIA as an instrument for the regulatory reform

The public’s preferences for and attitude toward regulatory policy have almost no bearing on the theory of market failure, on the basis of which economists usually make the case for or against regulation. Instead, whatever values and beliefs the public tend to endorse, they determine, in large measure, the directions and contents of regulations. It is thus no surprise that the NGOs play an immensely important role in the areas of regulatory policy today. Political scientists tend to view the differences in the public's policy preferences from the perspective of liberalism versus conservatism. This dichotomy does not lead us far toward understanding today's public debate over regulatory policies. By adopting a concept of regulatory culture, this paper seeks to approach such issues as being raised in the area of regulation but inexplicable by virtue of existing theories. Just as political scientists generally attribute different adherences to certain political parties and political ideologies to political culture, so would this paper try to explain differences in the public's preferences for or against certain regulations by harnessing the new concept of regulatory culture, which can be defined as “values and beliefs concerning the institutional construction of regulations.” For this purpose, a new theory(grid-group theory) of political culture pioneered by Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky will be highlighted in an attempt to explore the extent to which the theory could be made beneficially applicable to the study of regulation. Some implications follow.

There have been significant variations in the demographic compositions and experience distribution of the armed forces. In light of social costs and burden distribution etc., the question about reasonable conscripted term of military service in the draft has been a serious issue and been furiously debated. This survey is an empirical study of the supply and demand for military manpower in the future and provides implications for reasonable conscripted term. But, this survey does not pay much attention to the military downsizing now underway and elsewhere. It is too early to tell what effects they will have on various measures of the effectiveness and how changed military organizational structures associated with future national security and military strategies might be modified to minimize their impact.

Zoning system, as a mean of land use planning in Korea, has played the key role in managing national land. The zoning system has, however, raised debates for the fact that too many zoning districts, 254 zoning districts as the end of 2002, have been designated by 10 central government ministries with the 87 related laws. The number of zoning districts, in reality, may not be a serious problem but redundant zoning regulations have been raised many debates or problems in land management. This study aims at recommending some policy directions to improve more systematically and simplifiedly the complicated zoning system. This paper consists of five chapters. Following the Introduction, Chapter 2 examines the legal system and analyzes the designated zoning districts by its function. Chapter 3 evaluates the zoning system by using the classical regulatory policy rationales. Chapter 4 suggests the policy directions for articulating land use planning systems. In this part, this paper emphasizes the role of “National Land Planning and Use Law” enacted since this year, and the coordination function among concerned ministries and related laws. Finally, Chapter 5 digests this paper as a conclusion remarks.

This paper analyzes anti-competitive behaviors and provides a direction of their regulation in the restructured Korean power market. Using the System- Operating-Model, three separate strategic behaviors are simulated. The policy implications are derived as follows. (1) The nuclear company will earn positive profits from its strategic idling behavior. Must-run contracts should be applied to control the behavior. Moreover, the division of the company into two separate entities could be considered. (2) If some of coal-fired generators intentionally decrease the output of power, the market-clearing price will rise dramatically. A sophisticated set of market monitoring indicators and techniques should be developed to operate the market properly. (3) Had some of the pumped storage generators been reserved over peak time, peak-shaving function would have been considerably weakened. Various formats of the (implicit) collusion should be carefully examined to prevent the generators from exercising market power over peak periods.

How the change of regulation policy affects fare is important in the fare regulation policy. The objective of this research is to find the relation between the regulation and the fare. To analyze the relation, how the transportation fare deregulation policy affects the transportation fare level will be analyzed and evaluated. In this research, how all transportation fare deregulation policies affect the transportation fare was analyzed. Consequently, the fare deregulation policy has a different result from the original goal. This conclusion tells that pre-evaluation and discussions before the implementation are necessary and different deregulation policies should be implemented for different modes

It should be noted that the main driving force for Chaebols reform is basically market discipline, not government-led intervention. The only role of government is to set up market infrastructure for Chaebols to reform by themselves. Even though Chaebols reform is inevitable to level up the competitiveness of firms and revive to Korean economy, government role should be limited for the productive outcome of Chaebols reform. The forced dismantlement of Chaebols or business group does not guarantee the competitiveness. The competitiveness edge of Chaebols or business group is secured in the process of fierce market competition, the improvement of corporate governance, and the check and balance of variety of financial institutions. In addition, government should focus on the building of new incentive structure for Chaebols to reform by themselves in the productive and reasonable direction.