KJCKorea
Journal Central

This study focused on 322 regulatory policy areas during the "Policy Seminars Hosted by Members of the National Assembly" in the first half of the 21st National Assembly (2020.05.30.~2021.12.31.). Employing network analysis, the research investigated the characteristics and political interactions of 2,230 official and unofficial policy actors involved. The analysis reveals that, due to the significant political conflicts inherent in the regulatory policy domain, expert groups—consisting of legal professionals, professors and research institutions—play crucial roles as coordinators and advocates, helping to mitigate conflicts among actors. Additionally, robust networking activities are observed among public institutions with judicial and regulatory functions, such as the Ministry of Employment and Labor, the National Police Agency, the Fair-Trade Commission, and the Ministry of Justice. In the private sector, significant roles are played by labor interest groups such as the Federation of Korean Trade Unions, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, and the Public Transport Workers' Union, as well as welfare public interest groups, and economic and industrial interest/public groups.

The Educational Environment Protection Act is a law that imposes certain restrictions in areas within a 200-meter straight line distance from the school boundary or the boundary of the school establishment site in order to protect the health, hygiene, safety, learning, and educational environment of students. This law is evaluated as preventing students from being exposed to harmful environments and contributing to their healthy growth and development. However, it regulated prohibited facilities and activities uniformly without distinguishing between academic classes and regions, and was criticized for failing to take into account the nature and characteristics of the industry and for being similar to the characteristics of lumped regulations. As times and environments change, it is time to develop a new paradigm for management strategies for educational environment protection zones. In this study, the problems with the educational environment protection system were analyzed from the perspective of regulatory improvement. For the analysis, the characteristics and problems of the educational environment protection zone system were analyzed using the hazard and redundancy criteria, and regulatory improvements were also presented. As a result of the analysis, industries that are highly hazardous but are not regulated in other laws are suggested as being subject to regulation by the educational environment protection zone system. On the other hand, cases where the harmfulness is low and a system exists in other laws, cases where the harmfulness is low but the system does not exist in other laws, and cases where the harmfulness is high but a system exists in other laws are all presented as targets for regulatory improvement.