It has been 35 years now, under the slogan, "Good Person Makes a Good World," Korea Human Development Institution (KHDI), which has been providing a priceless lecture on Thursdays.
This time, the Dean of Social Sciences department from Seoul National University, Lim Hyun-jin took the stage. On April 22, with the title of "The Future, Hopes and Proposals of Twenty-First Century in Korea," he talked about global ages that we all face.
Globalization means a lot to Korea, with the start of globalization, we have achieved record growth, which has made it possible to interchange with many countries on culture, economics and so on. Yet, there are more than just "pros".
Scholars from different countries may say, "Globalization has created Korea to grow. Then why does Lim take a negative stance" Lim's point is that globalization is not filled with negativity, but he wants to make a better human oriented world by pointing out the "cons" of globalization.
Each country has different shapes of capitalism due to institutional contexts and culture. The Theoretical system is not part of diverse Capitalism, but the experiential analysis still exists. Capitalism started from Market Economy and Market Economy consists of Free Market Economy and Coordinate Market Economy. In Coordinate Market Economy the government intervenes in pricing.
U.S., England, Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand are the nations who follow the Free Market Economy. However, European counties and Japan pursue Coordinate Market Economy. Then, what about Korea In the past Korea followed the Coordinate Market Economy. Today, Korea has changed its direction to the Free Market Economy, but the government still intervenes though.
After World War II, researchers have shown that Coordinate Market Economy is better than Free Market Economy. The problem is that government intervention should not go too far. Based on the free price system and with some government control this would be the ideal Market Economy. Therefore, this will ensure the economic growth for the nation. On top of that, we need to make our own Capitalism and it should be compounded with Welfare, Workfare and Learnfare. Thus, to establish a brighter future for Korea, government, enterprises and society should work together.
We can get some tips from various cases below.
Capitalism Cases:
Japan
Japan has been a role model for Korea for a long time. Japan takes a serious view of loyalty, whereby a company is committed for life and it's a seniority-based system. This hinders inter-firm mobility in the labor market for Japan. Therefore, Korea has no need to follow Japan anymore.
Sweden
Sweden is a welfare country and it might be a good example for Korea. Sweden is a country with enormous high text rates. But on the other hand with its strong welfare system it is able to give back to its citizens. There are some negative sides in high quality of welfare though; a lot of individuals are living on benefits rather than working, companies move to other nations due to the high taxes.
England
Since Tony Blair came into power in the UK, they have taken "Third way". Third way rejects laissez-faire, lets people do as they choose; socialist approaches to economic control by the government, but emphasizes the importance of pursing economic progress by social investment. Unfortunately, third way policy by Blair has failed.
Netherlands
Consociational democracy, also known as 'power sharing' was the nation's economic policy since the 1950's. However, with a lot of part time workers this in turn has led to many problems within the country. The non-regular workers are not inevitable by globalization, but it could participate in family disorganization since welfare only benefits the individuals.
Denmark
Denmark is special because employers can fire employees at anytime given time and the people are fine with it. Even if you lost your job in Denmark, the government guarantees support for housing for 5 years. Denmark's tax rate is as high as Sweden and it is all spent on Learnfare for 5 years.