President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol is signaling that the new government’s role in its economic policies will be reduced so that private-sector market participants can lead economic growth more than before.On April 10, he nominated People Power Party lawmaker Choo Kyung-ho as the head of his economic team
The South Korean government announced its economic policies for the second half of this year on June 1 and economists pointed out that the policies lack fundamental elements to revive the private economic sector.“The policies focus on fiscal spending rather than deregulation and the government is pl
The conservative party of South Korea suffered a crushing defeat at the April 15 general elections. As a result, the Moon Jae-in administration came to dominate the executive, judicial and legislative branches for the first time since the nation's democratization in 1987 to complete a single hug
South Korea’s GNI per capita showed the steepest decline in a decade last year. Besides, South Korea’s nominal GDP growth hit a 10-year low of 1.1 percent. This means the South Korean government’s income-led growth policy based on an increase in minimum wage is not working well.The Bank of Korea ann
South Korea’s real GDP growth for the third quarter of this year and 2019 as a whole are estimated at 0.4 percent and less than 2 percent, respectively. The country’s annual real GDP growth was below 2 percent for only four years after 1953 and the four occasions were because of national economic cr
The income of the households in the lowest 20 percent income bracket in South Korea fell for the fifth consecutive quarter in spite of the South Korean government’s efforts for income-led growth. Specifically, their earned income fell 13.3 percent from the previous quarter in Q1 this year, when the
Korea Fair Trade Commission Chairman Kim Sang-jo stressed on May 5 that the South Korean government’s policy stance regarding income-led growth and chaebol reform remains basically unchanged.“The government’s economic policy can be broadly divided into income-led growth, fair competition and innovat
President Moon Jae-in has sacked Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Kim Dong-yeon and Presidential Chief of Staff for Policy Jang Ha-sung.The two top economic policymakers led the nation’s economy for one year and six months since the inauguration of the incumbent govern
The number of the employed increased by merely 3,000 year on year last month, the smallest ever in eight years and seven months. Besides, the youth unemployment rate hit a 19-year high, eclipsing the government’s desperate job creation efforts.According to Statistics Korea on September 12, the numbe
"The government is actively pursuing for a fair economy as one of its three economic policy goals, the other two being income-led growth and innovative growth. No matter how much fairness is emphasized, however, there will be no progress unless big business groups change their attitudes. But the gov
"Public organizations should play a pump-priming role for the Korean economy to achieve innovation-led growth," President Moon Jae-in told heads of public organizations on August 29. Moon stressed job creation while emphasizing the public nature of public organizations. However, he did not refer to
Controversy surrounding the South Korean government’s income-led growth policy is transforming into statistical disputes, triggered by replacement of the commissioner of Statistics Korea. Deputy Prime Minister Kim Dong-yeon said at the Special Committee on Budget & Accounts of the National Assembly
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on August 25 that both the quantitative and qualitative sides of employment are improving in view of the number of employees, the employment rate, an increase in the number of full-time workers, and other data. He added that the government’s economic policy is
The Korean government and the ruling Democratic Party are planning to greatly expand next year’s budget, despite the growing tax burden on companies. Although its job creation policy based on the public sector practically ended in failure, the government is seeking to shift the burden to businesses
Although the South Korean government raised this year’s minimum wage substantially in a bid to improve people’s living standards and reduce income disparity, low-income households suffered a sharp decline in their income in the second quarter of this year whereas the top 20% income earners saw a sig
At 7:39 pm on August 3, Kim Dong-yeon, South Korea's finance minister and deputy prime minister for the economy, issued a one-page statement on a news report titled “Presidential Office Asks Kim to Stop Begging Investment, Employment from Samsung.” Kim said, “I cannot afford to waste time and en
Financial Services Commission (FSC) Chairman Choi Jong-ku stressed the need to ease banking-commerce separation on July 11.“South Korea adopted banking-commerce separation back in 1982 in the process of privatizing the previously state-owned banks. It was intended to prevent chaebol from using banks
The South Korean government has set up a job stabilization fund to ease the impact of a sharp hike in the minimum wage on small and medium-sized companies. The government provides up to a 130,000 won per worker from this fund for small businesses employing fewer than 30 workers..Yet the job fund has
In the first quarter of this year, the nominal income of the South Korean households in the lowest 20% income bracket showed the steepest decline in history, while that of the households in the top 20% group posted the sharpest increase for Q1 in history. As a result, South Korea’s income distributi
At present, South Korea’s economic policy is based on two pillars, income-led growth and innovative growth. The former means that an increase in household income leads to an increase in consumption and, in turn, to more production and job creation by enterprises. In short, it means economic revitali