Social Conflict
The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs announced on March 24 that Korea ranked 27th among the 34 OECD member countries in its Social Conflict Management Index for 2011. The index is to show how effectively government administration and systems handle social conflicts. The institute analyzed the OECD member countries regarding such evaluation items as government efficiency, the quality of regulations, corruption control, consumer spending by government, etc.
It was found that North European countries were good at conflict management – Denmark (0.923), Sweden (0.866), Finland (0.859), and the Netherlands (0.846). Korea recorded 0.380 to follow the Czech Republic (0.429), Slovenia (0.408), and Portugal (0.406). Britain (0.677), France (0.616), Japan (0.569), and the U.S. (0.546) were ahead of Korea, too. Only seven countries were behind Korea – Mexico (0.068), Turkey (0.151), Greece (0.206), Hungary (0.247), Italy (0.281), Poland (0.340), and Slovakia (0.354).
The institute came up with the Social Conflict Factor Index as well to find specific conflict factors. Political, economic, social, and cultural elements were taken into account, including the political dependence of public services, limitation on access to information and the freedom of the press, income inequality, income distribution, and stress relating to the population structure.
The higher the Social Conflict Factor Index is, the greater the likelihood of social conflicts. Korea ranked fourth among the 24 OECD member countries the institute examined. Only Chile, Israel, and Turkey showed a higher index than Korea. Korea’s poor conflict management capabilities and higher probability of conflicts resulted in its fifth position in the Social Conflict Index, which reveals the actual intensity of conflicts in the 24 countries.