After working as a public servant for 30+ years, I`ve started to provide CEOs and executives of multinational corporations with advice on the business environment in Korea since 2006. For these foreign executives, Korea is one of the overseas markets to run their businesses. If the Korean business environment is more competitive than its rivals, these foreign corporations will stay in Korea and continue to grow their businesses, but if they feel the business environments of other countries are better, they`ll leave the country without hesitation.

The Moon Jae-In administration took office on May 10, 2017. As the government`s policies have been changing with the transfer of political power, I`ve also been busy with advising Korean and foreign executives about such change. I emphasize to them that this transfer isn`t something new for Korea as it has already experienced a change of government from conservative to progressive before.

Moreover, I also explain that the Moon administration aims to `establish a society where individuals are respected as human beings` and for that, the government is pushing for so called `income-driven growth.` In the 1960s, Korea was one of the poorest countries with per capita income of less than 100 dollars. Thanks to the rapid economic development, the country now boasts per capita income of 30,000 dollars, but its suicide rate is the highest among the OECD countries. I explain that in order to address side effects of the condensed economic growth, the government has introduced measures such as quick increase in minimum wage, regularization of non-regular workers and reducing working hours under the name of `Income-Driven Growth Policy.`

On May 31, the 6th "Good Company Conference" hosted by Sisa Journal was held. I have been working as a moderator from the 1st one to the 5th since 2013, but this year I also made a keynote speech as I was involved in selecting the theme for the conference. The conference has evolved considerably as years go by, but in the first year, we had to discuss the meaning of a good company.

So far, the conference has dealt with agendas like `Healthy and Sustainable Company (2013)`, `Good to Great (2014)`, `Compliance, Reputation, and Performance (2015)`, `Neo Trust (2016), and `Entrepreneurship & Good Governance (2017)`. After having a long discussion, `Human resources to Human Being` was selected as the main theme for the 6th conference in 2018. The conference was also subtitled `Ask People the Way.`

In this era of the 4th Industrial Revolution and Artificial Intelligence (AI) what challenges do we need to address? What was this rapid economic growth really for? If the ultimate purpose of economic development is to make each individual`s life better, the focus of welfare policy should be set accordingly.

Nobody would disagree that the most desirable welfare today is to `provide people with ability to work with opportunities to work.` Then the next challenge is to find the best way to create jobs as many as possible.

To respect human dignity and provide practical assistance to work-life balance through the income-driven growth policy, the policy must be supported by sustainable growth based on corporate innovation. In that sense, it is commendable that the government set `innovative growth` as one of the three main pillars (income-driven growth, innovative growth and a fair economy) for its "2018 economic policy direction."

Corporations, which play the key role in job creation, are complaining that it is difficult to catch up the pace of the income-driven growth policy led by the government. Taking this into account, the government should slow down to give some time to these corporations to adapt.

In the end of this month, the direction of economic policy for the second half of 2018 will be announced. I look forward to a policy that both workers and businesses agree to, a real welfare policy that leads to job creation. Through such policy, the government can accommodate the expectation of the people who overwhelmingly supported the ruling party in the June 13th elections.

【The contributions from outside analysts are unrelated to the views of the publisher. They have been contributed in English and the wordings have been mildly edited.】



By Senior Adviser KIM & CHANG, Oh Jong Nam

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]