 Strategy and Finance Minister Yoon Jeung-hyun addresses ministry employees about the country’s economic policy goals for the New Year at the government complex in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, Monday. / Yonhap |
By Cho Jin-seo
It is hard to believe that there is a government that discourages its citizens from going to college, but Korea is such a country. A year ago, Finance Minister Yoon Jeung-hyun said Korea needs fewer universities for the sake of its economy. His faith remains firm in the New Year.
The Ministry of Strategy and Finance said in its 2011 policy plan that Korea should reduce the number of universities through “restructuring” in order to raise “competence” and to “nurture a workforce that fits industrial demand.”
In other words, the government will try to shut down dozens of universities this year so that more high school graduates have to give up on going to college and instead take blue-collar jobs.
The ultimate goal of this controversial restructuring policy is to raise the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), the holy grail of government economic policymakers and U.S.-educated economists. The ministry’s target is to achieve 5 percent GDP growth next year to make Korea become an “advanced, first-class economy.” In order to meet the goal, the economy needs more young workers who are willing to work in factories or small companies for low salaries, instead of pursuing high education and highly paid jobs in manicured offices of chaebol companies or public organizations, the logic goes.
This year, it is likely to be put in contrast with the trend in the governments of many rich nations of pursuing happiness and a higher quality of life than merely trying to raise GDP. In countries like France, the United Kingdom and even the United States, governments plan to announce measures that may replace GDP as a measurement of citizens’ well-being, on top of already existing concepts such as “gross national happiness,” “Genuine Progress Indicator” or “U.N. Human Development Index.” But the Korean government has no such plan yet. Statistics Korea, the state agency which has the responsibility of measuring the GDP as well as the quality of life, says that there is no plan for the adoption of a GDP alternative in the near future.
Once, it looked like it was at least trying to make a “gross well-being product” or a “happiness index.” In October 2009, the agency held an international conference in Busan for the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) about devising a replacement for the GDP as a measure of general well-being and happiness of people. But since then, little if any progress has been made, an official at the agency’s planning and strategy department told The Korea Times last week.
“Conditions are uncertain, so there has been little progress made so far,” says Choi Yeon-ok, manager at Statistics Korea. He says that the agency has had no instructions from the government on this matter since the holding of the conference.
The Ministry of Strategy and Finance affirms that the GDP will remain as the main barometer of Korea’s economic policies for the time being, supplemented by the inflation and unemployment rate. In December, they published a report on the national competitiveness in comparison to other OECD member countries, which included “soft” criteria such as weekly working hours, crime rate, garbage recycling rate and so forth but still centered on “hard’ figures such as GDP, trading and population. In a press briefing, the bureau chief in charge of the report made it clear that the ministry does not have plan to make a comprehensive method in measuring the well-being of citizens and the soft factors are only for reference.
Bill Gates or me
GDP is a strong tool. It is an efficient and effective tool of comparing countries’ economic power, especially in terms of a nation’s ability to conduct warfare, such as how many tanks, airplanes and warships it can produce a year. And it has its shortfalls. Firstly, it does not take wealth distribution or degree of happiness into account. And GDP can increase even when the quality of life actually degrades, such as when an increasing number of prison inmates is forcing the government to spend more money in building prisons and hiring guards, or when a ship spills a large amount of oil onto the sea and people are hired to clean up the shore.
It also does not necessarily tell the degree of development in a society. The Korean government recognizes this. The ministry official at the press conference said that “no one thinks Saudi Arabia and Qatar are advanced nations or they should be our role models even though they have very high per-capita GDP.”
The recent financial crisis has further eroded GDP’s credibility and usefulness. Progressive economists say that the correlation between per-capita GDP and the degree of happiness a country’s citizens feel dramatically drops to an insignificant level once it surpasses $15,000. Smaller income gap between the rich and the poor and less unemployed people, it seems, matter more to happiness of people than GDP in most cases.
The notion that it is time to consider a GDP replacement seriously has gradually gained support. But in general, people in Korea are still grabbed with the belief that money can and will buy happiness.
In its New Year edition, Chosun Ilbo, the conservative paper with largest circulation, published a report from happiness survey on some 5,000 people in Korea and nine other nations around the world. The result shows a striking tendency of Koreans being more vulnerable to materialism.
They asked people to pick the happiest person among eight celebrities ― Bill Gates, the Dalai Lama, Angelina Jolie, Barack Obama and others ― and the respondent himself/herself. In any other country, most people selected “myself” as their first choice and the second place was in most cases the Dalai Lama. In Korea, the top pick was Bill Gates simply because he is rich.
Joy of learning
‘Restructuring’ of universities by the government is the typical example of money and economic growth being the supreme virtue in the Korean society and in its government, especially since Lee Myung-bak took the presidency. He has labeled himself as a “CEO President” with pragmatic thinking. His campaign slogan was 747 ― achieving 7 percent annual GDP growth, $40,000 per-capita GDP and the world’s seventh largest economy by 2013. Though the goal has now become impossible to achieve after three mediocre years, his New Year’s speech still shows that “expanding economic territory” of Korea remains as his top priority.
The change in educational budget structure has a symbolic meaning in this debate of which matters more between economic growth and happiness. The idea of reducing number of universities and cutting state funds to liberal arts and social science courses, and of shifting the saved government budget to vocational training programs at two-year colleges and high schools is appealing to policymakers who prioritize GDP over the joy of learning.
There is resistance, however. Professors at Seoul National University, the most prestigious school in Korea, are holding rallies on its campus this winter to protest the government’s decision to make the school run as a public foundation, where board members will be designated by the education ministry. The teachers fear that this will lead to closure of many liberal art programs and contaminate the school’s academic atmosphere with capitalism.
Rhee Jeong-jeon, professor emeritus at Seoul National University’s economics department, is one of scholars who urge the government should do just the opposite. In his 2008 book “Are we happy,” Rhee claims that allocating more resources on liberal art programs will in the long run make a happier, more mature society.
The idea may have a stronger appeal to President Lee and his administration when the United Kingdom, the United States and France come up with more concrete ideas of GDP replacements this year. But one thing is clear, that the devotion to GDP won’t disappear very soon in Lee’s policies.
