21st century possibilities

Korean public administrative culture is still emerging from its unitary, authoritarian, president- and elite-centered tendencies toward a future designed to be more decentralized and to demand more public participation and oversight.

The administrative valuation of rationality and science requires that administrators not rest on their technocratic expertise but rather emphasize bringing their knowledge and practice to a wider understanding by elected leaders and the public.

The key values that underlie Korean administrative culture include conformity, uniformity, fatalism, emotional humanism and familism.

What limits or defines the possibilities for improvement and change is the alliance of contemporary bureaucrats with technocracy and elitism.

To the extent that Korean public administration is a technocratic elite, one obvious suggestion for its further improvement is to democratize the administration.

I will discuss new public management, as a liberalist paradigm of administrative modernization and make recommendations for the possibilities of Korean public administration in the 21st century.