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Brief Reports

Report that suggests the national future strategies based on the analysis of major future issues by the research team
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82

[National Future Strategic Insight] Proposal of New National Development Model (No. 20)

Kim Hyeon-kon, the NAFI President, presented a new people-led development model centered on lifelong health, lifelong learning and lifelong employment, addressing the new paradigm shifts in the 21st century and socioeconomic challenges. As proposed by the President, this new model shall: (1) deal with the new paradigm shifts in the 21st century, such as AI revolution, longevity revolution and climate crisis; (2) contribute to solving the economic and social obstacles accumulated in the process of compressed growth, such as inequality, polarization, social conflict, educational bias and aging population, (3) ensure a people-led development that promotes and utilizes the freedom and autonomy of the general public, smarter than ever before supported by digital adoption and transformation. He emphasized that our country should ultimately purse a human-oriented community based on the freedom and autonomy of the people. “The national development model so far has a limitation in that it is focusing on the point of view of the state and the government only,” said President Kim. “This new model reflects the perspective of the people whom the state and government exist and will serve as a tool to promote public consensus, to direct to the national goal, and to judge the priority of national policies and strategies.” In this report, President Kim also assessed the importance, role and historical flow the national development model and newly proposed Korea’s future vision – “Country Where All People Dream and Achieve Their Dream, Country Where 50 Million Dreams Exist”. * “National Future Strategic Insight” is a brief report which is issued every two weeks to provide strategic insights for our future based on in-depth analysis of major issues made by professional researchers at the National Assembly Futures Institute (NAFI).

P.I : Kim Hyeon-kon

Date : 2021-06-10

[National Future Strategic Insight] Exploring Improvements in Framework for Early Childhood Care and Education Service (No. 19)

Dr. Lee Chae-jeong (Associate Research Fellow) reviewed the need for preventive response to the crisis of daycare centers and kindergartens arising from the continuing decline in the number of newborn babies upon discussion of alternatives. This study categorized the early childhood care and education (ECCE) services in the OECD members in terms of the government intervention in the social policy implementation process, and conducted analysis on whether the supply chain of ECCE services has been balanced with the distribution of infants and toddlers in 2019 and 2045 for each region. Referring to the analysis of the OECD member states, Dr. Lee concluded that Korea’s ECCE services is overly dependent on market only and should be improved; she also presented rearrangement of ECCE service providers in consideration of demographic changes with the demand-supply gap analysis, emphasizing that dissection on the mid- to long-term plans is required to achieve a supply-demand balance of the ECCE services considering the demographic change resulting from rapid aging of the population. “In Korea, a user selects the ECCE services in the private market and is compensated by the government,” said Dr. Lee. “It is necessary to improvement our market-overdependent system and to build up mid- to long-term plans for rearranging a framework itself to achieve a supply-demand balance in the light of the rapidly aging population.” * “National Future Strategic Insight” is a brief report which is issued every two weeks to provide strategic insights for our future based on in-depth analysis of major issues made by professional researchers at the National Assembly Futures Institute (NAFI).

P.I : Lee Chae-jeong

Date : 2021-05-27

[National Future Strategic Insight] Intuitional Approach to New Phase: Functioning National Assembly (No. 18)

Associate Research Fellow Cho In-yeong, as a principal investigator, has explained the current status and challenges of the National Assembly in terms of improvement of the legislative branch by cross-national comparative research and game theory approach, and suggested measures addressing such challenges on the recognition that one of the biggest cause would be incongruity of the current institutional arrangement. This brief presented four policy proposals that: (1) it is necessary to refrain from reinforcing or undermining the rights that the majority and minority respectively have in relation to the assembly proceedings at the same time; (2) it is necessary to avoid pursuing institutional reform as “Talking National Assembly” in which the only vote-winning majority takes the lead in the assembly proceeding; (3) it is necessary to institutionally balance between the majoritarian democracy and the consensus democracy to the extent of the political system for successful organizational and institutional reform into “Working National Assembly”; and (4) it is necessary to, if system reform to change the majority to the consensus is not available in the near future, it should be made at least to alleviate the conflict of values pursed by “Confronting National Assembly”. “Korean democracy is based upon majority rule rather the consensus decision-making, thus low effectiveness may be expected even if the systems are reorganized to build up ‘Working National Assembly’, because they do not correspond well to the majoritarian democracy,” explains Cho. “If the reform is ultimately aimed at ‘Working National Assembly, we need to consider fundamental and complement institutional arrangement, instead of institutional reform resulting in conflicts.” On the other hand, this study also paid attention on the inefficiency and low trust of the Korean National Assembly focusing on conflict between effectiveness and representativeness of the political system. The researcher’s analysis resulted that that the Korean National Assembly displays an outlier in the context of comparison with the OECD members. * “National Future Strategic Insight” is a brief report which is issued every two weeks to provide strategic insights for our future based on in-depth analysis of major issues made by professional researchers at the National Assembly Futures Institute (NAFI).

P.I : Cho In-yeong

Date : 2021-05-13

[National Future Strategic Insight] Need for Happiness Report and National Happiness (No. 17) (Revised)

Associate Research Fellow Heo Jong-ho has confirmed the inequality of happiness depending on region, age and socioeconomic position based on “2020 Korean Happiness Survey” and emphasized the need for in-depth research and policy proposals. In particular, he conducted “Korean Happiness Survey” in November 2020 with about 14,000 males and females aged ≥ 15 nationwide as respondents; it asked respondents to think of overall happiness score, meaning of life, accomplishment, freedom to make decisions in life, a position they feel they stand at the present time on the Cantril ladder, and satisfaction 5 years ago and after. The outcomes show that average overall happiness score is above 5 despite of the COVID-19 pandemic; however the vulnerable groups, such as elderly population (aged 60 and over), single-person households, groups with low education and income levels, and groups with poor health, demonstrate much lower scores than average, thus it can be concluded the inequality is the critical factor to happiness. Further, the most notable variation is observed across regions instead of gender or socioeconomic indicators; Jeonbuk, Jeonnam, Gwangju, and Gyeongnam regions show a higher degree of happiness, but Gyeongbuk and Jeju have the lowest scores for all matrices. Heo suggested to establish polices based on the peoples’ rating of their own lives in order to improve the quality of life and gross national happiness; especially, South Korea needs to institutional approaches to ensure significance improvement in well-being of vulnerable groups, including elderly, single-person households, low-income groups, local residents living in Gyeongbuk and Jeju regions. “Studies have been reported that higher level of happiness can contribute to build up more prosperous and robust society,” explains Heo. “It is necessary to accumulate basic data serving as a foundation for establishing mid- and long-term policies with continuous monitoring of national happiness and inequality from the viewpoint of the National Assembly, thus we will provide the detailed takeaways in terms of policy through in-depth researches.” * “National Future Strategic Insight” is a brief report which is issued every two weeks to provide strategic insights for our future based on in-depth analysis of major issues made by professional researchers at the National Assembly Futures Institute (NAFI).

P.I : Heo Jong-ho

Date : 2021-04-29

[National Future Strategic Insight] Proposal of Reform Agendas to Explore National Long-Term Development Strategy (No. 16)

Research Fellow Lee Sun-hwa has presented the reform agendas for the national long-term development strategy: (1) demand-oriented integrated development strategy, (2) redefined role of the bureaucracy, (3) framework for decentralized decision-making and policy communication, and (4) strengthen decision-making function of the National Assembly. For the “demand-oriented integrated development strategy”, agendas suggested by Lee include coordination of policy ownership and inter-ministry cooperative system, emphasizing the role of control tower across all ministries. For the “redefined role of the bureaucracy”, she divided the bureaucracy system into recruitment and promotion and suggested innovative solutions for each section, including reformation of public service examinations and employments, recruitment of talents from the private sector in the civil service, and performance- or competency-oriented promotion framework. For the “framework for decentralized decision-making and policy communication”, her suggestion include a decentralized local governance framework and a strengthened local service supply chain, separated from a central-leading model, in various sectors such as housing, local communities, healthcare, employment, and labor-management relations, on the premise that administrative districts should be reorganized to establish new regions encompassing local hub cities and satellite towns for increasing the effectiveness of the decentralization. For the “strengthen decision-making function of the National Assembly”, she derived the reform agendas including the National Assembly’s institutionalized role in resolving social conflicts and a cooperative framework of the National Assembly and the financial authorities for sustainable finance. This report was prepared based on the NAFI’s “National Long-Term Development Strategy Research Series” for seeking a comprehensive solution from the viewpoint of the national operation system to the political, economic, social and structural obstacles challenged by South Korea. “The ultimate goal of the national long-term development strategy is to present a national vision and reform agendas to overcome the drawbacks of the existing system,” explains Lee. “The most promising approach to derive effective strategies is to explore the pros and cons of the compressed growth of South Korea by sectors that make up the national system, such as governance, quality of life, growth engines and labor system.” * “National Future Strategic Insight” is a brief report which is issued every two weeks to provide strategic insights for our future based on in-depth analysis of major issues made by professional researchers at the National Assembly Futures Institute (NAFI).

P.I : Lee Sun-hwa

Date : 2021-04-14

[National Future Strategic Insight] Challenges and Innovative Measures of Mid- to Long-Term Plans for Strengthening Future Capabilities: Focusing on Science and Technology Sectors (No. 15)

Dr. Yeo Yeong-jun (Associate Research Fellow) has defined major policy issues that Korean government tends to face in the mid- to long-term plans for science and technology sectors as follows: (1) limited adaptation to changes in policy environment due to low autonomy; (2) impaired continuity of policies depending on the party which is in power; (3) limited policy coherence due to insufficient coordination between ministries and agencies; (4) unproven feasibility due to the constraints of evidence-based policy making; and (5) impaired effectiveness due to vast number of policies implemented simultaneously. Dr. Yeo’s study was performed based on his awareness of that Korea’s lack of policy effectiveness although it has established a variety of mid-to-long-term plans for science and technology across the diversified fields every 5 years. He pointed out that improvement has not been actively carried out without systematic studies to support learning and understanding of the failure causes. Accordingly, 10 major policy innovations were presented to enhance the effectiveness of mid- to long-term strategies in the national science and technology sectors as follows: (1) mutual coherence between the national mid- to long-term visions and plans; (2) systematic information on the feasibility of the planning process; (3) systematic consideration of inter-ministerial cooperation and cooperative governance; (4) comprehensive consideration of various stakeholders involved in the goal;(5) development and diversification of methodologies to strengthen policy learning;(6) validity and objectivity of step-by-step performance goal; (7) systematic review on compatibility of technical elements; (8) enhanced logical causality between goals, strategies, and tasks in the plan; (9) flexible and strategic revisions in accordance with changes in the environment; and (10) legal engagement and frameworks for meta-evaluation of mid- to long-term plans. This report was written based on the combined outcomes obtained from text network-based quantitative analysis and interview-based qualitative analysis, found in the “Meta-Evaluation of Government’s Mid- to Long-Term Plans: Science and Technology Sectors” conducted last year at NAFI. “The desirable goals and values should be integrated, especially in this era of uncertainty, which are herein national mid- to long-term plans and development strategies,” said Dr. Yeo. “We are expected that this study will be a contribution to supporting the policy design and implementation by feeding back takeaways into the future-proof policy process.” * “National Future Strategic Insight” is a brief report which is issued every two weeks to provide strategic insights for our future based on in-depth analysis of major issues made by professional researchers at the National Assembly Futures Institute (NAFI).

P.I : Yeo Yeong-jun

Date : 2021-04-01

[National Future Strategic Insight] Current Status and Takeaway of Domestic and Foreign Energy Transition Policies (No. 14)

Dr. Jeong Hoon (Research Fellow) has reviewed the current status of energy transition policies in Korea in this report. He has also sought the future direction by evaluation of the relevant policies and global indices for Germany, the United Kingdom and France, leading countries in response to climate change. The followings are takeaways drawn referring to those leading countries: (1) determining the best energy policies considering the priorities appropriate to the national situation as the socio-economic systems and circumstances are different depending on countries and the optimal energy transition pathway is not outlined; (2) establishing long-term challenging goals for carbon neutrality and to lay a foundation for continuous energy transition by reflecting relevant laws and policies; (3) raising public awareness of the need for transition to a carbon-neutral society and encouraging citizen participation; and (4) evaluating the policy implementation and establishing a feedback framework to achieve the implementation of the long-term goals and transition to a carbon-neutral society Korea was placed at the 48th position among 115 countries in the 2020 Energy Transition Index, and at the 31st position among 32 advanced countries, which is not very desirable scores. Korea was also ranked 31st position out of 108 countries in the 2020 Energy Trilemma Index. “With the accelerated climate change, countries around the world are participating in carbon neutrality,” explains Dr. Jeong. “Korea also needs to recognize the importance of promoting long-term energy transition policies and participate in a practical climate crisis response together with the international community.” * “National Future Strategic Insight” is a brief report which is issued every two weeks to provide strategic insights for our future based on in-depth analysis of major issues made by professional researchers at the National Assembly Futures Institute (NAFI).

P.I : Jeong Hoon

Date : 2021-03-18

[National Future Strategic Insight] International Conflicts and Trade Dispute in Northeast Asia No.13

Dr. Park, Sung jun (Associate Research Fellow) has studied on changes in Korea-Japan and Korea-China bilateral relationships with the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) project, which is a big data service that offers various data collected and analyzed while monitoring the world’s broadcast, print and web news. In particular, major Korea-Japan/Korea-China conflicts and trade disputes in the late 2010s were compared with the GDELT data to find a pattern how those conflicts had been reflected in the GDELT, visualizing the aspect of international conflicts to ensure more intuitive observation and analysis. According to the comparison made by Dr. Park, it was confirmed that the number of cases recorded in the GDELT database increased during the trade dispute, and negative tone was appeared in documents. Especially harsh languages were observed between Korea and Japan immediately after the South Korean Supreme Court’s ruling that workers used as forced labor by Japan during World War II were entitled to financial compensation and Japan’s restriction on the export of high-tech materials used in semiconductors and displays. The number of verbal and material conflicts between two countries were elevated during the trade disputes. Verbal conflicts tended to increase upon the background events, such as the Supreme Court’s ruling on war-time forced labor and the THAAD system on the Korean Peninsula, while both verbal and material conflicts significantly boosted at the same time when “economic reprisal” had intensified the trade dispute. “The GDELT database leads to more intuitive observations for changes in relations between Korea and major countries by visualizing conflict degree,” said Dr. Park. “I’m sure that GDELT will be of great help in the main study with its excellent visibility.” * “National Future Strategic Insight” is a brief report which is issued every two weeks to provide strategic insights for our future based on in-depth analysis of major issues made by professional researchers at the National Assembly Futures Institute (NAFI).

P.I : Park, Sung jun

Date : 2021-03-04

[National Future Strategy Insight] One Year with COVID-19: How Did People’s Lives Change? No. 12

Associate Research Fellow Heo Jong-ho investigated the changes that came to the Korean people in terms of “Changes in jobs and income,” “Changes in family relationships,” “Changes in the awareness of value and actions related to infectious disease prevention and control,” and “Changes in health.” The findings identified the damage experienced by the people from COVID-19, especially by the vulnerable groups. It predicted that if the pandemic is to go on, there will be greater socioeconomic inequality. In terms of “Changes in jobs and income,” among the respondents aged 20 and over, 5.5% experienced a change in jobs such as layoffs or closures of business. Among the 5.5%, 55.6% were female and 44.4% were male. Of the total respondents, 19.6% answered that their income decreased, and the amount of decrease of monthly income was KRW 795,000 on average. Although 88.2% of employees (who receive income from an employer) did not experience a decrease in income, 61.2% of those who were self-employed responded that their incomes decreased, and 9.7% of self-employed responded that their monthly incomes decreased by at least KRW one million in average. In terms of “Changes in family relationships,” 14.8% of the respondents said that their family relationships became better after COVID-19. However, for households in Seoul metropolitan area, public assistance recipient households, and one-person households, family relationships became worse rather than becoming better. For “Changes in the awareness of value and actions related to infectious disease prevention and control,” 69% of the respondents agreed that it is necessary to sacrifice some aspects of daily life to prevent the spread of the virus. Among the respondents, 55% agreed that those who were infected with the virus were at fault for being so, and 63.2% agreed that it is necessary to disclose information on the movements of those confirmed to have the virus. The percentages of those living in Seoul metropolitan area who agreed with the three statements were approximately 3%-7% lower than those of those not living in Seoul metropolitan area. For “Changes in health,” 16.6% of the respondents said that they became healthier after COVID-19. It was also noted that the percentage of one-person households who took action to stay healthy was approximately 1%-5% lower than that of other households. The percentage of females who are at high risk of depression was 10% lower than that of males, 19% of the respondents aged 20 and older said that they reduced smoking, whereas 6.9% responded that they smoked even more. Smoking was reduced more for females than for males (Male 18.6% vs. Female 24.2%). Of the respondents, 13.0% answered that they reduced drinking by 1.6 times a week on average. The percentage of males who responded that they reduced drinking was 2.5 times greater than that of females, and 22.0% of those aged 20 and over responded that they reduced drinking. The study was conducted by the research team of the National Assembly Futures Institute last year, and was based on the responses related to COVID-19 in the “Survey of Happiness of the Korean People” conducted on 14,000 males and females aged 15 and over from all around the country. Dr. Heo stated that “at an international level, the numbers suggest that Koreans are relatively less miserable, but the results still pointed to the serious impact from COVID-19 that hit vulnerable groups the hardest. Also, there is concern regarding potential greater socioeconomic inequality,” and advised that “there should be evidence-based policies for not only infectious disease prevention and control, but also regarding socioeconomic inequalities that stem from COVID-19.”

P.I : Heo Jong-ho

Date : 2021-02-16

[National Future Strategy Insight] An Investigation into and Future Challenges regarding Education Policies to Expand Psychological and Social Capital, No. 11

[National Future Strategy Insight] An Investigation into and Future Challenges regarding Education Policies to Expand Psychological and Social Capital, No. 11 Associate Research Fellow Sung Moon-ju presented challenges related to education policies to expand “psychological capital,” healthy and positive psychological states of individuals, and “social capital,” intangible capital that comes from the social relationships between people and lead to individual or public benefits in her report. After identifying the current levels of psychological and social capitals of the members of society, it was found that it is necessary to improve the levels of both types of capital. Particularly, levels of resilience, participation and networking, and public trust were especially low, and so it was concluded that these levels must be significantly improved. In terms of the low-income, it was found that the state must actively intervene to improve the levels of psychological and social capitals. The role of university education to expand psychological and social capitals also needed to be strengthened. Based on these findings, the report listed the following challenges in relation to education policies: implementation of various types of evaluation methods and evaluation criteria for elementary and middle school education, and the separation of student evaluation at the classroom level and at the national level; increase of the opportunities for students to participate in developing national elementary and middle school education curricula and decision making processes of schools in terms of the education curriculum; development of a program to improve the level of psychological capital for university students at the university level; increase of the accessibility and the number of programs for adults to improve resilience; and establishment of an education organization that strengthens intangible social learning. Dr. Sung stated that “in order to achieve the national goal of securing national competitiveness and improving the quality of life of the citizens with innovative growth, there must be a greater perspective on capital,” and added that “to expand the capitals that come from human capabilities, it is necessary to comprehensively consider not only human capital, but also psychological and social capital and find a balance among them. This will make it possible to achieve the country’s goals.” ※ “National Future Strategy Insight” is a brief-type in-depth research report issued every other week to present national future strategies for Korea based on the analysis of major future issues by the research fellows of National Assembly Futures Institute.

P.I : Sung Moon-ju

Date : 2021-01-20