[Editorial] Economic shot in the arm

In yet another measure aimed at accelerating economic recovery, the government will delay tax investigations into 1.3 million small and medium-sized enterprises through the end of next year. The National Tax Service on Monday announced that it would defer tax investigations and audits of 1.31 million SMEs with annual sales of less than 100 billion won through the end of 2015. About 25 percent of the country’s businesses will be affected by the measure, the largest such to date. The tax authoriti

Oct. 1, 2014

[Editorial] Assembly gets to work

The National Assembly finally returned to work after 151 days of not deliberating or passing a single bill.Following a day of continued bargaining, the ruling Saenuri Party and the major opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy were able to ink a final compromise on the Sewol special law just in time to convene a plenary session of the National Assembly. While the representatives of the families of the Sewol ferry disaster victims held a press conference announcing their opposition to the

Oct. 1, 2014

[Editorial] Weaker yen

Data released by the central bank last week showed that the profitability of Korea’s listed firms slipped in the second quarter as a stronger won hit manufacturing exporters. The average ratio of operating profit to sales, a key gauge of profitability, stood at 4.2 percent in the April-June period, dropping from 5.4 percent in the same period last year.Major exporters including automakers, shipbuilders and electronics firms saw their profits wane in the second quarter. Hyundai-Kia Automotive Gro

Sept. 30, 2014

[Editorial] FTA with China

Korea and China held their 13th round of free trade talks in Beijing last week, making little headway in resolving differences over sensitive matters.Negotiators from the two countries have been under pressure to reach a deal by the end of this year, as agreed by President Park Geun-hye and her Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping during their summit in Seoul in July. Speculation has been raised that the two sides may conclude a bilateral free trade accord in time for a meeting between Park and Xi on

Sept. 30, 2014

[Editorial] Detainees in N.K.

North Korea has a long history of detaining foreign citizens, especially Americans, on baseless criminal charges to use them for propaganda and “hostage diplomacy,” which is largely aimed at gaining concessions from foreign governments. As part of the anachronistic policy, the North is currently detaining three American citizens, including one Korean-American missionary who has been locked up in the isolationist country for nearly two years. Kenneth Bae was detained in November 2012 on charges o

Sept. 29, 2014

[Editorial] Distrust of finance sector

Officials of successive administrations and industry executives have long voiced the need to bring the nation’s financial firms up to the same level as companies like Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor. So there has been a lot of hoopla, with government officials pledging support for globalization drives by local financial firms and measures to improve their competitiveness, and executives putting forward ambitious plans to upgrade their products and services. But if recent developments are a

Sept. 29, 2014

[Editorial] Cyberexodus

As was expected, the country’s IT companies are feeling the impact of the government’s announcement that it will monitor cyberspace activities in real time.On Sept. 18, the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office announced that it would establish a special team of five prosecutors and investigators within the Seoul Central District Prosecutor’s Office to monitor cyberspace in real time in order to act “preemptively” against the dissemination of false information. Redistributors of false information would be

Sept. 28, 2014

[Editorial] Pardon for chaebol chiefs

President Park Geun-hye’s pledge of nontolerance for white collar crimes by chaebol chiefs may be the latest among a string of election promises being cast off.On Sept. 24, Justice Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn hinted at the possibility of releasing jailed businessmen on parole or granting them a pardon, saying, “Couldn’t they be given a chance if a national consensus is formed?” The very next day Deputy Prime Minister for the Economy and Minister of Strategy and Finance Choi Kyung-hwan expressed suppo

Sept. 28, 2014

[Editorial] Battling dementia

Dementia is a cruel disease that dilapidates not only patients but also their families. Its psychological, physical and financial impact is so severe that we often encounter tragic cases in which people affected by the illness commit suicide, mercy killing or even murder. As Korea’s societal aging progresses at one of the fastest paces in the world, the brain disease that destroys patients’ memories and cognitive abilities is growing as a major social menace. A set of figures shows how serious t

Sept. 26, 2014

[Editorial] Real safety innovation

The government has outlined its plan to draw up the Safety Innovation Master Plan, which is aimed at upgrading the nation’s safety system, in which numerous defects were exposed by the tragic sinking of the Sewol ferry in April. Officials said the master plan, which will be completed by February next year, will be highlighted by a realignment of responsibilities among government offices during major disasters. For instance, the new national safety agency that the Park Geun-hye administration wan

Sept. 26, 2014

[Editorial] Keep pressing N.K.

North Korea’s appalling human rights situation has come under global scrutiny again, this time at the U.N. General Assembly and at a ministerial meeting on North Korean human rights in New York City.Addressing the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, President Park Geun-hye urged North Korea to improve its human rights record, bringing attention to the human rights abuses by the regime. While the ministerial meeting on Sept. 23 in New York presided over by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and a

Sept. 25, 2014

[Editorial] Another Blue House fiasco

There is an old saying that goes, “Personnel matters are everything.” Taking that maxim to heart, top businesses allocate great resources to finding the right people for the right positions. However, the Blue House seems to think it is an exception, much to its embarrassment and the embarrassment of the country, which must witness yet another personnel appointment fiasco.Details emerging concerning the sudden resignation of Senior Presidential Secretary for Education and Culture Affairs Song Kwa

Sept. 25, 2014

[Editorial] Self-employment blues

A gloomy but often neglected aspect of the country’s job market is the large proportion of self-employed individuals struggling with excessive competition and income stagnation amid the prolonged economic downturn.Self-employed people account for nearly a quarter of the total employed population in Korea, far higher than the average 16 percent for the 34-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The figure stands at 12 percent in Japan and 7 percent in the U.S.The number of s

Sept. 24, 2014

[Editorial] Global contributions

An administration official said this week that South Korea was seeking to extend the deployment of its troops in South Sudan and Lebanon as part of its contribution to U.N. peacekeeping efforts around the globe. Last week, the Foreign Ministry announced a plan to increase Seoul’s grant aid to less developed countries by 9 percent next year.These moves can be seen as reflecting South Korea’s will to expand its role in the international community as a middle-power nation. As a country that owes mu

Sept. 24, 2014

[Editorial] Pension reform

A forum on how to reform public employees’ pensions was aborted Monday as members of the government employees’ union blocked proceedings in a National Assembly conference room. The conference, organized by the ruling party, was to discuss a reform plan proposed by the Korea Pension Association. The forced cancellation of the forum demonstrates how arduous it will be to overhaul the debt-ridden pension scheme for civil servants. In fact, there has been a lot of talk about the issue for a long tim

Sept. 23, 2014

[Editorial] Outside directors

As the Sewol ferry disaster has exposed holes in the nation’s public safety system and broader problems in society, the fiasco at KB Financial Group has laid bare a host of flaws in Korea’s financial system. The immediate cause of the crisis at KB was a boardroom feud that went out of control. What made it worse was lax regulatory supervision and a botched response, including several flip-flops over the level of punishment for the two top executives involved in the conflict. The root cause, of c

Sept. 23, 2014

[Editorial] Big Brother in cyberspace

The country’s prosecutors have assumed the role of an Orwellian Big Brother, acting “pre-emptively” against dissemination of false information by monitoring activities in cyberspace and immediately removing false information as it is discovered.The new measures were announced after the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office convened a meeting of officials from the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, Ministry of Security and Public Administration, National Police Agency, Korean Communications Stan

Sept. 22, 2014

[Editorial] Multicultural students grow

The number of children of multicultural families in schools has reached some 67,800, accounting for slightly more than 1 percent of all students.This represents a 21.6 percent increase over the previous year, and the number is expected to reach 100,000 within the next three years, according to the Education Ministry. Children from families of diverse cultural backgrounds pose challenges for the education system in that it must create programs that can help the children ease into the school syste

Sept. 22, 2014

[Editorial] Public sector reform

It is one thing to come up with reform measures and another to implement them thoroughly. This seems the prevailing public response to the public sector reform package announced by the ruling Saenuri Party last week.No one disagrees on the urgent need to overhaul poorly managed, debt-ridden public corporations. At the end of 2013, Korea’s public enterprises were saddled with a combined debt of more than 523 trillion won ($500 billion), with their average debt-to-equity ratio nearly doubling over

Sept. 21, 2014

[Editorial] Repairing neighborly ties

South Korea and Japan have recently been moving to build momentum toward repairing their soured relations, with the possibility growing that President Park Geun-hye and Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will hold their first bilateral summit in the months to come.In his message delivered by former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori to Park last Friday, Abe expressed hope that he could meet her on the sidelines of one of this fall’s international conferences. Park was quoted by Mori as agreeing

Sept. 21, 2014