Apparently in the belief that policy coordination would be key to her successful governance during the next five years, President Park Geun-hye revived the post of vice prime minister for economic affairs upon her inauguration. She appointed Hyun Oh-seok, a long-term bureaucrat, to the post and had him double as finance minister.

But it is not easy to push for policy coordination among government agencies, because a policy initiative tends to produce winners and losers. No agency in their right mind would readily support a policy initiative if it had much to lose from it.

What if the policy proposal is determined to have more good than bad as a whole? If so, it is necessary for the administration to adopt it and persuade dissenting agencies, or force them if necessary, to toe the line.

Park, now five months into office, undoubtedly finds the deputy prime minister’s job performance unsatisfactory, given that she has recently told him to get economic ministries under tight control and push for policy coordination.

In a meeting with her senior secretaries on Monday, she said walls separating government agencies still remained high, though she has repeatedly ordered that compartmentalization end and called for collaboration in policy among government agencies in the past. She said, “I wouldn’t like to hear about it again.”

It was the second time this month for her to lash out at a raging turf war among government agencies. In her meeting with her Cabinet members on July 9, she told the deputy prime minister “to play the role of control tower” when it came to economic issues causing conflict among different ministries.

A case in point is whether or not to overhaul property-related taxes to prop up the sagging housing market. The issue came to a head, as a nascent property boom plummeted when a temporary cut in property tax was put to an end on June 30.

Against this backdrop, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport is demanding that the tax on the property acquisition be halved to boost the housing trade. But the downside is the proposed tax cut means huge revenue losses for municipalities. That is the reason the Ministry of Security and Public Administration, the supervisor of municipalities, is up in arms against the proposal. Park referred to this escalating conflict when she told the deputy prime minister to take control in such inter-ministerial disputes.

The deputy prime minister may have been bewildered by Park’s thinly veiled displeasure with his performance. Still, it cannot be denied that she threw her weight behind him when she called on him to push for inter-ministerial collaboration and policy coordination. What he needs to do now is get himself actively involved in the settlement of inter-ministerial disputes in pursuit of coherence in economic policy.