• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.93-110
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• 1990

The basic purpose behind the Korean government's policy toward the Korean deep sea fishing industry is to limit growth of the industry. Therefore, the regulations on the industry are generally restrictive and interventionist. The policy is intended to maintain high domestic fish prices in order to protect the domestic coastal fishing industry. Some regulations have also been introduced to maintain "industrial order." Each fishing vessel must obtain a government permit for operation. The permit specifies the kind of fish it can catch, the area of sea in which it can operate, and the port at which it can unload its catches. The number of permits government issues each year is based on the estimates of the demand increase calculated by government officials, and the government traditionally has been fairly conservative in its estimation, reflecting its concern for fish price stabilization, which actually implies a gradual increase of the prices. There is also a restriction on importing vessels from abroad. This regulation is intended to protect the domestic shipbuilding industry. However, this regulation has resulted in an unusually high average age of Korean fishing vessels, causing fishing costs to rise. These regulations and the inflexible response of the regulators to changing circumstances have resulted in many problems: i) high domestic fish prices, which are, to some extent deliberately, inflated to three or four times the level of international prices, resulting in huge consumer welfare losses; ii) over-exploitation of coastal fish resources; iii) provision of a hospitable environment for inefficient firms to survive, which is especially evident from the fact that, despite the high fish prices in Korea, most of the firms in the industry do not enjoy high profitability. It also must be pointed out that the actual beneficiaries of the high fish prices are the large operators, who are protected from competition and provide most of the fish for domestic consumption, rather than the low-income fishing households and small coastal operators whom the policy was originally designed to help. This study proposes a set of regulatory reforms and policy changes which could Promote competition and equity within the industry and allow firms to reduce costs and increase productivity. Such changes can make the industry more efficient and internationally competitive. Major proposals are, among others: minimization of bureaucratic discretion in issuing fishing permits and maintaining transparency in the governments' decision-making processes; reduction of the government permit specifications and simplification of the operational categories within the industry; and removal of the restrictions on importing foreign fishing vessels.

• Journal of National Security and Military Science
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• s.9
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• pp.313-340
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• 2011

The National Defense Reformation bill of "National Defense Reformation 2020" which have been constantly disputed and reformed by the government went through various levels of complementary measures after the North Korean sinking on the Republic of Korea (ROK) Naval Vessel "Cheonan". The final outcome of this reform is also known as the 307 Plan and this was announced on the 8th March. The reformed National Defense Reformation is to reduce the number of units and military personnel under the military structure reformation. However, in order for us to undertake successful National Defense Reformation, the use of privatized civilian resources are essential. Therefore according to this theory, the ROK Ministry of National Defense (MND) have selected the usage of privatized resources as one of the main core agenda for the National Defense Reformation management procedures, and under this agenda the MND plans to further expand the usage of private Especially the MND plans to minimize the personnel resources applied in non-combat areas and in turn use these supplemented personnel with optimization. In order to do this, the MND have initiated necessary appropriate analysis over the whole national defense section by understanding various projects and acquisition requests required by each militaries and civilian research institutions. However for efficient management of privatized civilian resources, first of all, those possible efficient private resources which can achieve optimization will need to be identified, and secondly continuous systematic reinforcements will need to be made in private resource usage legislations. Furthermore, we would need to consider the possibility of labor disputes because of privatization expansion. Therefore, full legal and systematic complementary measures are required in all possible issue arising areas which can affect the combat readiness posture. There is another problem of huge increase in operational expenses as reduction of standby forces are only reducing the number of soldiers and filling these numbers with more cost expensive commissioned officers. However, to overcome this problem, we would need to reduce the number of positions available for active officers and fill these positions with military reserve personnel who previously had working experiences with the related positions (thereby guaranteeing active officers re-employment after completing active service). This would in tum maintain the standards of combat readiness posture and reduce necessary financial budgets which may newly arise. The area of maintenance, supply, transportation, training & education duties which are highly efficient when using privatized resources, will need to be transformed from military management based to civilian management based system. For maintenance, this can be processed by integrating National Maintenance Support System. In order for us to undertake this procedure, we would need to develop maintenance units which are possible to be privatized and this will in turn reduce the military personnel executing job duties, improve service quality and prevent duplicate investments etc. For supply area, we will need to establish Integrated Military Logistics Center in-connection with national and civilian logistics system. This will in turn reduce the logistics time frame as well as required personnel and equipments. In terms of transportation, we will need to further expand the renting and leasing system. This will need to be executed by integrating the National Defense Transportation Information System which will in turn reduce the required personnel and financial budgets. Finally for training and education, retired military personnel can be employed as training instructors and at the military academy, further expansion in the number of civilian professors can be employed in-connection with National Defense Reformation. In other words, more active privatized civilian resources will need to be managed and used for National Defense Reformation.