[Editorial] Has Quality of Life Improved That Much?

According to Bank of Korea (BOK) figures released Monday Korea ranked 9th in gross domestic product (GDP) among Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations in 2003, again confirmation of how Korea has achieved growth worthy of international attention. The world can feel our strength for having achieved the development we have even after experiencing colonial rule and the Korean War. Per capita GDP is not as high, but at US$12,646, it still ranks 21st. Though Korea ranks low among OECD member states, in the quantitative sense it is becoming an advanced nation.

Should we be satisfied with such figures? Has the quality of life for a majority of the people improved in parity with the rapid economic growth? It appears that would not be the reality, and there is plenty of documentation that demonstrates as much. According to the same BOK documentation, "labor income ratio" is 59.7 percent, still lower than the 63.4 percent it was in 1996, immediately before the financial crisis of 1997. The figure speaks of how much working income accounts for the whole of the country's income. The "five sub-categories of income" (sodeuk 5bunwi baeyul) and the gini coefficient are important tools in showing the gap between rich and poor, and currently they also show you that things have not improved. That is natural if you consider the rapid increase in people employed as irregular laborers and the self-employed. Is not the remarkable quantitative growth failing to lead to an improvement in the quality of life for many people? Our economy has many such structural problems.

Now the focus when growing the economy should be to achieve qualitative development. It is in particular time to make sure the lives of the poorer common people are made less difficult and that they are able to be active participants in economic activity. Does it even mean very much to them to have the per capital GDP be US$12,646 in the current situation? There is much the government can do. It must accelerate the work of improving the make-up of our economy. Becoming a truly "advanced country" is not done so easily.

The Hankyoreh, 4 January 2005.

[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]