Deregulate lotteries to fund welfare

First published in The Korea Herald. There has been a heated debate in recent months about the need to raise taxes in Korea to generate revenue for the various government welfare programs to support the needy. While President Park Geun-hye has ruled out the possibility of raising taxes and is instead eyeing the “shadow economy” to get the much-needed funds, there is one other source that has been completely overlooked ― lotteries. Lotteries are of particular interest to public finance economists since they represent an important source of government revenue in many countries. As a significant contributor to the government kitty, they have been widely examined by economists focusing primarily on their revenue potential and desirability as a method of taxation ― in many countries they exceed...

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Dynamics of Korea-China economic relations

First published in The Korea Herald. The much-awaited Korea-China Free Trade Agreement was initialed in late February, taking a step closer to implementing what is seen as Korea’s most significant trade deal. The initialing came about three months after the two countries concluded FTA negotiations that began in May 2012, and is expected to eclipse its deals with the U.S. and the EU, as China is already its largest trading partner. China, the world’s largest destination for Korean goods, accounted for more than one-quarter ― $145.28 billion ― of Korea’s overall exports of $572.66 billion in 2014. The next biggest national-level markets for Korean exporters are the United States at 11 percent and Japan at 6 percent. According to news reports, the agreement, currently written in English,...

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Restrictive Internet platform in Korea

First published in The Korea Herald. The Korean government has finally announced its plans to start removing the troublesome ActiveX software from public websites later this month in order to create a more user-friendly Internet environment. For long, this tech-savvy country has been stuck in a time warp with its slavish dependence on Internet Explorer. ActiveX controls were one of the many troublesome regulations that President Park Geun-hye vowed to remove in her signature deregulation initiative, and it is good to notice that the government is moving fast. It is a software framework that defines reusable software components in programming language and has become an integral part of the country’s Internet landscape. Because it is a nonstandard software, it sometimes has trouble interacting...

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