산업구조조정과 정부-재벌 관계

Industrial Restructuring and Government-Chaebol Relations

The purpose of this thesis is to review the terms of successful Japanese industrial restructuring and apply these to Korea. Distinct differences can be observed in the industrial restructuring between Korea and Japan. Japanese restructuring was based mostly on a coalition of the private sector working together with the government. Korean restructuring conversely was a government-led unilateral restructuring process. The term “functional interdependence” describes the type of the Japanese restructuring process where the private sector acts independently and the government acts as a facilitator. We try to analyze business(Chaebol)-government relations during the restructuring process triggered by the IMF-led economy in view of “functional interdependence”. Initially the Korean government wanted Chaebol to reform by their own initiatives Resistance to reform and outside pressure forced the government to reform the Chaebol. Closing stagnant banks and liquidating stagnant companies were unpleasant shock to the Chaebol and caused them to doubt the government leadership as in the past. The Chaebol resisted and bucked government leadership as was shown in the “Big Deal” trade dynamics. In the semi-conductor industry, the president’s direct intervention led the merger of two key players. Government intervention rendered spontaneous functional interdependence impotent. Functional interdependence was swept aside because the Chaebol lacked visions and a clear command structure to reform. M & A had to be imposed because the Chaebol lacked the ability to perform this independently due to the conflict of interests. The government’s main short-term objective was to restore market credibility during the crisis. The government superceded the Chaebol power structure and implemented reforms. Previous attempts at government-led restructuring were mostly unsucessful because of the lack of the private sector’s initiatives. In Korean Chaebol-Government relations, there has been historical pattern for government unsuccessfully to reform the Chaebol. This pattern appears to have repeated itself. We came to the conclusion that in the long-term, successful restructuring can be achieved based on fuctional interdependence and business(Chaebol) acting independently on thier own initiatives.