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[EDITORIAL]Incentives for training



The 1997-98 financial crisis brought about one distinct change in corporate hiring practices: companies prefer experienced employees to novices and irregular workers to regular staff. This change is an outgrowth of a single-minded post-crisis corporate drive to improve the bottom line.

This new hiring trend has obviously contributed to bolstering corporate profitability as it allows companies to cut training expenditures for their work forces. But this reduction in corporate spending on human resources development is worrying as it could undermine the competitiveness of Corporate Korea in the long term.

According to a survey conducted by the Labor Ministry, training expenditures accounted for 2.1 percent of total labor costs at domestic companies in 1996. This ratio fell to 1.5 percent in 2003.

One way to reduce investment in training was to hire skilled workers rather than the inexperienced. As a result, the share of experienced workers in total corporate hiring more than doubled from 34.8 percent in 1996 to 81.8 percent in 2002.

The latest employment data released by the National Statistical Office illustrate the change in corporate hiring practices in a disturbing way. In May, the number of unemployed people in their 20s and 30s increased by 107,000 and 57,000, respectively, compared with a year ago.

In contrast, there was a sizable increase in the number of employed people among the over-40 age group - 134,000 in their 40s and a whopping 305,000 in their 50s. The rise in employment among the 40s age group reflects the corporate preference for experienced workers, while the surge for people in their 50s is seen as mirroring the increase in irregular workers.

The reduction in corporate spending on human resources development is a cause for concern because it could hurt the competitiveness of not just the corporations but the nation as a whole.

Before the crisis, big corporations served as a social institution that offered vocational training to a large pool of unskilled workers. For instance, they took on a large number of college graduates each year and nurtured them into competitive a work force through training.

Now they no longer play this role. However, the social infrastructure for vocational training remains woefully inadequate, creating a large shortfall in social investment in human resources development.

One solution to this problem is for the government to provide sufficient incentives for corporations to increase investment in manpower development. This is a win-win approach as increased spending on worker training will ultimately benefit the corporations.





US backs expansion of UN Security Council


The United States said it favored adding at least two permanent members, including Japan, to the UN Security Council and proposed specific criteria for candidate nations.

Washington opposed giving a resolution veto to the newcomers but said it also wants up to three additional non-permanent seats in the Security Council.

Outlining for the first time the US position on the council's expansion, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said it "will likely support adding two or so permanent members" and "two or three" additional non-permanent seats to the council.

That would expand the council from its current size of 15 members "to 19 or 20," he said.

Aside from Japan, he did not indicate a US preference for new membership but the New York Times quoted an administration official as saying a second US-backed candidate would come from the developing world.

Burns rejected as unwieldy a plan by Japan, Brazil, India and Germany -- known as the Group of Four -- to enlarge the council from 15 to 25 members.

The Security Council currently has five permanent members, with the right to veto a resolution -- China, the United States, France, Britain and Russia -- and 10 rotating non-permanent members without veto powers.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stressed at a press conference that any expansion of should be linked to broader UN reforms such as management and secretariat reforms, peace-building, non-proliferation and funding to expand democracy.

They are "extremely important," she said. "We simply will not let Security Council reform sprint out ahead of other reforms."

Rice hoped the US Senate would approve on Monday President George W. Bush's controversial nomination of John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations "so that he can shepherd this very important process" of UN reform.

Burns said the United States wanted a "modest" expansion of the Security Council and that the G4 proposal "would entail very large intake of countries in one fell swoop" and "be possibly injurious" to its effectiveness."

"We think it's very important... not just to look at it as a debate of what parts of the world should be represented, which geographic region should have the greatest number of seats or the least number of seats," he said.

The undersecretary for political affairs said the United States would introduce "early next week" at the UN General Assembly a proposal laying out the criteria for eligibility for permanent or non-permanent membership in the Security Council.

The criteria included the size and population of the country, its military capacity and potential to contribute to UN peacekeeping operations.

Other factors, he said, were adherence to democracy and human rights principles, financial contributions to the world body, and the candidate's record on counterterrorism and non-proliferation.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who has suggested widespread reforms, including increasing the number of council seats to 24, welcomed the US proposals but said Washington would have to negotiate with other countries rather than impose its will.

Annan told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York that "the way we do business is to discuss and come to an understanding -- a broad agreement -- and then to move forward.

"So if the US has proposals, they should put it on the table and discuss it with the others, and I think there are lots of proposals on the table now; now I would encourage the US to engage with the other member states and come up with a reform package."


In a related development, the White House and the State Department have come out against legislation that would withhold half of the United States' UN dues unless the world body carried out reforms.

"We do have concerns about the legislation," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said of a bill that threatened to withhold some 220 million dollars, for one year. He urged Congress to "reconsider".

Washington is the largest contributor to the United Nations, accounting for US$438 million of the world body's 2005 budget of US$1.82 billion. - AFP

2005.06.18




[EDITORIAL]Ditch WTO rice accord?


With a hearing ended on the WTO deal on rice imports on Wednesday, the National Assembly will now have to decide whether to endorse, reject or postpone action on the multilateral accord. But it will find it harrowing to make a decision because each of the three options available poses formidable risks.

The hearing began on Monday to determine whether or not the government concluded "backdoor" agreements on concessions when it negotiated an agreement on new import quotas last year. But the hearing proved to be waste of time, as critics could not back up their accusations with evidence.

The government had its hands tied when it started negotiations because, under pressure from farmers' organizations, it had thrown away a valuable option to shift to tariff-based imports. It had to make sizable concessions to rice-exporting countries if it was to keep quota increases within a tolerable range.

Indeed, the government promised China it would speed up an import risk analysis on apples and pears, a move to drop them from an import ban at an early date. It will be a matter of time until low-priced Chinese fruits will crowd out domestic products. The government made similar concessions to other countries.

In return, the government obtained consent to incremental quota increases from 4 percent of total consumption in 2004 to slightly less than 8 percent in 2014.

Though critics may claim with justification that the government gave more than it received, they cannot charge that it entered into "backdoor agreements." As the government says, it was necessary to conclude "ancillary agreements" on concessions to bargain an acceptable increase in import quotas.

This is not to say that the government did well to make no mention of the separate concessionary agreements when it announced at yearend that it concluded an agreement on an import quota increase. It deserved public criticism that it attempted to mislead farmers by hiding the concessions.

Now farmers' groups are pressuring the National Assembly to kill the motion for ratification while demanding negotiations all over again. They threaten to stage various demonstrations, including hunger protests. But what they fail to see is that they cannot have their cake and eat it. They will have to make a choice between continued protection from the increased import quotas and a shift to liberalization for tariff-based imports.

The reason is that renegotiations on quota increases are realistically impossible. Even if rice exporters should agree, they have few reasons to accept an offer of concessions less onerous to Korea, the only rice importer in the world that demands protection against full liberalization for another 10 years.

A realistic alternative is for the government to take the process of starting liberalization with high tariff rates. It will become necessary for Korea, the 12th largest trading nation in the world, to notify the WTO of its decision in this regard should the National Assembly refuse to approve the motion.

The National Assembly will find it difficult to veto the motion, given its grave implications for Korea as a nation relying heavily on trade to generate growth. At the same time, it will find it equally difficult to ignore the demands of farmers, given their lopsided voting power.

Under these circumstances, the National Assembly may be tempted to delay a vote on the motion until after its regular session starts in September. But it will solve no problem. Instead, it will create new conflict with rice exporters.

What it needs to do is to rise to the occasion and vote for the motion during the current session. If its members ever should serve the nation at the expense of their constituency interests, this surely is one such occasion.

2005.06.17




Time ripe for new approach toward China


The Daily Yomiuri/Asia News Network
Relations between Japan and China have been strained for some time now.

China seems to have become increasingly touchy, with a rash of massive anti-Japanese demonstrations in April and the last-minute cancellation of Vice Premier Wu Yi's planned meeting in Tokyo with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in May.

A key factor behind China's growing dissatisfaction with Japan is the prime minister's visits to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.

Koizumi has visited the shrine, which is dedicated to the war dead including Class-A war criminals convicted by the Tokyo war crimes tribunal, every year since taking office in 2001. The prime minister has vowed to visit Yasukuni this year as well.

Another irritant to China may be the inclusion of the Taiwan issue at the so-called two-plus-two meeting in February of the Japan-U.S. Security Consultative Committee, which declared the two countries would "encourage the peaceful resolution of issues concerning the Taiwan Strait through dialogue."

Beijing may have taken the committee statement as a sign that Japan was departing from its support of "one China."

Other irritants to China include recent moves by Japan to phase out new yen loan projects for China and the dispute over China's oil and gas field development in the East China Sea.

When seen from the Chinese point of view, these developments give the impression that Japan's policy toward China is changing.

It is true that Japan's security and foreign policy have changed.

The transformation, however, does not mean the resuscitation of militarism that Beijing is afraid of, but instead signifies that Japan is shifting towards becoming an ordinary country.

Japan is seeking to shift away from its conventional excessively conciliatory stand toward China that was demonstrated by repeated apologies for Japan's wartime past.

But there is no doubting that Japan should not forget its past actions. The government should be considered honest for committing itself to building friendly ties with China on the basis of lessons of the past.

The deterioration in bilateral ties was triggered by the appointment of Koizumi to the premiership in April 2001. He took power with a public pledge to make a visit to Yasukuni Shrine on Aug. 15, the anniversary of the end of World War II.

A month later, I was a member of the Japanese press corps visiting China when Beijing was strongly calling on Koizumi not to make the visit.

A senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official, in an unofficial meeting with the press corps, reiterated Beijing's position wanting to stop Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni.

Having covered Koizumi for a long time, I told the meeting that Koizumi was a man who never changed his mind and that I believed he most likely would visit Yasukuni Shrine again.

Koizumi has tended to take his foreign policy advice from close aides in his office rather than from the Foreign Ministry, forcing the pro-China bureaucrats in the ministry, who once ran China policy in tandem with the Hashimoto faction, to alter their approach.

More fundamentally, the change in policy approach has taken place with a surge in public opinion calling for the change driven by the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States and Koizumi's snap visit to North Korea on Sept. 17, 2002.

The Sept. 11 attacks exposed international terrorist networks as a new threat to the international community while Koizumi's trip to Pyongyang led to the revelation that the totalitarian state was responsible for abducting Japanese and was developing nuclear weapons capability.

These two events made the Japanese people, who had been ridiculed for taking peace and security for granted, waken to the need to ensure national security.

It was against this background of transformation of public opinion that legislation related to national contingencies, which had long been deemed a political taboo, was enacted in 2003 and 2004.

The legislation included a law stipulating the response to a military or terrorist attack on Japan and another one outlining steps the government would take to protect the population in such a crisis.

In addition, China's extraordinary economic growth and bolstering of its military might in recent years raise issues for national security.

Defense Agency Director General Yoshinori Ono, in a meeting in Singapore on June 5 with his British counterpart John Reid, pointed out, "Although we don't consider China a menace to Japan, there are a number of problems pending between the two countries."

Ono cited China's failure to boost transparency of its military spending, the infringement of Japan's exclusive economic zone by a Chinese nuclear submarine and marine resources research and oil field development activities in waters close to this country.

Ono's remarks are a reflection of public opinion in favor of an assertive stance by Japan over issues of national interest such as the territorial dispute over the Senkaku (Diaoyu in Chinese) Islands in the East China Sea off Okinawa Prefecture.

On the economic front, however, two-way trade value between Japan and China surpassed that between Japan and the United States in 2004, making China Japan's biggest trade partner.

Given the rapidly deepening interdependence between Japan and China, nobody in Japan wants to see bilateral relations worsening.

Even after Koizumi is replaced there will be little possibility of the public throwing its support behind any excessively conciliatory approach toward China.

China is now at the threshold of becoming an economic power and shedding its status as a developing country.

Prompted by rapidly shifting international security environment, Japan is set to break out of pacifist isolationism in dealing with national security in a bid to become an ordinary country.

In the final analysis, Japan and China should understand that the character of countries change over time.

Kazunori Ozaki is a deputy political news editor of The Yomiuri Shimbun. - Ed.
By Kazunori Ozaki

2005.06.16




China rebuts US textile import limit


Vice-Premier Wu Yi rebuked Monday the US for unilaterally limiting textile imports from China.

Disputes, she said, should be settled within the World Trade Organization (WTO) framework.

Wu's comments came days after the country's 10-hour negotiations with the European Union (EU) hammered out an agreement and averted a textile trade war.

Making the remarks at the 2005 Pacific Basin Economic Council (PBEC) International General Meeting in Hong Kong, Wu lashed out at recent US moves to impose unilateral limitations on Chinese textile imports.

Addressing her speech to hundreds of business leaders in the region, Wu said: "The setting of unilateral restrictions on some Chinese textile products by the US has impaired the rights of mainland enterprises."

Wu said the China-EU deal was proof that trade rows can be resolved on the principles of equality, mutual benefit and respect.

On Saturday, China and the EU reached agreement on the annual growth of 10 categories of exports to the European market.

China is working to meet WTO trade regulations by developing a more open and dynamic economic system, she said.

She said China would ensure a balance between economic growth and the sustainability of human and natural resources.

China will step up its use of coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power as well as other new energies.

The vice-premier also mapped out five-point principles to call on the countries in the Asia-Pacific region to join hands in world peace and development.
2005.06.15



Powercomm Corp.granted high-speed Internet license


The Ministry of Information and Communication yesterday allocated a high-speed Internet license to Powercomm Corp., allowing the company to sell Internet services to individual customers as early as September.

The country's telecom policymaker also granted seven licenses for Internet-based telephone services, with fixed-line telephone operators KT Corp., Hanarotelecom Inc. and Dacom Corp. securing spots.

The Communication Ministry said it plans to announce the license conditions for the companies by September and allow them to start service.

"We are carefully approaching the case on Powercomm and its license conditions, considering its extensive impact on the market," said Oh Nam-seok, an official at the Communication Ministry's telecommunications resources management division.

Powercomm, the subsidiary of Internet operator Dacom, controls a network that provides the second-widest high-speed Internet coverage nationwide behind telecom giant KT. The two companies combine to control about 84 percent of Internet subscriber lines.

The company has been generating revenue by leasing their networks to other Internet service providers such as Hanarotelecom but has wanted to expand beyond the corporate market.

With Powercomm allowed to sell Internet services to individual customers, the broadband Internet sector is bracing for the possibility of a fierce marketing battle that could erode profits at companies.

According to the Communication Ministry, the number of Korea's broadband Internet subscribers increased just 1 percent year-on-year to 11.92 million in 2004.

The growth rate is a significant decline from 101 percent in 2001 and 33 percent in 2002.

Korea's Internet penetration rate passed the 70 percent mark last year, with 31.6 million of the country's 48 million citizens having online access.

"The high-speed Internet market is approaching saturation and Powercomm will have to rely for much of its growth in luring away customers from KT and Hanrotelecom.

Marketing costs will rise and average revenue per user will dip," said Woori Securities analyst Stan Jung.

Dacom, the high-speed Internet and long-distance telephony affiliate of the LG Group, is planning full-scale efforts to strengthen its market share with the addition of Powercomm into their lineup.

The company believes Powercomm's advanced infrastructure in optical and HFC (hybrid/fiber coax) networks could give them a competitive advantage in the LAN-based high-speed Internet market.

Powercomm's entry to the Internet market is striking fear in mid-tier players, such as No. 2 carrier Hanarotelecom, who is concerned that their current reliance on access to Powercomm's network could eventually hurt their competitiveness.

Of Hanarotelecom's 3.9 million customers, around 2.28 million of them are provided services through HFC networks, which the company borrows from Powercomm.

For the licenses for Internet-based telephony, slated for commercial services in the second-half of the year, KT, Hanarotelcom and Dacom will join Dreamline Corp., Enterprise Networks Co., SK Telink Co. and SK Networks Co. in the nascent market.

Voice-over-Internet protocol technology enables voice signals to be sent over the Internet. VoIP services could provide cheaper voice services for consumers and allow access to features such as video-telephony and datacasting.

The government believes Internet telephony can increase competition in the slowing traditional telephone and broadband Internet markets, with the comparatively low cost for technology putting up a low entry barrier for new companies.

Government officials predict Korea will complete its transition to IP-based telephony by 2010, while generating 5.3 trillion won ($4.6 billion) in service revenue by then.

Last year, the Ministry of Information and Communication dedicated an IP-only access code, 070, for VoIP services in an attempt to promote online telephony services.

The IP-only prefix can be used anywhere in the country and will be assigned to operators providing services that meet the quality requirements set by the Telecommunications Technology Association.

(thkim@heraldm.com)

By Kim Tong-hyung



Seoul opens Korean version of N.Y. Central Park today


The Seoul Metropolitan government today opens the Seoul Forest - dubbed the Korean version of New York's Central Park - in eastern Seoul along the Han River.

The ecological park in Ttukseom in Seongdong, has abundant trees and wildlife, providing opportunities for citizens to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

The forest has 1.1 million square meters, or one-third of Central Park, and joins the city after two years of construction and an investment of 235 billion won.

The area, which was used for horse racing and golf playing, is comprised of five themed parks. Right next to its front gate, a park for culture and art will provide facilities such as a plaza, outdoor concert hall and soccer field.

The second park is an ecological forest filled with a variety of trees such as chestnut, pine, and cherry with animals like squirrels, deer and elk. Visitors are not allowed to enter the area, but they can enjoy nature from the observatory bridge which crosses over the forest.

The third and fourth parks will give opportunities for children and other visitors to experience nature.

The fifth is the Han River Park, located along the river and connected to a cycle path.

To celebrate the grand opening of the park, the Seoul government will hold events from today till June 26. At 7 p.m. this evening, the Open Concert, a popular music show on KBS network, is expected to attract 30,000 citizens to mark both the birth of the forest and its 600th run.

Other events include sightseeing of the forest in a hot-air balloon, pantomime performance and face-painting. Details about the celebrations are available on the Web site at parks.seoul. go.kr/seoulforest (only in Korean).

Citizens can get to the forest after a five-minute walk from exit No. 8 at Ttukseom Station on Line No. 2. The environmentally-friendly place has a parking lot for only 330 cars and parking fees are 300 won per ten minutes.

(hjjin@heraldm.com)
By Jin Hyun-joo
2005.06.18

[김동석]

좋은 게시물이네요. 스크랩 해갈게요~^^