Labor Reform Must Be Based on Free-Market Economic Principles

The economy must be revitalized through labor reform

Professor Dongwoon Park’s early work focused on “labor market flexibility.” Confident that a free labor market would bring prosperity, he called for bold reform. Labor Market Flexibility, also the first volume in the Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)’s “Freedom and Reform” series, is a masterwork that fully embodies his academic achievements.

He studied how the United Kingdom reformed its rigid labor market and regained prosperity, and wrote Thatcherism: The Great Victory of the Free Market Economy, a book on Margaret Hilda Thatcher. Through the British case of successful labor reform, he presented the direction Korea should take.

In the 1970s, by economic indicators, the United Kingdom ranked last among the G7 countries. However, as a result of Prime Minister Thatcher’s structural reforms, Britain became a free market economy country comparable to the United States. Accordingly, through Labor Market Flexibility and Structural Reform and Unemployment Measures, Professor Dongwoon Park emphasized that structural reform alone was the prescription for revitalizing the Korean economy. He also explained in Market Economy or Anti-Market Economy? why the Kim Dae-jung administration’s structural reforms fell short of expectations.

The free market economy and its impact on Korean society

In Where Is the Korean Labor Market Headed Now?, Professor Dongwoon Park also repeatedly stressed that the Korean economy could not survive unless it transformed into a free market economy. After that, he produced numerous books presenting directions for reform in our society based on the free market economy. In Korea in Crisis, the Market Economy Is the Breakthrough, he makes clear that policies that depart from the principles of the market economy are bound to fail. He pointed out that economic problems yield the most desirable results when addressed according to market principles, and that those results can be just. In this book, he evaluates the performance of the Korean economy through international comparison, citing the prosperous periods of Ireland and the United Kingdom, both faithful to market economy principles, as success stories, while also introducing the growth periods of the United States, New Zealand, and China as successful cases.

By contrast, as examples of countries where the market economy failed, he discusses North Korea, Argentina—whose per capita income in 2003 was lower than in the 1970s—and Japan, which fell into prolonged stagnation. Their common denominator was that anti-market policies were the cause. In that sense, he points out the harmful consequences that anti-market legislation in Korea would bring. Written on the basis of abundant data, this book can be described as both an introductory text on market economics and a practical guide. For merchants in the marketplace, where real economic activity takes place, it serves as a guide to the realities of the market economy; for students of economics, it can serve as a textbook on market economics. It is also, in effect, a textbook on economic reform that presents the direction of reform to policymakers.

In Why I Became a Liberal, Professor Dongwoon Park explained why he became a liberal and described his life in these words: “I became a liberal through life experience and exploration of the academic world. The questions left to me by my eldest brother, who went to the North, and the intellectual shock I received from Friedman’s Free to Choose made me a liberal. From the moment I began to understand what a liberal is, I have been deeply immersed in liberalism ever since. Nearly all the many things I have written have been related to the free market economy. I have constantly tried to discuss liberalism at the level of positive analysis rather than norm.” He had a firm belief that “the free market economy makes us prosperous.” He lived as a scholar and educator with greater faith in and passion for the free market economy than anyone else, even opening the first “Market Economy” course at Dankook University. Through his writing and research, he helped the free market economy take root in Korea.

Establishing a Christian perspective on the market economy

Because Professor Dongwoon Park was a scholar devoted to living faithfully as a Christian, he wrote many books on Christianity and economics. A representative work is A Journey Through the Market Economy with the Bible. The book was consistently well received by many readers, and his research into discovering the market economy within Christianity made a major contribution to broadening the base of support for the free market economy.

The Bible, Jesus, and Entrepreneurship is an outstanding book that presents how economic issues should be interpreted and what economic principles should be adopted in accordance with the Bible. In the book, he sheds light on leadership and entrepreneurship through figures from the Bible. The first example is Abraham, who became the forefather of faith through obedience. Others include Jacob: becoming the father of the 12 tribes whose descendants would be as numerous as the stars; Joseph: preparing an opportunity for the refinement of faith through 430 years of slavery in Egypt; Moses: leading the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt and laying the foundation for the rule of law; Joshua: conquering the land of Canaan and completing the distribution of the land; David: unifying Israel and laying the foundation of a Christian nation; Solomon: building the Temple and laying the foundation of Christianity; Jesus: coming into this world to save human souls; Jesus’ twelve disciples: spreading Jesus’ teachings in all directions; and Paul: succeeding in evangelizing Rome and paving the way for Christianity to become a world religion.

Even while battling illness, he never stopped writing, and he also published the paper “An Evaluation of the Price Policies of Successive Governments” in Freedom and Market, the journal of the Korea Hayek Society. His dedicated research activities deeply inspired younger scholars.

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Original title: 자유시장 경제 원칙에 기초한 노동 개혁을 해야

Author: Sung-no Choi

Date: 2021-04-15

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=press&idx=23627