Korea introduced three major health-care reforms: in financing (1999), pharmaceuticals (2000), and provider payment (2001). In these three reforms, new government policies merged more than 350 health insurance societies into a single payer, separated drug prescribing by physicians from dispensing by pharmacists, and attempted to introduce a new prospective payment system. The change of government, the president’s keen interest in health policy, and democratization in public policy process toward a more pluralist context opened a policy window for reform. Civic groups played an active role in the policy process by shaping the proposals for reform —a major change from the previous policy process that was dominated by government bureaucrats. However, more pluralistic policy process also allowed key interest groups to intervene at critical points in implementation (sometimes in support, sometimes in opposition), with smaller political costs than previously.

Strong support by the rural population and labor unions contributed to the financing reform. In the pharmaceutical reform, which was a big threat to physician income, the president and civic groups succeeded in quickly setting the reform agenda; the medical profession was unable to block the adoption of the reform but their strikes influenced the content of the reform during implementation. Physician strikes also helped them block the implementation of the payment reform. Future reform efforts in Korea will need to consider the political management of vested interest groups and the design of strategies for both scope and sequencing of policy reforms.

Soonman Kwon is Professor of Health Economics and Policy, and Director of the BK (Brain Korea) Center for Aging and Health Policy in Seoul National University, South Korea. After he received his Ph.D. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, he was assistant professor of public policy at the University of Southern California in 1993-96. Prof. Kwon has held visiting positions at Harvard School of Public Health (Fulbright Scholar and Tekemi Fellow), London School of Economics (Chevening Scholar), Univ. of Trier of Germany (DAAD Scholar), and Univ of Toronto. He is on the editorial boards of Social Science and Medicine (Elsevier), Health Economics Policy and Law (Cambridge U Press), and Health Systems in Transition (HiT, European Observatory). He has occasionally worked as a short-term consultant of WHO, ILO, and GTZ (German Technical Cooperation) on health financing and policy in China, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Philippines, and Vietnam. He has also been a consultant of Korean government for the evaluation of its development aid programs in North Korea, Ecuador, Fiji, Mexico and Peru.

This talk will examine the challenges and problems that South Korea faces on its way to full-fledged democracy. The ideological composition of Korean society, the role of political parties, civil society and media as well as the attitude of public intellectuals will be assessed.

Se Il Park is a 2008-09 visiting scholar at APARC’s Korean Studies Program, and a professor of law and economics in the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University. He is the founder and the chairman of the board of Hansun Foundation for Freedom and Happiness, an independent, non-partisan think tank based in Seoul devoted to providing innovative and practical public policy recommendations to South Korean society at large.

Park is the author of many books, including Communitarian Liberalism (2008); National Strategy for Sunjinwha in Korea (National strategy to make Korea a world-class nation) (2006); Blueprint for Tertiary Education Reform in Korea (2003); Strategy for Presidential Success: Authority, Role, and Responsibility (2002); Growth, Productivity, and Vision for Korean Economy (2001); Reforming Labor Management Relations: lessons from the Korean experience: 1996-1997 (2000); and Law and Economics (2000).

Park served as Senior Secretary to the President for policy planning and social welfare in the Office of the President of the Republic of Korea from 1995 to 1998, and was a member of National Assembly of the Republic of Korea from 2004 to 2005. He also worked at the Korea Development Institute as a Senior Fellow from 1980 to 1985. Park received his B.A. from Seoul National University and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Cornell University.

This event is supported by the generous grant from Academy of Korean Studies in Korea.

"Sunshine" policy, named after one of Aesop's fables, has been the catch phrase of South Korea's appeasement policy toward North Korea to stimulate and restructure the already collapsed North Korean economy and eventually to convert North Korea to a more conciliatory and cooperative state.

After 10 years of shining the sunlight on North Korea, however, evidences that those self-imposed goals have been achieved are rather scarce. This suggests that, from the beginning, the basic premises of Sunshine policy must have been fatally incongruous with the reality: North Korea should not have been portrayed as an innocent traveler leisurely walking down the street. Or, perhaps, the policy toward North Korea should have pursued more serious goals than just stripping a man of his coat.

In this talk, Dr. Park proposes an alternative to the "Sunshine vs North Wind", and discusses the policy implications of his proposal.

For the past 14 years, Dr. Jongkyu Park has worked on various macroeconomic policy issues of Korean economy including economic forecasts, monetary policy, inflation, budget deficit, exchange rate, savings rate, population aging, real estate bubble, and Japan's economic slowdown and revival. He received B.A. in Economics from Seoul National University in Korea, M.S. in Statistics from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University.

Some people said North Korea would not survive the end of the USSR and dissolution of the Soviet bloc. Some people said Kim Jong Il's likely tenure could be measured in months. Some people said that North Korea was on the verge of collapse in 1997; some people, in fact, proclaimed that the economy had already collapsed.

What sorts of myths and misperceptions do we entertain and perpetuate that make it difficult for us to deal with North Korea coherently?

Robert Carlin is a 2007 Pantech Fellow at Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and has been a visiting fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University since 2005. After receiving an A.M degree from Harvard University's East Asian Regional Studies program, he joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1971. From 1974 to 1988, he was a senior North Korea media analyst in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), where he received the director of the CIA's Exceptional Analyst Award. From 1989 to 2002, he was the chief of the Northeast Asia Division in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Concurrently, from 1993 to 2002, Mr. Carlin served as senior policy advisor to the U.S. special envoy for talks with North Korea, taking part in every significant set of U.S.-DPRK negotiations of which there were many--during those years. He was on the delegation accompanying Secretary of State Madeline Albright to Pyongyang in October 2000. From 2003 to 2005, Mr. Carlin was senior political advisor to the executive director of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), leading numerous KEDO negotiating teams to the DPRK. Altogether, he has made 25 trips to North Korea.

Much of Mr. Carlin's analysis on North Korea from his years at FBIS has been declassified and is available either in the "Trends in Communist Propaganda" or "Trends in Communist Media". Over the years, he has written chapters for several books on the Korean issue including, most recently, "Talk to Me, Later," appearing in North Korea: 2005 and Beyond. In 2006, he co-authored an IISS Adelphi paper "North Korean Reform: Politics, Economics and Security." His essay on negotiating with North Korea will appear in Korea 2007 - Politics, Economy, Society. Over his career, Mr. Carlin has lectured at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, the State Department's Foreign Service Institute, foreign ministries and intelligence organizations abroad, and numerous universities.