김영삼 정부 시기 조선산업의규제완화 정책과 담론정치

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to examine the contention of ideas amongst policy elites with regard to the shipbuilding industry during the Kim Young-sam administration. This study will examine how the lifting of the ‘Shipbuilding Industry Rationalization Measure’ in 1993 marks the beginning of a policy shift by the Kim Young-sam administration on its stance towards the shipbuilding industry from the perspective of discursive institutionalism. The Shipbuilding Industry Rationalization Measure (1989~1993) had been enacted in 1989 in order to regulate over-competition between Korean shipbuilding firms and their eager expansion of production facilities. However, months leading up to the lifting of the rationalization measure in 1993, worries about a foreseeable over-production occurring in the shipbuilding industry throughout the world and how the consequence of this occurrence could present itself as a major obstacle for local shipbuilders were raised both at home and abroad, which led many to ponder on the possibility of extending the rationalization measure by a few more years. In this context, two main questions are raised : First of all, why did the government decide to lift the Shipbuilding Industry Rationalization Measure in 1993 despite all the internal and external pressures that mounted against them? Next, why did the government continue to take strong deregulation measures toward the shipbuilding industry despite the increase in internal and external pressure? This paper observes how there existed a contention of ideas on the matter of industrial policy between neoliberal bureaucrats on the one hand, and government- controlled bureaucrats on the other and how the industrialization of the South Korean shipbuilding industry in the 1990s has radically changed as a result. In specific, discursive contention between bureaucrats and their grab for ‘legitimate authority’ came to shape the policy-making process, while it can also be concluded that the question of whether certain discourses could appeal to the political interests of President Kim Young-sam determined whether they were given the final say in shaping the policy. These discursive contentions within the Kim Young-sam administration influenced the shipbuilding industry by directing the general industrial policy towards the promotion of competition in the private sector and deregulation thereof. This change of industrial policy in the Korean shipbuilding industry that had consistently relied heavily on government regulation led to the excessive production of shipbuilding facilities and over-competition between Korean shipbuilding firms in the 1990s. In all of this, discursive institutionalism can be applied as a useful framework of analysis to make sense of the decision to lift the Shipbuilding Industry Rationalization Measure in 1993 and the deregulation of the shipbuilding industry throughout the 1990s.