A quadrennial report for the periods 2015–2018 submitted by the non-governmental organization in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council through the Secretary-General pursuant to Economic and Social Council resolution 1996/31

 

E/2020/32 (Part I) for Report of the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations on its 2020 regular session

 

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Writing summaries

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This year falls on the Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice (CCEJ) 30th anniversary. Of our particular interest in a new order to obviate the incorrigible structure of Korean economy, economic iniquity and grand corruption and constructive ambiguity, is the report by CCEJ on our new vision for the future in Korean society. This report has the purpose of prescribing and advocating antidotes. Our report involves the man of the street in having been meaning to make the citizens’ movement for the reform agenda, six goals and twenty-three detailed targets and with about eighty methods on the basis of the historical background and experiences. And we hope you can have to come up with the least common denominator from our report to your own alternatives.

In this background, the past years since 1987 has seen the plutocracies, the Chaebol’s corporatocratic centralization of economic powers and the property tycoon’s housing speculation for windfall profits over and over again—in effect, the lowering self-empowerment of the affected class, youths and women and working people; we citizens were in it, and the ordinary citizens without hope and despair but together with CCEJ couldn’t help rising up against the worsening economic crises. In particular, the past few years of 2015–2017 saw the 2016 South Korean political scandal on their own way onto the political, legal and economic corruptions: the ex-President Park’s abuse of power into the lobbyist’s hands; the chief justice’s court-packing scandal with the Circumlocution Office; and their collusive ties between the government and the judiciary and the conglomerate Samsung. And we the people could have got to impeach some of them against the crisis of democracy—still, the other daredevils wouldn’t have reigned on it. After that time, the rising of the Moon when we would hope to see the nation through the selling of the President to return to normalcy, the recent years of 2017–2019 had got to see his privatized governance—bureaucrats’ neo-feudalism underneath politicians’ populism—to the Chaebol’s innovative ambiguities under the name of “the Inclusive Growth of the Innovative Nation.” Of course, lately his fraternal approach to the North Korea crisis happened to be more or less unlike at his will; anyway at all, we appraised at good will. Meanwhile, his paternal and patrimonial approach to Korean socioeconomic crises had got to dare paid for systemic risks. As a matter of fact, sometimes when due to the monopoly regulation on patrimonial assets of conglomerates, the Chaebols grumbled to his government that was levying property, inheritance and donation taxes, President Moon nodded, his bureaucrats and his politicians were going to make regulatory innovation not only to circumvent the tax exemption provisions but to deregulate the company provisions on the capital market though a Chaebol had committed accounting fraud, tax omission and tax evasion. And money changes hands. Thanks to them, our ordinary citizens had to pay for income tax more and for capital loss more. Or, sometimes when due to economic downturns on the property market, the property tycoons also grunted his government out pump-priming projects, President Moon nodded, his bureaucrats and his politicians already made regulatory innovation bulldozing out safeguards, such as the preliminary feasibility test of the development projects to gain related profits; thanks to them, our ordinary citizens couldn’t help being expropriated dog-cheap out of our home and out of our workspace to be bulldozed through. And money comes, money goes. The whole nation is booming housing speculations more, falling into the incorrigible maladies of windfall income more. In recapitulation, the government hadn’t to challenge hard tasks, hard targets only, like a sitting duck, as always.

In this result, we learn the people couldn’t beat the man of system with only the candlelight campaign; without the government own will and its fair share and its intervention, the system is too vulnerable to dynamic market and socioeconomic order against both magnates: the Chaebol and the property tycoon. In the same vein, we’re now suggesting our reform agenda, a vision that is, goals and detailed targets by 2030 and with our alternatives, as the attached report: CCEJ's quadrennial report to ECOSOC in 2015-2018 (*Click and Download this)