[Opinion] 780 Signatures

This is a non-fiction story told by “A,” a former minister of Construction and Transportation. During “A’s” term as minister, a Korean businessman residing in Japan came to his office. With a complaining tone in his voice, the businessman explained, “I wanted to build something grand in my homeland so I started constructing a building, but soon after starting the construction, it was brought to a halt by Korean regulations.”

Upon hearing this, minister A called for a thorough investigation to look into what was behind the regulation stopping the Korean-Japanese. After a very strenuous search, he found the source to be an out-of-date, a then 10 year-old restriction which had been regulated by the Office of the Prime Minister to local authorities at the time.

Though the times have changed, the restrictions appear to not have done so. At a recent meeting of the leaders of economic organizations hosted by Prime Minister Goh Kun, Park Yong-sung, chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said, “We’ve been altering regulations to a small degree, but the main sculpture remains the same now as it was in the past. Just building one golf course requires 780 signatures.” Getting one signature a day would equal to 2 years and fifty days for approval. In reality, it takes even longer. The usual authorization time for a golf course can take up to a period of 3-5 years. Because many people who invest in golf course constructions are unaware of this lengthy process, reality has ended up with numerous bankrupt cases.

One golf course can bring a county local tax profit of up to 2-3 billion won, and 50 to 150 part-timers are employed daily. Therefore, any local county interested in securing its finances and increasing employment rates would be tempted to at least consider building a golf course. However, a new competitor has emerged on the surface, as Chinese local authorities have become the significant rival to its Korean counterpart. The prospect? In short, it is far from promising.

The cost of building a golf course in China is less than 10 percent of the Korean price. What’s more, the Chinese local authorities go to the trouble of escorting the businessman to collect all necessary signatures, which saves considerable time. With all this right up to the final approval, the whole process needs only an average of three months. There would be absolutely no reason for the investor to say no.

Earlier this year, in March, the government announced it would relieve these regulations to a large degree, due to the increasing loss of foreign currency that is being used to golf overseas, a result that comes from a disparity in supply and demand of the golf courses at home. These golfers who declare tax on their golf clubs, are at a steep rise in number with this year’s figure to exceed 100,000. Considering other golfers who prefer to hire golf clubs in the destination country, the foreign currency leak could be well over 1,000 billion won, estimated.

Six months later, the plan to relieve regulation announced on March has still not been carried out. It is bad enough that the manufacturing sectors are moving abroad, but if this trend continues to the service sectors, where on earth are we to live on now.