Contracting Out in Korean Local Governments: Current Situation and Challenges Ahead

Abstract

Faced with an economic crisis in the 1990s, the Korean government pushed on strongly with a privatization policy as one of the main tools for reforming government. In compliance with the national policy, local governments in Korea began to expand privatization in the 1990s. In spite of this development in practice, systemic efforts at assessing privatization have been deficient in academia. Consequently, little is known about privatization in Korean local governments. This study is intended to remedy such a deficiency. It introduces readers to Korean local government experiences with contracting out which is one of the most typical forms of privatization. Main topics in this study include the background to and motivation for contracting out in Korean local governments, features and results of contracting out, problems encountered in the process of contracting out and the tasks ahead. For the discussion, it analyzes the actual cases of two regional governments and 17 municipal governments.