Korea needs to raise competitiveness in social integration: new report

Korea has been faring relatively well economically, but it still lags behind in terms of social integration, infrastructure and other non-economic areas, a government report showed Wednesday.
“Our country is faring well in the economic sector, but we remain weak in terms of social integration, social capital and natural resources,” the finance ministry said in the report that analyzed the nation’s competitiveness in comparison with other advanced countries.
“Economic indicators have improved as we coped with the global economic crisis more effectively than other advanced countries. But improvement is still needed for non-economic factors in such areas as social integration and social capital.”
The report is based on 259 indicators in four different areas ― economy, social integration, environment and infrastructure.
The report, the second of its kind, does not provide the overall competitiveness ranking but each indicator was compared with 34 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
In the economy area, Korea’s growth rate ranked second as of 2010, up from fifth in the previous report. Its per-capita gross domestic product improved from 25th to 22nd.
The nation’s labor productivity grew at the fastest pace in 2010, compared with ranking 12th globally in 2009.
In the social integration and other non-economic areas, however, many indicators showed that Korea has a long way to go before competing with other advanced countries.
The gap between the haves and have-nots, in particular, appears to be widening. In terms of income inequality based on the Gini coefficient, Korea ranked 20th in 2008, down from 17th in the previous report.
In terms of the ratio of income paid to female workers, the nation ranked the lowest among 19 countries surveyed. Korea also came in 28th out of 31 countries surveyed in terms of the level of media freedom.
In infrastructure, Korea lagged behind especially in terms of road construction. It ranked 17th in the field, down from the previous 15th. Its ranking for public education spending per student to GDP also slipped to 9th from 6th. Among indicators related to the environment, Korea’s ranking dropped in per-capita carbon emissions from 24th to 28th.
The ratio of fossil fuel consumption also increased here, with its ranking in the field dropping from 18th to 21st, the report showed. (Yonhap News)