Who will take care of the economy in crisis?

“Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win,” said Gary Lineker, English striker whose team lost to Germany in penalty kick-out in the semifinal of the 1990 World Cup in Italy. The German football team continues to prove that “no one player is bigger than the team.” A similar saying can be applied to Korean politics. “The liberals work hard, and at the end, the conservative win.”

If I may give one advice to the opposition, how about fully supporting Park Geun-hye administration’s creative economy? Since the importance of growth is already recognized, the opposition may want to positively consider whether creative economy could be the stepping stone for growth. Creative economy could become a growth engine for the future.

However, creative economy takes time to bear fruits, and it is highly likely to fail in a short term. Therefore, the liberals and the conservatives need to leave their party interests behind and persistently pursue it to make it successful. It coincides with the progressives’ idea of fundamentally improving the economic structure rather than short-term measures in order to resolve inequality of income distribution. So it is contradictory that Saenuri Party floor leader Yu Seung-min advocated structural reform to enhance growth potential and criticize creative economy at the National Assembly speech.

State economic policy should be two-track: short-term boosts and long-term reform. While offering immediate supports for small businesses and economic vitalization measures, the structure of the national economy needs to be changed fundamentally. One of the solutions is creative economy.

Universities welcomed government’s creative economy campaign, and entrepreneurship of the young people is reviving. Large corporations also answer to the government policy. We need to keep the atmosphere for aspiring young entrepreneurs going. While the Sung Wan-jong scandal is sweeping the politics, someone has to take care of economy. If the opposition party takes charge, it will earn the trust of the citizens and economic policies would lead to better outcomes.

By Kang Byung-oh, Professor at Chung-Ang University