Ways sought to track happiness

President Lee Myung-bak, left, greets dignitaries who attend the third OECD World Forum yesterday in Bexco, Busan, before he gives an opening speech for the forum. By Cho Mun-gyu

The third OECD World Forum on “Statistics, Knowledge and Policy” kicked off yesterday at the southern Korean port city of Busan.

The four-day event will include discussions by politicians, policy makers, journalists and statisticians on charting progress in society and improving the quality of life.

In his opening remarks, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak proposed developing a new index that could measure the quality of life of people. “We agree that individual happiness and the quality of life must be the standard by which the development of a society is measured,” Lee said. “And Korea regards our people’s happiness as the top priority and tries to improve their quality of life. We will develop an indicator to gauge their quality of life and keep our eye on people’s happiness.”

The forum is jointly organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and Statistics Korea. The inaugural forum was held in Italy in 2004. Turkey hosted the next one in 2007. The first day of the forum featured discussions on national indicators measuring dimensions of progress, and comparisons of progress of different regions. Participants included university professors, statisticians, bureaucrats and officials from the United Nations.

Today’s session will focus on new paradigms to measure progress. Tomorrow, participants will discuss “How can we improve the way in which evidence on progress promotes change?” On the last day, awards will be presented to those who have made contributions to the forum.

The third edition of the OECD World Forum was launched to implement the Istanbul Declaration, which was signed at the second OECD World Forum by the UN, the European Commission, the OECD and the World Bank among others.

By Yoo Jee-ho [jeeho@joongang.co.kr]