Nuclear development in Korea, beginning since 1959, has been evaluated that it has contributed enormously in the economic and industrial development in Korea. However, few people seem to recognize this fact. It seems general perception of people that ...
Nuclear development in Korea, beginning since 1959, has been evaluated that it has contributed enormously in the economic and industrial development in Korea. However, few people seem to recognize this fact. It seems general perception of people that nuclear policies have been determined by a group of special elites without open discussion, differently from other policy areas. In this regard, this study aims to analyze the actors who intervened the decision processes and their interactions and consequences. Also, this study is to lead nuclear policy making processes into a transparent glass box out of a black box.
This study views the forty years of nuclear policy making since the administration of Park Jung Hee until the administration of Kim Young Sam, which can be categorized into three stages according to the contents and maturity of nuclear policies; 1) nuclear policy formation phase, 2) nuclear technology self-reliance phase, and 3) nuclear industry reformation phase.
This study performs the analytical comparison in terms of policy actors, relation structure and interaction between actors. The summary of this study is as follows.
First, it is found that nuclear policy decisions have not been always made only by the government in a closed environment. This study finds that various non-governmental policy actors have played a crucial role in the nuclear policy making processes, though they were unseen to outsiders due to the nature of nuclear policies. Non-governmental actors such as KEPCO(Korea Electric Power Company) and KAERI(Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute) have been at the center of nuclear policy making processes.
A special characteristic of the nuclear policy network is that the will of the highest policy decision maker (President) in the government gave direct impact on the policy making process. In 1960''s, the President intervened and changed some nuclear policies that had been already agreed among policy actors without further policy making processes. In 1990''s, the President suggested his implicit opinion on the policies on the nuclear industry reformation, which lead to the reiteration of the policy making processes and changed the original decisions. These examples illustrate the strong power of the President on policy decision makings in the Korean political system such as presidential system.
Second, the relational structure of the nuclear policy network has been changed according to the policy contents and the policy environment. In terms of the boundary of the policy network, its scale has expanded as the number of actors increased in the policy decision making processes. This phenomenon can be seen as one of the results of the transition from the authoritarian regime to the democratic one, but also can be seen as the result of the rise of new policy actors in the government and in the nuclear industry.
In 1960''s, the relational structure of the nuclear policy network was formed only inside the government, representing extreme exclusiveness. However, as time goes on, the relational structure was continuously changed to relatively open and horizontally equal structure. Especially, in 1990''s, the Congress and the press participated in the processes, and also individual stake-holders tried to enter into the policy network with forming interest groups. This implies that the openness of the nuclear policy network will improve as more divergent policy actors appear in the nuclear policy areas.
Third, in terms of interactions in the policy network, there have been repetitions of cooperation and conflict. Policy making actors have shown mutually dependent relations with various interest groups since they could not dominate the policy resources. The range of policy changes became wide and the duration of policy making became long as the conflict in the policy network became deep. It is important who lead the policy network since it affected the result of policy results. Its is also crucial for interest groups to maintain cooperative relationship with actors who lead the policy network or have influential power on it.
Fourth, the status changes of policy actors have affected on the policy result, which implies that the opinions of major actors in the network have been reflected in the decision making processes. Especially, the confidence of the policy actors was a key factor to give influence to decision makings. This shows that the power structure among the actors in the policy network is close related to the result of decision makings.
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inally, the policy network in the nuclear policy making processes have evolved from a loose sub-government model to policy community model. Nuclear expert institutions have played a key role in the nuclear policy community. It has possibility to show the nature of issue-network at nuclear policy areas in the democratic social structure and current divergent society. However, considering the specialized nature of nuclear policies, the nuclear policy network seems to remain the sub-government or policy community model leaded by the government and nuclear expert institutions. The change of nuclear policy network influenced the results of policy makings, and the changes of policy result caused an effect on the characteristics of nuclear policy network.
Key Words : nuclear policy, nuclear r&d, policy network, policy community, nuclear network, nuclear power generation, policy change, AEC(Atomic Energy Commission), MOST(Ministry of Science of Technology), MOCIE (Ministry of Commerce, Industry, and Energy)