• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.71-88
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• 2009

The Korean online gaming industry has seen rapid growth since the boom of information technology (IT) related industries, especially Internet and PC-bang or local area network (LAN) use, throughout the country. Online games are real-time games in which two or more players meet, compete, and cooperate in the same game space using the same communication network. Even though the growth rates of IT-related industries have recently slowed, the growth of the online gaming industry has increased, and Korean firms are expanding their businesses to countries all over the world. However, the online gaming industry is becoming an oligopoly, in which 4-5 leading companies occupy most online gaming markets. This situation presents a disadvantage to the Korean online gaming industry, since online players usually seek a diversity of online gaming contents and high quality online game services. Therefore, small- and medium-sized game developers must survive in this market by upgrading the quality of their online gaming services in an effort to provide differentiated goods and services in monopolistic competition markets. However, most venture companies in the online game industry, whether new or previously existing, are not able to obtain adequate financing. The objective of this paper is to examine the management environment for medium- and small-sized game developers in the Korean online gaming industry. By introducing the case of Grigon Entertainment, we try to identify the source of difficulty obtaining external financing for Korean venture firms in the online gaming industry.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.11 no.2 s.35
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• pp.43-54
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• 2007

Despite the importance of customer satisfaction corresponding to the phenomenal development of the gas industries, supplier-centered management still prevails in the city gas industry due to the monopolistic market environment. However, customer's demands for diverse and higher services are ever growing in the midst of the development and the accelerated competition of the service industries. In this context, customer satisfaction management may be the best style of management for establishing a short, mid and long-term foundation of growth. This paper derives directions for improving customer satisfaction management in such 3 areas as systematic, technological and service improvement from the environmental changes as well as from the customer needs. Based on the survey and comparative analysis of customer satisfaction, we also suggest 5 growth strategies to maintain sustainable development of the gas industry in the midst of competitive environment between city gas companies and among diversified energy businesses and to protect rights of the city gas consumers.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.47-72
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• 2007

Ideas do not become exhausted, and there are no diminishing returns in the creation of knowledge. Nonetheless, growth ultimately ceases in this simplest model of endogeneous innovation. The reasons are similar to those that are discussed in the context of the neoclassical model of capital accumulation. Even if the resource cost of creating new goods does not rise, the economic return to invention may decline as the number of available products increases. When the rate of return to R&D falls to the level of the discount rate, private agents cease to be willing to defer consumption in order to invest in product development. But, if we treat knowledge capital as a public capital considering of its non-appropriable benefits, economic growth can be sustained in the economy. Romer(1986) has pointed out that growth might be sustainable if the accumulation of knowledge is not subject to long-run diminishing returns. Actually Romer assumed diminishing returns in the production of private knowledge from available resources, but increasing returns in the production of output from labor and total (public and private) knowledge. His condition for the sustainability of long-run growth amounts to an assumption that the diminishing returns in the former activity do not outweigh the increasing returns in the latter. The Johansen(1988) cointegration test method is used for finding long-run equilibrium relationship between R&D input and the product innovation. Test results indicate the existence of cointegrating equation between each pair of regression variables including dependent variable in the knowledge production function. And, the signs of cointegrating vectors are well accord to the prediction of sustainable growth. In the empirical analysis, from all cases of the form for the knowledge production function, we could not reject the null hypothesis that R&D spillover effect is significant($H_{0}:\;{\gamma}=1$). In summary, we showed that considering goodness of fit of regression model, we can see that the empirical evidence is strongly in favor of the character of knowledge as the public knowledge capital. So, we can expect that by product innovation, economic growth can be sustained in the Korean economy.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.641-656
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• 2022

This article investigates how Baedal Minjok(BaeMin) has grown to be a dominant mobility platform operator in food delivery sector in South Korea and what roles its brand and branding have played in the process, drawing on the idea of origination. For the purpose, BaeMin is considered as a typical platformized mobility service provider and origination is framed to be an appropriate analytical lens for the business sector. For the origination conception, unlike mainstream neoclassical theory and concepts, is able to deal fairly well with the issues of imperfect competition, imperfect information, and monopolistic brand rent, which are apparent in today's platformized mobility services. Drawing evidence from textual data, empirical analysis pays particular attention to discursive and symbolic dimensions of BaeMin's socio-spatial biography. It is found that national origination underpinning ethnicity comprises an important pillar of BaeMin's brand and branding. Another form of place-based origination is also observed to matter, especially in the varied relation between the mobility service brand's owner and consumers. However, this configuration of BaeMin's brand origination has yet to be fully stabilized, as it has faced with serious challenges including brand vandalism and anti-brand movement especially since its merger to German food delivery platform giant Delivery Hero in 2020. This origination crisis moment appears to be associated with a series of contractions intrinsic to so-called 'platform capitalism'.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.103-126
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• 2010

The development of an industry including distribution sector is influenced by not only government policy but the related firms' behaviors. Recently the large-scale retailers have had more enormous channel power than any other distributors including monopolistic makers. Now is the time for government to prepare some policies against the unfair transaction behaviors by large-scale retailers. In this paper I tried to inquire into the distribution competition policy from a political correspondent point of view related with the transition of distribution system. For the purpose of this article I compared the case of Korea with Japan. According to the results so far inquired, there are some commons and differences in the cases of the two. Some suggestions are as follows. Considering the predominant position the concept of large-scale retailers is to be extended from a single store to numerous chain stores in the political level. Government needs to examine the standard propriety for large-scale retailer; the size of selling area and amount of sales a year. When a large-scale retailer store is to be established, it need to be taken a permit or a pre-inspection. The Fair Trade Commission have to secure the neutrality from Government's strategies. And government should find out the examples of unfair transaction behavior types and prepare some proper guidelines continually. For the last time statistical data by distributors are to be fitted out and the actual investigations for estimating the effects of government policies need to be enforced.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.71-94
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• 1990

This paper reviews the rationale of monetary and banking intervention by an outside authority, either the government or the central bank, and seeks to delineate clearly the optimal limits to the monetary and banking deregulation currently underway in Korea as well as on a global scale. Furthermore, this paper seeks to establish an objective and balanced view on the role of the central bank, especially in light of the current discussion on the restructuring of Korea's central bank, which has been severely contaminated by interest-group politics. The discussion begins with the recognition that the modern free banking school and the new monetary economics are becoming formidable challenges to the traditional role of the government or the central bank in the monetary and banking sector. The paper reviews six arguments that have traditionally been presented to support intervention: (1) the possibility of an over-issue of bank notes under free banking instead of central banking; (2) externalities in and the public good nature of the use of money; (3) economies of scale and natural monopoly in producing money; (4) the need for macro stabilization policy due to the instability of the real sector; (5) the external effects of bank failure due to the inherent instability of the existing banking system; and (6) protection for small banknote users and depositors. Based on an analysis of the above arguments, the paper speculates on the optimal role of the government or central bank in the monetary and banking system and the optimal degree of monetary and banking deregulation. By contrast to the arguments for free banking or laissez-faire monetary systems, which become fashionable in recent years, monopoly and intervention by the government or central bank in the outside money system can be both necessary and optimal. In this case, of course, an over-issue of fiat money may be possible due to political considerations, but this issue is beyond the scope of this paper. On the other hand, the issue of inside monies based on outside money could indeed be provided for optimally under market competition by private institutions. A competitive system in issuing inside monies would help realize, to the maxim urn extent possible, external economies generated by using a single outside money. According to this reasoning, free banking activities will prevail in the inside money system, while a government monopoly will prevail in the outside money system. This speculation, then, also implies that the monetary and banking deregulation currently underway should and most likely will be limited to the inside money system, which could be liberalized to the fullest degree. It is also implied that it will be impractical to deregulate the outside money system and to allow market competition to provide outside money, in accordance with the arguments of the free banking school and the new monetary economics. Furthermore, the role of the government or central bank in this new environment will not be significantly different from their current roles. As far as the supply of fiat money continues to be monopolized by the government, the control of the supply of base money and such related responsibilities as monetary policy (argument(4)) and the lender of the last resort (argument (5)) will naturally be assigned to the outside money supplier. However, a mechanism for controlling an over-issue of fiat money by a monopolistic supplier will definitely be called for (argument(1)). A monetary policy based on a certain policy rule could be one possibility. More importantly, the deregulation of the inside money system would further increase the systemic risk inherent in the current fractional banking system, while enhancing the efficiency of the system (argument (5)). In this context, the role of the lender of the last resort would again become an instrument of paramount importance in alleviating liquidity crises in the early stages, thereby disallowing the possibility of a widespread bank run. Similarly, prudential banking supervision would also help maintain the safety and soundness of the fully deregulated banking system. These functions would also help protect depositors from losses due to bank failures (argument (6)). Finally, these speculations suggest that government or central bank authorities have probably been too conservative on the issue of the deregulation of the financial system, beyond the caution necessary to preserve system safety. Rather, only the fullest deregulation of the inside money system seems to guarantee the maximum enjoyment of external economies in the single outside money system.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.31-68
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• 1990

The concentration of economic power takes the form of one or a few firms controlling a substantial portion of the economic resources and means in a certain economic area. At the same time, to the extent that these firms are owned by a few individuals, resource allocation can be manipulated by them rather than by the impersonal market mechanism. This will impair allocative efficiency, run counter to a decentralized market system and hamper the equitable distribution of wealth. Viewed from the historical evolution of Western capitalism in general, the concentration of economic power is a paradox in that it is a product of the free market system itself. The economic principle of natural discrimination works so that a few big firms preempt scarce resources and market opportunities. Prominent historical examples include trusts in America, Konzern in Germany and Zaibatsu in Japan in the early twentieth century. In other words, the concentration of economic power is the outcome as well as the antithesis of free competition. As long as judgment of the economic system at large depends upon the value systems of individuals, therefore, the issue of how to evaluate the concentration of economic power will inevitably be tinged with ideology. We have witnessed several different approaches to this problem such as communism, fascism and revised capitalism, and the last one seems to be the only surviving alternative. The concentration of economic power in Korea can be summarily represented by the "jaebol," namely, the conglomerate business group, the majority of whose member firms are monopolistic or oligopolistic in their respective markets and are owned by particular individuals. The jaebol has many dimensions in its size, but to sketch its magnitude, the share of the jaebol in the manufacturing sector reached 37.3% in shipment and 17.6% in employment as of 1989. The concentration of economic power can be ascribed to a number of causes. In the early stages of economic development, when the market system is immature, entrepreneurship must fill the gap inherent in the market in addition to performing its customary managerial function. Entrepreneurship of this sort is a scarce resource and becomes even more valuable as the target rate of economic growth gets higher. Entrepreneurship can neither be readily obtained in the market nor exhausted despite repeated use. Because of these peculiarities, economic power is bound to be concentrated in the hands of a few entrepreneurs and their business groups. It goes without saying, however, that the issue of whether the full exercise of money-making entrepreneurship is compatible with social mores is a different matter entirely. The rapidity of the concentration of economic power can also be traced to the diversification of business groups. The transplantation of advanced technology oriented toward mass production tends to saturate the small domestic market quite early and allows a firm to expand into new markets by making use of excess capacity and of monopoly profits. One of the reasons why the jaebol issue has become so acute in Korea lies in the nature of the government-business relationship. The Korean government has set economic development as its foremost national goal and, since then, has intervened profoundly in the private sector. Since most strategic industries promoted by the government required a huge capacity in technology, capital and manpower, big firms were favored over smaller firms, and the benefits of industrial policy naturally accrued to large business groups. The concentration of economic power which occured along the way was, therefore, not necessarily a product of the market system. At the same time, the concentration of ownership in business groups has been left largely intact as they have customarily met capital requirements by means of debt. The real advantage enjoyed by large business groups lies in synergy due to multiplant and multiproduct production. Even these effects, however, cannot always be considered socially optimal, as they offer disadvantages to other independent firms-for example, by foreclosing their markets. Moreover their fictitious or artificial advantages only aggravate the popular perception that most business groups have accumulated their wealth at the expense of the general public and under the behest of the government. Since Korea stands now at the threshold of establishing a full-fledged market economy along with political democracy, the phenomenon called the concentration of economic power must be correctly understood and the roles of business groups must be accordingly redefined. In doing so, we would do better to take a closer look at Japan which has experienced a demise of family-controlled Zaibatsu and a success with business groups(Kigyoshudan) whose ownership is dispersed among many firms and ultimately among the general public. The Japanese case cannot be an ideal model, but at least it gives us a good point of departure in that the issue of ownership is at the heart of the matter. In setting the basic direction of public policy aimed at controlling the concentration of economic power, one must harmonize efficiency and equity. Firm size in itself is not a problem, if it is dictated by efficiency considerations and if the firm behaves competitively in the market. As long as entrepreneurship is required for continuous economic growth and there is a discrepancy in entrepreneurial capacity among individuals, a concentration of economic power is bound to take place to some degree. Hence, the most effective way of reducing the inefficiency of business groups may be to impose competitive pressure on their activities. Concurrently, unless the concentration of ownership in business groups is scaled down, the seed of social discontent will still remain. Nevertheless, the dispersion of ownership requires a number of preconditions and, consequently, we must make consistent, long-term efforts on many fronts. We can suggest a long list of policy measures specifically designed to control the concentration of economic power. Whatever the policy may be, however, its intended effects will not be fully realized unless business groups abide by the moral code expected of socially responsible entrepreneurs. This is especially true, since the root of the problem of the excessive concentration of economic power lies outside the issue of efficiency, in problems concerning distribution, equity, and social justice.