The central government and local governments have been designating special zones and providing package support, including budgets, to promote balanced regional development, but criticism that the incentive effect is diluted because there are many special zones of similar nature was raised on the floor of the "Korea Local Era Expo."
There was also a suggestion that, as there is a problem of over-designating special zones by each local government, it is necessary to introduce a performance-based sunset system.
Bae Su-hyeon, principal research fellow at the Busan Development Institute, said the same at a conference held on the 20th at the Ulsan Exhibition and Convention Center under the theme "From special zones to hubs, opening the path to regional growth," noting that "a number of inactive special zones with poor operating records are occurring due to special-zone designs whose purpose and differentiation are not clear."
Bae said, "Because the designation criteria for each special zone are not specific, the number of areas where special zones are designated as requested by local governments is increasing, making efficient support based on 'selection and concentration' difficult," adding, "It is also a problem to designate special zones with a focus on equity between regions rather than economic effects."
Bae emphasized that installing a control tower to manage the special zones is necessary as a prerequisite to resolve this. Bae said, "Because overarching governance has not been established, there are limits to coordinating roles among special zones, and performance management by zone is also inadequate," and added, "Since individual special-zone systems are operated mainly by the competent ministries, it is difficult to grasp the status of special-zone operations across ministries, and there are limits to establishing a comprehensive roadmap."
Bae also pointed out that regional clusters are focusing on building industrial complexes, leaving education and research functions weak. The view is that space should be created to allow innovation institutions such as universities and research institutions to cluster, thereby supplementing talent attraction and research and development (R&D) functions.
Bae presented the United Kingdom's "Cambridge Science Park" and the United States' "Boston bio cluster" as overseas benchmarking cases.
The two special zones are based on prestigious universities such as the University of Cambridge and Harvard and MIT, and corporations related to bio and physics are actively entering, leveraging the universities' professional personnel and infrastructure. Bae said, "Of the top 20 U.S. biopharmaceutical companies, 18 corporations, including Pfizer, Janssen and Moderna, are located in the two regions."
Bae added, "The function of innovation clusters should be shifted from the mere agglomeration of corporations to spaces for education and global innovation," and "special zones should be used as spaces where excellent talent development takes place together."