South Korea has a productivity problem. As Rob Atkinson explains in The Korea Times, productivity growth is the single most important economic factor, for without it per-capita incomes stagnate. To turn around, Korea needs to embrace all kinds of automation and leave the decisions of whether it is worker-enhancing or worker-replacing up to companies—and the Korean government should expand, not cut tax incentives for investing in automation.
To be sure, companies and the government need to ensure that workers who do lose their jobs to automation are assisted in the efforts to obtain new employment, including temporary income support and retraining. But having the policy be to minimize technological "creative destruction" and automation, is a path to slow economic and income growth.
