‘Official Development Assistance(ODA) and the Participation of Civil Society in Development Cooperation : Its Current State and Task’(September 16, 2014)
2:00 PM on Tuesday, September 16th, Seoul National University Asia Center invited Dr. Kim Seonggyu(research professor, Hanyang University) for ‘Civil Society Program’ and held a workshop about ‘Official Development Assistance(ODA) and the Participation of Civil Society in Development Cooperation : Its Current State and Task.’ This workshop consisted of presentation, Q & A session, and discussion. Also the workshop introduced the type and performance system of Korea’s ODA business and shared the method of the ‘Innovative Public-Private Partnership Business’ based on Development Alliance Korea(DAK) now under debate.

Dr. Kim is former senior fellow of KOICA(Korea International Cooperation Agency) ODA research team and holds a Ph.D. in sociology at Freie University of Berlin, Germany. His research interest is mainly focused on international development cooperation and ODA, the social opportunity and safety net of developing countries, the transformation of industrial structure and labor market in less-developing countries. He has published Understanding International Development Cooperation (Co-authorship) and Social Enterprise and Human Resource Strategy (Co-authorship).

This workshop, following the last second workshop(The Trend and Challenging Tasks of Korean Development NGO’s Development Partnership) of civil society program, was intended to broaden the understanding of civil society as a main agent of ODA and development cooperation by holding a workshop about how development cooperation business(in particular, the business of public-private partnership) of KOICA is actually planned and implemented. It is also designed to diagnose the diverse barriers of Korean civil society for taking part in the course of development cooperation and ultimately, to propose on altenative measure.

The issues discussed at the workshop were as follows. Although Korea’s ODA has recently achieved a rapid quantitative growth, it still has a long-term goal: qualitative improvement in the field of development cooperation, beyond its structural limitations including fragmentation of government departments and institutions that plan and perform development cooperation, hardware centered business, and business composed mainly of short-term projects, etc.

KOICA affiliated with MOFAT(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Korea) has recently concentrated on public-private partnership as some of its diverse projects. It is now carrying forward the cooperative development business with civil society organizations and private enterprises, which are one of the principal agents of development cooperation, through business such as Civil Society Cooperation(SCO) Program, Global Corporate Social Responsibility(Global CSR) Partnership Program, business for strengthening the competence of civil society organization, and development cooperation business in partnership with university, etc. In addition, DAK(Development Alliance Korea) public-private partnership, aimed at building a new and comprehensive partnership for cooperative development without compensation, embraces various institutions including corporation, university, and civil society organization.

The development cooperation business of KOICA has some critical limitations, for instance, the lack of systematic mechanism to control planning, reviewing, performing, post evaluation and feedback, deficiency of professional experts, and business method confined only to promotion, etc. In order to make civil society play a significant role in development cooperation, internal innovation should be accomplished by managing the whole procedure from planning stage based on consultation with business agents, reinforcing the specialty of every participant, and establishing institutional infrastructure to push ahead with the business.

Because Dr. Kim had worked as a senior fellow of KOICA, he could introduce an ample amount of information about KOICA. Not only the interested parties of Asia Center, but also numerous outside students actively participated in a heated discussion about structural limitation and the present contradiction of KOICA.

Meanwhile, ‘Civil Society Program’, conducted by SNUAC, researches how civil society of each Asian country adapt to and change in line with the globalization. Furthermore, SNUAC Civil Society Program makes a comparative study about civil society from aspects of diverse movement, region, and strategy. It is now carrying out basic research into the effort of Asian civil society to analyze topographic feature of Korean civil society, construct database, compare and contrast civil movements of Korea, China, and Japan, facilitate international cooperation, and globalize alternatives, while aiming at education and policy proposal as its long-term goal.

Program on Civil Society Homepage (http://snuac.snu.ac.kr/pcs)