Chairman Park Byung-won of the Korea Federation of Banks, 3rd R, Prime Minister Chung Hong-won, 

3rd L, and Chairman Shin Je-yoon of the Financial Service Commission, 

2nd L, applaud at a recent unveiling ceremony  of the National Happiness Fund in Seoul.

Chairman Park Byung-won of the Korea Federation of Banks has been designated to head the National Happiness Fund.

Chairman Park, in a meeting with the media on March 22, said he has decided to serve in the two positions at the same time because heading the Happiness Fund will not be difficult, since most of the expert-work will be done by the Korea Asset Management Corp. But since it will concern the entire banking community, he will steer the fund in order to firm up its operations as early as possible, he said.

The government plans to hold a launching ceremony for the fund and recommended KFB Chairman Park as chairman of the fund, which is to be launched with the Credit Recovery Fund as its seed money.

The financial community feels that Park is eminently qualified to run the fund as his experiences holding many key positions include senior presidential secretary for economics affairs and chairman of the Woori Financial Group, thus making him the best person to balance the interests of the private sector and the public sector. Additionally, the KFB manages the Youth Venture Foundation, the Miso Financial Foundation, and the Credit Recovery Committee, among others, which may have been taken into consideration when he was selected as chairman.

Park, in the meantime, delivered a special lecture at Yonsei University Management School on the subject of “Creation of Jobs and the Solution to Economic Problems.” 

The KFB chairman said he is sorry that there is no mutual understanding regarding the urgency of job creation and its difficulties in the country. Park, who doubles as chairman of the Service Industry Alliance Federation, is often called an “evangelist for job creation,” because he has been saying that creating jobs is the key to solving all the current problems. 

Drawing on his more than 30 years in government service and as chairman of Woori Financial Group, he feels deeply that the creation of jobs is the most urgent task the nation is faced with.

Park used the podium of the special lecture to explain what needs to be done to create jobs. The government, he said, should make the task its top priority policy issue to take care of. He has said that at the root of all problems is the unemployment of youths.

“You cannot explain all the problems that our economy is faced with by simply pointing to indexes on exports and economic growth alone. We cannot feel the severity of the problems without all the key indices on employment, which is the problem,” he said. 

In 1991, jobs in the manufacturing sector totaled 5.16 million, but the number decreased annually by an average of 52,000 jobs between 1991 and 2012. If the farm sector were included, total annual job losses would reach around 100,000, which leaves the service sector to create 400,000 jobs to make up for the losses, Park said.