Capturing Collusion: The Industry and the Government in Ferry Safety Regulation

We explore through process tracing what caused the dismal safety regulatory failures in the Sewol ferry disaster. We find that regulatory capture was largely responsible for the Sewol tragedy. Both obsolete regulation, such as entry regulation that continued to protect existing monopolies in the ferry industry, and deregulatory measures, such as the extension of the ship age limit, were directed by the industry lobby. We further find that the enduring legacies of state corporatism of the authoritarian developmental state have institutionalized business–government collusion and regulatory capture . In particular, the ineffective vessel-operational managers system operated by the Korea Shipping Association was not a product of neoliberal reform but a state-corporatist arrangement that was first introduced in 1972.