[Editorial] Balanced Regional Development Requires Strategic Cooperation Between Government and Business

President Lee Jae-myung held a meeting on the 4th at Cheong Wa Dae, the presidential office in Seoul, with the heads of South Korea’s top 10 conglomerates. The gathering was intended to pool opinions on how to achieve balanced regional development under the “Five Mega-Regions and Three Special Self-Governing Provinces” policy (the 5+3 policy), a core national agenda, and how to boost youth employment. To expand balanced development in the regions and increase jobs for young people, the government’s blueprint and companies’ region-specific industrial investment strategies must align.
Balanced regional development is not a task for the government alone. Overconcentration in the capital area, the decline and disappearance of local communities, and labor market mismatches are problems that society as a whole must solve. They also represent structural risks that, in the long run, can undermine the foundations of corporate growth. If population and talent are concentrated only in the capital region, companies face higher costs to secure workers and the industrial ecosystem becomes more fragile. Expanding investment in the regions, therefore, goes beyond public policy; it is directly tied to companies’ medium- and long-term sustainability. From this perspective, balanced national land development for the government and the securing of new regional growth bases for companies are issues that should be pursued through public–private cooperation.
The same logic applies to youth employment. The government needs to take the lead on policy, while companies should share part of the responsibility as a matter of social obligation. Creating quality jobs and offering stable career paths ultimately benefits the companies themselves.
For now, the goals of the government and the corporate sector appear to be aligned. The real question is how they will be implemented. Balanced development and youth employment are difficult to advance through the efforts of only one side. The government must design institutions, infrastructure, and fiscal support, and companies must respond with investment and hiring for the system to function. If they fail to work in sync, policy costs will rise while the burden on businesses also grows. This is why many similar meetings in the past have fallen short of producing tangible results. Cooperation between the government and companies often ended up as one-off promises or merely formal participation.
In particular, the success or failure of the 5+3 policy will hinge on whether it can induce substantial investment in the regions. To draw corporate investment outside the capital area, tax incentives, regulatory exemptions, industrial infrastructure, and improvements in living conditions must be actively considered as a comprehensive package. Companies, after all, must justify their investments through returns. They must demonstrate to shareholders that management decisions are worthy of trust. This is why firms can decide on long-term investments only when they are confident in the continuity and predictability of government policy. A vague appeal that something is “good for society” without concrete policy design will inevitably show its limits. The government should therefore refrain from trying to extract investment pledges from companies through pressure. Instead, it should prepare a detailed roadmap that explains how it will create an environment in which companies want to invest voluntarily in the regions, and what specific support will make youth employment genuinely beneficial for businesses as well.
Only when the government presents transparent commitments and realistic blueprints will companies be able to step forward with active cooperation. In parallel, companies should look beyond short-term profitability and carefully assess the strategic value of regional investment from a medium- to long-term perspective. They ought to move one step beyond declarations about fulfilling social responsibility and seriously review concrete implementation plans.
Balanced development under the 5+3 policy cannot be achieved by declaration alone. The government must create a market-friendly investment environment, and companies must embed their investment plans within their long-term growth strategies. Only when the interests of both sides are aligned in this way can balanced development be seen not as a cost, but as an “investment in the future.” This latest meeting should become the starting point for genuine, practical cooperation.