Key Takeaways
South Korea is moving to merge the Audience Media Foundation and the Korea Advertising Foundation into a new public body, but the plan is drawing warning signs over how different the two institutions are.
The foundation chief said the draft law still leaves gaps in media promotion functions, staffing, budgets, and labor rules.
The broadcast media regulator countered that delays will only raise costs and make organizational setup harder, putting speed and design in direct tension.
Creating a new agency looks straightforward on paper. In practice, it means reconciling different missions, budgets, staffing rules, and internal cultures. That is exactly why the proposed launch of the Korea Broadcasting, Media and Telecommunications Promotion Agency has become controversial.
Cheol-ho Choi, chairman of the Audience Media Foundation, said he supports the idea in principle but sees major problems in merging institutions with very different roles. Jong-cheol Kim, head of the Broadcast Media Telecommunications Commission, argues the opposite: the longer lawmakers wait, the more expensive and difficult the transition becomes.
Two institutions with very different jobs
The dispute centers on a bill that would combine the Audience Media Foundation and the Korea Advertising Foundation, better known as Kobaco, into a new organization called the Korea Broadcasting, Media and Telecommunications Promotion Agency. The plan also allows related projects and personnel from other bodies, including the Korea Communication Agency, to be transferred in certain cases. This is more than a simple name change.
Choi's objection goes to the heart of that mismatch. The Audience Media Foundation focuses on viewer rights, media education, and wider access to media, while Kobaco has a much stronger role in broadcasting advertising and public-interest functions. When two institutions with such different purposes are placed under one legal umbrella, operations do not automatically become aligned.
His warning that there are still many elements to be fixed suggests the merger could lose credibility if the differences are ignored. A larger organization is not necessarily a clearer one.
What the draft law still does not spell out
Choi said the draft does not adequately reflect media promotion functions, related projects, staffing, and budgets. That is a familiar problem in public-sector restructuring. It is easy to decide on a new institutional title, but far harder to define who has authority, what gets funded, and how the work will actually be carried out.
In this case, the framework for merger and transfer is in place, but the operational design still appears thin. If lawmakers approve the structure without clearly mapping out responsibilities, the new agency could begin life with confusion already built in.
Choi also said that his side had submitted opinions that seem not to have been fully reflected. That matters because merger plans often fail not at the moment of passage, but in execution. If practical concerns raised by the institutions themselves are left out of the bill, the result is a law that must be patched later, costing both time and trust.
One organization needs one set of rules
Another serious issue is that the institutions involved use different employment rules, personnel systems, pay structures, and discipline regulations. Merging agencies is not just about putting offices under one roof. If employees are judged by different standards or receive sharply different treatment, the organization can begin to fray quickly.
That is why Choi stressed the importance of a shared sense of identity among staff. Even under the same name, unequal treatment can breed resentment faster than cooperation. In public institutions especially, fairness inside the organization often shapes how stable the merger becomes.
The success of the reform will depend less on the visible size of the new agency and more on whether its internal rules have actually been aligned. Choi's call to resolve treatment issues before launch is less a matter of convenience than a warning about organizational stability.
Speed matters, but so does design
Kim, on the other hand, pushed for quick passage of the law. In his view, the sooner it is enacted, the sooner the founding committee can be formed and the more smoothly the organization and budget process can move forward. Delays, he said, only increase costs and make disruptions worse.
That argument is hard to dismiss. If legislation stalls, budgets stall too, and personnel deployment is delayed along with them. By the time a new body is finally ready, the policy environment may already have moved on. Administrative systems often favor speed for that reason.
Still, this merger is not the kind of reform that can be fixed by rushing. If the goal is to strengthen public functions, lawmakers need to show how those functions will actually work after the merger. A hastily assembled institution can create more friction than efficiency.
The real task is to balance pace with design. Parliament and the relevant agencies should not frame the debate as a simple yes-or-no fight over the merger itself. They need to define where each function belongs and sort out staffing, budgets, and regulations at the same time. Public-sector restructuring is often sold as reform, but in reality it is a rewrite of the rules. If those rules are vague, the new agency will begin under a heavy burden.
