[Opinion] Let's Find Solutions to Taxi Issues from Within the Taxi Industry

Sangwoo Park, Distinguished Professor, Graduate School of Engineering, Korea University

Amid the global turmoil caused by the COVID-19 crisis, one piece of news caught attention. On the 6th, the so-called 'Tada Ban Law,' officially the 'Amendment to the Passenger Transport Service Act,' passed the National Assembly plenary session. This amendment significantly reduces the exceptions for driver mediation applied to vehicle rental operators (rent-a-car businesses) like Tada and institutionalizes platform transportation operators. The law is called the 'Tada Ban Law' because it only permits rent-a-car operators to provide drivers when renting 11-15 passenger vehicles for tourism purposes for more than six hours or when the rental and return locations are airports or ports. If this provision is enforced, Tada, which offers rent-a-cars with drivers, will effectively be unable to operate in its current form. Currently, Article 18 of the Enforcement Decree of the Passenger Transport Service Act, which underpins Tada's operations, allows 11-15 passenger vehicles to be provided with drivers unconditionally along with rent-a-cars. However, the amendment adds regulations on operation time (more than six hours), purpose (tourism), and location (airport or port). In response, Tada immediately protested, arguing that the regulation stifles innovation and has called on the president, who has emphasized innovative growth, to exercise a veto on the amendment. Some politicians and experts also criticize that Tada is an innovative service providing better service to the public, and by criminalizing it, innovation in South Korea, at least in the mobility service sector, will find it difficult to take root.

Not only this government but also previous administrations have unanimously agreed across all political parties on innovative growth and regulatory reform to remove obstacles. Various committees have been established within the government, and special laws that collectively reduce regulations have been enacted in the National Assembly. On the surface, regulatory reform and abolition are popular national agendas to the extent that all administrative regulations in South Korea should have already been eliminated. However, the reality is neither that simple nor binary. The reason is that every regulation has its own parent. No regulation is born without a parent. The parents of regulations are other national values such as "safety," "environment," "order," and "protection of economically vulnerable groups." Therefore, when delving into the specifics of regulatory reform, these parents appear to protect their children. The desperate sense of crisis that regulatory reform is the only way fades, leaving only the protection of individual values and interests, defending their children. This is the stark reality and the barrier that those demanding regulatory abolition must overcome.

The case of Tada is no different. The taxi industry in South Korea has long needed innovation. However, this is also connected to the survival rights of the taxi industry, which is a small-scale industry, and its workers, the taxi drivers, so finding solutions is not easy as if drawing on a blank canvas. Everyone acknowledges Tada's improved service, but it has come to an already saturated taxi ecosystem as another ecosystem of rental cars, and services like Uber and other carpooling add similar services using private passenger cars to the taxi industry, which already requires a reduction in vehicles.

In both cases, rental cars and private passenger cars, not taxis, have become external forces attacking taxis, causing friction. True innovation is when the subject of innovation finds solutions internally, not through external interference. The government should ease necessary regulations and provide bold support so that the newly established 'platform transportation business' in this legal amendment can achieve reform on its own through various experiments such as franchise taxis and reservation taxis.

Park Sang-woo, Distinguished Professor, Graduate School of Engineering, Korea University

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.