Inflation measures, price controls and even massive cross-country projects.

These are a few of the favorite things of the Lee Myung-bak administration and, in striking similarity, the authoritarian government led by the late President Park Chung Hee, experts say.

The Lee administration last week announced a list of 52 items that it vowed to closely watch for fluctuations in prices.

The Park administration, during its time, literally controlled the prices of many products.

The Lee administration has pursued the construction of a cross-country canal despite fierce protests, while the Park administration built the Seoul-Busan freeway in the face of a similar outcry.

In 1978, the Park administration announced different measures to hold inflation steady.

They are exactly the same measures being laid out by the Lee administration today.

The Lee administration has said it will freeze the costs of utilities and public transportation.

In addition, businesses suspected of keeping too much inventory and hoarding will be subject to tax investigations.

“Controlling consumer prices is not desirable,” said Choi Sung-no, a researcher at the Center for Free Enterprise.

“It leads the public to have false hopes that the government can keep prices steady.

Communist countries have tried to control prices, but that has only resulted in a shortage of supplies.”
Choi said it will also be difficult to control prices today, too.

Lee was the chief executive officer of Hyundai Engineering and Construction Company between 1977 and 1988, while Park was president.

Critics have said Lee’s programs suggest he is still nostalgic about the Park Chung Hee era of government-led economic development.

“I hope not, but what has been going on so far concerns me,” said Ka Sang-joon, a politics professor at Dankook University.

“The Lee administration is too similar to the Park administration.”
Park, whose power was backed by the military, led the construction of the Seoul-Busan freeway despite resistance from the opposition parties.

The official date of the start of construction was Feb.

1, 1968, but the freeway had been under way for three months by that time.

It was finished in two years and five months.

Ka said, however, that the Lee government will not be able to do the same with the canal project.

“The country’s democracy has come a long way and it is different from the time when the Park administration was in power,” Ka said.

By Limb Jae-un Staff Reporter [jbiz91@joongang.co.kr]