Public sector reforms including privatization became a major economic policy of many developed and developing nations since the 1980`s and it has gained further momentum with the need to transform a large number of State owned enterprises (SOEs) in former-socialist nations. The purpose of this paper is to compare the privatization experiences between Korea and EU countries, focusing on the special case of electricity industry reforms which will show the drastic contrast between two regions. We will see that the Korean government utilized various conventional measures which sought to change the way the government and the SOE sector interact, thus attempting to alter managerial incentive and economic efficiency of SOEs without changing ownership. But these measures were handicapped by a lack of government commitment to end the politicized relation with the SOE sector. Monopolization of SOE reform policy making process by selected government officials, the opposition by supervising ministries and SOE unions as well as SOE managements, and the conceptual bias in the role of the government and the private sector all led to implementational difficulties.