government control vs. government regulation

This is a very common mistake that I have seen in many essays written by Korean students. Although both "to control" and "to regulate" can be translated as "규제/제한하다" in Korean, there is a subtle difference between the two, and often they are not interchangeable.

Control means to exercise restraint over/to dominate/to command, a close equivalent of 통제하다, 장악하다 in Korean. Take a look at the following example.

• Google’s decision to scale back operations in China ends a nearly four-year bet that Google’s search engine in China, even if censored, would help bring more information to Chinese citizens and loosen the government’s controls on the Web. (New York Times, Mar 22, 2010)

Regulate means to direct according to rule or law/to adjust to a particular specification, a close equivalent of 규제하다, 조정하다 in Korean. Take a look at the following example.

• The Macao government is planning to regulate the building of new casinos in an attempt to curb investment in the gambling industry.

Here, the Macao government is not a dominating authority in a way that the Chinese government is; the former tries to drive the gambling industry to a certain direction through indirect measures including legal restrictions, while the latter imposes itself directly on the Internet through censorship.