KJC Korea
Journal Central

This article is on the ‘precarious work' that is deepening in the age of economic crisis and it handles first the debate on the effectiveness of important social protection laws/institutions(nonstandard work act, national minimum wage act, labour standard act etc.). Today, with increasing separation of economic growth and employment, the important phenomena which are emerging in the labour market, are the enlargement of low wage works and the deepening of diversification of employment-types. The one is the result of limits to quantitative growth of employment and of competition pressure due to the open economy system such as globalization. The another is due to the various causes such as technical development, increasing competition pressure and personnel labour management of business, and voluntary choices in the trend of enlarging individualization. This article deals with problems of increasing precarious work such as low wage works and deepening diversification of employment-types in the labour market. While it is concentrating on the differences in the wage and working conditions between the direct and indirect work and the economically dependent work(or between the standard and nonstandard work), it reviews the reality of important social protection laws/institutions and its effectiveness that is in question. Especially, while in the age of economic crisis, this article is assessing the importance of job creation, it is critically reviewing the business friendly labour market policy as the background of controversial debate on the effectiveness of social protection laws/institutions. This article regards the protection levels of labour market in korea, compared with the countries of OECD or considering its economic size, as not so high(or not enough). In fact, this article sentences that compared with leading countries, the key issue in the korean labour market is not the problem of dichotomy between market-oriented flexibility and social-protective regulation, but of the ‘market-mismatching’ between the organized workers in the big business and public sector with higher wage and better working conditions and non-organized workers in the small and medium business that are mostly in the dead angle of legal protection. Considering this special situation in korean labour market, this article is now critically reviewing the problems of market-oriented and unregulated job creation strategy which is not considering the social security at the moment. As K Polanyi analyzed, this article concludes that the unregulated or self-regulated market only could not solve the problems of social protection as well as the employment problem itself. At the same time, it is important to recognize that to limit the precarious work through the legal regulation only could cause the unintended consequences such as the so-called ‘balloon effect'. The legal and institutional policy should be concentrated to prohibit the various illegal, unlawful and easier methods which are disturbing the contracting order in the market. At one side, one should try to achieve the social agreement on basic levels of protection and consequently to enforce the legal standard to correct the contracting practice between the employers and employees. At the other side, one should exert oneself to raise the productivity of enterprises through functional flexibility and to search for a solution to prohibit the polarization in the wage and working conditions in the labour market and to secure proper security. This is the so-called ‘flexicurity’ strategy and there could be no exception to this labour market policy, today. At the same time, this article is trying to show the social-integrative job strategy and the daring alternatives for the true ‘green economy initiative’ which could make the new dynamics for the growth and job creation, which the international organizations like the UNEP and ILO are starting to make global campaign and that should replace with the traditional civil engineering and construction industry such as the 4 big river projects.

For the last 10 years, social security institutions have developed expansively, including expansion of social insurance coverage, launching new public assistance system, and the expansion of social services. This article aims to evaluate the expansion of social security institutions since the Financial Crisis of 1997 and suggest policy directions based on re-lightening their institutional weakness. The study discuss that the explicit development of social security institutions has been basically path-dependent and there have been a big portion of population not covered by the social security institutions. Empirical analyses upon income inequality and poverty reduction effects of public transfer system suggest that the real performances of social security institutions are still weak, they have failed to decrease feminisation of poverty, and their function related to poverty prevention for the working age population has been very restricted. Based on these findings, the article emphasises that social policy of Korea needs to reinforce preventive features for the working age population and to establish the universal principle in the real term for the political sustainability.

With the recent global economic crisis posing a threat to public health, the importance of health security as a social safety net is growing. Bucking the trend, more than 8% of South Koreans are currently excluded from its health-security scheme due to financial, managerial, and political factors, and even the level of health security coverage remains a mere 60%. Moreover, medical-bill assistance and emergency aid projects fail to offer sufficient solutions to the blind spots of health security due to the complicated and segmented assistance provided, managerial issues, and the low level of coverage. As a result, the number of households in South Korea that spends more than 10% of what they can afford to pay on their medical-bills accounts for a remarkable 10-15% of the total number of households, and the South Korean adults’ medical insufficiency represents 3-10%. These blind spots of health security pose a bigger threat to the nation under an economic crisis. For short-term measures to address the blind spots of health security under an economic crisis, prompt action is necessary,with the parts working in coordination and with the help of stern arbitration regimes in such problematic areas as the existing medical insurance, healthcare bills, the different standards between medical-bill assistance and emergency aid projects, administrative confusion, and the untimely decision-making process. As for mid- to longer-term measures, the existing health safety net should be restructured. The treatment-centered health safety net should be transformed into the concept of prevention and health enhancement, with the addition of rehabilitation and rejoining the society. Furthermore, the inclusion of those who have been left in the blind spots of the health-security system among the beneficiaries of the major relevant policies is necessary, along with the inclusion of resource procurement and service delivery through the private sector in the said framework. In addition, a mechanism that establishes an operating system where the civil society and the concerned parties can participate in, and that monitors projects in a consistent manner, is required. It should be designed and managed in such a way that it will be in good coordination with the social safety net in the areas of income, housing, education, and culture. In addition, the settlement of the blind spots of the health-security system should be made a matter for political discussion, and consideration must be given to the stark reinforcement of security for the public healthcare system and to the integration of the systems. Moreover, the quantitative expansion and qualitative enhancement of the public health system should be sought through the development and implementation of projects that target the extension of assistance to the underprivileged. In an economic crisis, a series of policies that trigger a rise in medical bills should be sublated while preferentially putting much effort in securing a high quality of reasonable medical-service delivery systems based on publicity to maintain the effectiveness of such safety net. The settlement of the issues regarding the blind spots of the health-security system with enhanced security assumes the nature of a political process. Accordingly, the successful establishment of a firm health safety net lies in the following factors: the expansion of the discussion on the value of social solidarity, which surpasses unlimited competition and market discussion political leaderships securing effective political means with the public supportstable resources policymakers dedicated to the establishment of a medical safety net related working experts on the frontline and the relevant capabilities and efforts of the civil society. A firm health safety net will serve as a critical base in overcoming an economic crisis.

Of the national strategies facing the current global economic crisis, education becomes the one of the most critical areas in the national policy being considered as social investment forming the productive and creative human capital for sustainable growth and as the fundamental means for breaking the vicious cycle of poverty. Despite the effort of government and political parties for improving education welfare, the problems of educational alienation and disparity continue and rather demand more policy concern. While the policies of the government seem to actively tackle the problems, the analysis of the policy system shows some weaknesses. They are low level of communication and collaboration between institutions, programs, and services, regional disparity in the infrastructure for education welfare service and the lack of systematic effort for developing local leadership, low capacity of schools for diagnosis and provision of timely and adequate supports, unstable program budget and inefficient financial operation, insufficient understanding of teachers about education welfare, limited opportunity and inconsistency of services, deficiency of academic research on the education welfare issues, incompletion of legislation and institutionalization of education welfare policy process. On the other hand, the current policies on student achievement and school diversification seem to have some possibility of impeding the equity in education, regardless of their initial goals. This is likely to militate against the government's effort for education welfare and increase the cost of fighting against the educational alienation and disparity. In order to improve the education welfare, some policy tasks are to be carried out such as establishment of the national board of education, improvement of local education welfare system, transforming schools into welfare-friendly places, training and recruit of professionals in education welfare programs, building legal and institutional basis of education welfare projects, and testing the equity effect of education policies through systemic simulation.

This study is to investigate the historical meaning of Korean retirement allowance reform in 2005 focusing on the interactions between actors and institutions, and the effects of institutional legacy on the results of the reform. The retirement pension system was layered to the old retirement allowance at the same time when paying-out the retirement allowance during employment was introduced. Though the Labor and the Capital each emphasized the benefit security and cost curtailment oppositely, both of them supported paying-out the retirement allowance during employment and financial asset accumulation together. The results of the investigation are as follows. First, the historical legacy and the contents of the retirement allowance had been working during about 50 years have affected the strategies of main actors, the Capital, the Labor and the government. Second, the differential growth mechanism to eventual transformation is affected by not only incentive structure also by the institutional legacy. To summarize results, how the institution had been before reform is related with the reform process and results of the reform.

The main purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of household and regional characteristics on poverty in Seoul. For the stated purpose, this study examines major determinants of household poverty status, using the Seoul Welfare Panel data and other government's official statistics. The Hierarchical Generalized Linear Model(HGLM) identifies variables of both levels in household and regional attributes, predicting probabilities of poverty. The findings show that the relative poverty measure based on 50% of the median household income is about 15.92%. Household headed by aged, low educated, divorced, or unemployed relatively make up a larger proportion of the poverty population. Number of jobs and number of workers in small business are significant predictors in regional level to explain household poverty status. Therefore, antipoverty policy should be considered at the both levels of household as well as community.

In this study I tried to define the concept of “publicness” in social welfare along two dimensions. One dimension is the formal “publicness” of social welfare, which can be described as the role of the state in the welfare mix, the ways in which welfare production is allocated among the state, market, families, and non profit organizations. The other dimension is the substantial “publicness” of social welfare, which can be defined as the degree of social citizenship that concerns the rights and duties associated with the provision of benefits and services designed to meet social needs and enhance capabilities, and also to guarantee the resources necessary to finance them. Adopting the human need theory developed by Doyal and Gough, I tried to classify social citizenship into five realms: the rights of income security, health, housing, labor, and education. In each realm, I included the subsidiary rights that all citizens can enjoy, in other words, those that the state has an obligation to provide, along with indicators showing the degree of realization. These ways of understanding of “publicness” in social welfare along two dimensions will have significant implications not only for the theory of the welfare state but also for the reform of the welfare state.

This study aims at analysing a equity in health care utilization by health status(health needs) in income class and It will be submitted base data for rational policy establishment. In order to this ends, First, First, low income class's health care utilizations are the higher than high income class, and all concentration index(CI) shows negative. It means the utilization of benefit cost is concentrated in low income class. Second, An low income class's health status concentration index show negative. Therefore, Health needs is concentrated in low income's peoples. Third, Le Grand index increased toward positive direction. To conclude, Income class's health care equity is lacking in the low people's utilization of national health insurance.

It is urgently needed to implement social welfare policies to supplement insufficient income for the elderly because of low benefits from public pension and social assistance in Korea. This study aims to investigate the representative type of retirement process and to find influential factors on retirement process. This study used lifetime job records for 20years from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing(KLoSa) for males aged 45 and more in 2006. Using the group-based trajectory method, this study identified eight types of retirement patterns : ① never-worked, ② early retirees I, ③ early retirees II, ④ normally retired self-employees, ⑤ normally retired workers, ⑥ keep-working self-employees, ⑦ keep-working workers, and ⑧ never-stop working. The economic status of the normally retired workers is the highest among these eight groups, while those of early retirees and keep-working groups are worse than those of normal retirees. Thus, it is necessary to raise the benefit levels of public pension and social assistance programs for income maintenance of keep-working groups. In addition, various labor market policies are needed for early retirees to redeem works.

Everyone shares the right to a decent standard of living. Essential to the achievement of this standard and therefore to the fulfillment of human lie beyond simple survival is access to adequate housing. The right to housing codified as a human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And The right to housing is included in several international legally-binding documents such as UN-Habitat and UN Housing Rights Programme, Among the most significant of these is UN International Covenant of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights(Article 11.1). Although most states do not stipulates a clear right to housing, most do have legislation and national programs related to housing. Korea has the constitution and national laws that promote the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing. In Korea legal protection of the right to housing at the national level often involve arbitrary eviction, safety and health regulations, or equal protection issues. The housing policy should be oriented around securing the right to housing and the affordability of housing, particularly for the underprivileged groups.