KJC Korea
Journal Central

This study explores the moderating effects of economic stress in the relationship between organizational devotion and emotional self-sufficiency of the self-sufficient program participants. 698 persons who lived in Taegu participated in this study. Multiple regression analysis was adopted. Results indicate that higher level of organizational devotion is positively related to the higher self-sufficiency. In addition,economic stress moderated the effect of organizational devotion on emotional self-sufficiency. Practical implications of this study are two folds; One is that in order to increase emotional self-sufficiency, sense of community should be put into consideration; The other is that approach for decreasing economic stress should be included in the program for self-sufficiency. Overall, this study lays a groundwork for the self-sufficiency of the participants in the self-sufficient program.

Class has been the factor that affects welfare attitudes in western societies. But the results of the studies on affects of class in Korea are not consistent. This Study focuses on the relations between three class variables-income, status in employment,occupation-and the Korean attitudes on welfare policy and examines the regulating effects of education on that. Attitudes on welfare policy consist of ‘reinforcement of established welfare programs’, ‘expansion into new welfare area’ and ‘universalism in welfare policy.’The result shows that all three class variables, education and age do not affect the attitudes to ‘reinforcement of established welfare programs.’ Age and class variables affects the attitudes to ‘expansion into new welfare area’ statistically, but education does not. Education explains largest parts of the attitudes to ‘universalism in welfare policy.’

This paper is to critically review the economic reasoning of non-sustainability of welfare state due to its intrinsic incentive problems and to see how the nordic welfare state responds to them. The welfare state as a political design of state to pursue equality has social insurance as its main economic function. It survives market failure of private insurance to contribute to human capital investment and industrial restructuring. The universal tax-financed welfare state, however, has the problem of tragedy of commons such as reduced work incentive and work ethics. But, the existing nordic welfare state overcomes it through employment-focused policy arrangements, maintenance of work ethics and benefits moral, incentive mechanism of wage-compression, public educational investment and its complementation with social security. The Nordic model shows that problems of incentive and moral are not about those of theory and reasoning, but about their reality which policies and institutions could respond to.

This study aims to investigate causes of the emergence of so-called ‘family-care workers’ in the Long-term Care Insurance system in Korea. The LTCI system introduced in 2008 financially support the utilization of formal care services for the eligible elderly with care needs by paying for services of their care workers. Interestingly, 38.4 percent of payments for the in-home services were claimed by family members registered as qualified long-term care workers in 2012. We interviewed ten family care workers in depth and analyzed the needs of the aged and their families to explain the emergence of family care workers. The emergence of family-care workers is an inevitable result of choice by family members who face a dual burden of living and caring; be the additional choice following discharge the duty to support the elderly; be the alternative choice to fulfill unaccepted needs for services. These results suggest the needs for a comprehensive public provision of both income and social service support for the aged and an introduction of financial support for family care complementing the formal care support in the LTCI in Korea.

Humanities learning courses for the weak people in Korea is similar to the Clement course initiated by Earl Shorris in the US. This study aims to understand the in depth meaning of the course among the participants of the self-supporting programs in Korea. For this aim, data were collected mainly from the intensive interviews with 7 research participants who have finished both the general and in depth courses offered by Seoul Metropolitan government. Through the study, 4 substantial themes were drawn; ‘exploration and acceptance of the unfamiliar’, ‘new understanding of the self through reflection’, ‘reconstruction of the self with humanistic value’, ‘continuous seeking for humanistic life’. As a result,the meaning of humanities learning was found to be ‘recovering his/her own originality’ or ‘living like a decent human being’. Understanding both the results and difficulties that had to be overcome during the course, some practical and policy implications could be drawn.

This paper examines how a social investment approach can be applied in a comparative analysis of childcare arrangements. We compared changes in Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, Japan and Korea during the 2000s, focusing on four dimensions of social investment: activation, gender equality, quality of care, and the degree of state’s intervention in the family. We considered leave systems and the number of children enrolled in formal care and education facilities as indicators for labour market activation. For gender equality, women’s position in employment is considered with respect to labour market participation rates, proportion of permanent employment, and wage-sex ratio. Quality of care concerns child-to-staff ratio and care provided with government quality control. The state’s intervention was measured as social spending on families as proportions of GDP and total social spending. Our analysis provides empirical evidence that Sweden and France are pioneers in this arena and that the UK, Germany, Korea, and Japan are path-shifters in their care paradigms, albeit to varying degrees. Is the social investment approach an adequate paradigm for care? In a normative sense, this approach has potential. However, the following issues remain unaddressed: gender equality should be achieved through an expansion in good-quality jobs, fathers should be encouraged to take on childcare duties, and families should have universal access to good-quality childcare services controlled by the government.

Child care cash benefit policy in Korea started in 2009 limited to the those under 2 years old in the poverty group entitled to National Basic Living Security Act and the near poor group (100,000 won a month). However, in 2013 the coverage has been expanded to everyone under 5 (200,000 won for those between babies in their first year, 150,000 won for the second year and 100,000 won for those between 2 to 5 years old) regardless of the household income level. The policy change between year 2012 and year 2013 requires a rapid increase in child care budget - 760% increase. This paper examines this exceptional expansion in child care cash benefit using policy network analysis. We found that local election as well as general election immediately effect the interaction between policy actors and the types of networks. This suggest that policy actors recognize child care cash benefit to be more directly related to the election result compared with child care services. Also conflictive interaction between the parties and government bodies with budget restraint also facilitated the diversification on the child care cash benefit discussion. The policy making process of child care cash benefit was led to policy adoption immediately after the presidential election suggesting that policy formation process and the policy adoption had an close relationship in the Korean child care cash benefit policy process.

Despite various policies have been implemented to curb shadow education in Korea, it has continued to grow in recent two decades. This study investigates the expansion mechanism of shadow education focused on mobilization capabilities and market strategies of the suppliers. The success and failure of policy toward shadow education depends on how effectively it could block off the way by which the suppliers as the most important actors in politics of shadow education market mobilize consumers' anxieties. But shadow education policies have failed in two points. First, they have lacked honest intention to stop its proliferation. The Constitutional Court Decision Against Anti-Out-Of-School Classes Legislation of 2000 widened the windows of opportunity for the suppliers, and 5.31 educational reform of 1995 was neutral to their mobilization capabilities, though seemingly designed to control shadow education. This policy orientation, which reflected neoliberal Gesinnungsethik defective of Verantwortungsethik, stimulated shadow education to expand in that suppliers' mobilization capabilities were reinforced or remained intact. Second, shadow education suppliers have succeeded in mobilizing the desire and anxiety of potential consumers. To cope with government's policy including improving the qualities of public education, realignment of college entrance systems, and meeting the shadow education needs, they have developed various market strategies such as management of existing demands, creation of responsive demands, and squeezing out new demands. They have succeeded in nullifying policies by employing or mixing strategies with effect. Policy decisions in the future need to be made with reference to Verantwortungsethik, and be more cautious to socio-political contexts of Korea, to mobilization capabilities and market strategies of the suppliers in particular.

This article is aiming intensively to analyze the polarizing tendency of labour market and social integration. The polarization of labour market is being regarded as one of the hottest issues not less important than those problems of economic growth, employment, income distribution and national security etc. in the national policy. In this article, we will first follow up the important phenomena of labour market polarization and the background as well as its consequence. Especially, it asks if the present labour policy in the new government which is now being concentrated on the improvement of employment rate(from the present 63% to the 70% in the future) could deserve to diminish the polarization of labour market in korea. At one side, this article makes the special attention on the diversifying tendency of labour market and the various phenomena of fragmentation and segmentation in the labour market according to the forms and types of employment and according to the employee’s status as much as the company’s size. At the other side, it emphasizes that to overcome the polarization of labour market should require the wide reform from the legal measure to the improvement of the wage system, and the qualification system and the social investment as well as the human resource development. Furthermore, this article stresses the importance of integrative approach between the active market policy and the social policy instead of choosing each policy option, seperatively.