KJC Korea
Journal Central

This study evaluates the strategic capacity of Korean labor union movement by examining policy alternatives and strategic steps that the Federation of Korean Trade Unions and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions have shown in response to Park Geun-Hye government's labor market structuring policies. While the government-led labor reform was carried out as intended, organized labor has not simply failed to achieve progressive labor reforms to enhance employment security, but also to exert their strategic capacity effectively for preventing Park's labor market flexibilization policies. The two national centers have not been able to exert their strategic capacity (such as intermediating, framing, articulating, learning) for mobilizing the resources of internal solidarity, network embeddedness, narrative discourse, and organizational infrastructure. In particular, the formation and diffusion of public discourse is a significant part of strategic capacity of labor unions dealing with the labor politics of labor market restructuring, since organized labor, which is under the unfavorable constraints of limited movement resources and power imbalance with the business circle, needs to mobilize massive support and participation from union members and civil society organizations. In this light, it becomes of more importance for labor union movement to exert their strategic capacity toward internal solidarity and network embeddedness in the stage of labor market reforms. Under the recent stage of labor reforms, however, the labor unions has not harnessed their movement resources effectively, but undertaken their protest in a traditional manner, thereby losing its public efficacy from inside and outside. Moreover, it is necessary to build and activate the network of organic solidarity among organized labor, civil society organizations and progressive political parties, in order to cope with the pro-business coalition of power elites for accomplishing pro-labor reforms.

This paper analyses the policy effect of minimum housing standards, using the fact that Seoul set the minimum housing standards in 1998. Because the whole country except Seoul did not set the minimum housing standards in 1998, we could find this situation as a quasi-experiment. In order to identify the policy effect of minimum housing standards, I compare decreasing amounts in the number of households below the threshold between Seoul and comparison regions from 1995 to 2000, using Differences-in-Differences method. I draw estimate of one-to-one comparison, using Gyeonggi province as a comparison region, and OLS estimate, utilizing the whole nation except Seoul as a comparison region, respectively, and compare two estimates. The former and the latter suggest that the setting of Seoul minimum housing standard in 1998 account for decreasing the number of households under the minimum housing standard, by about 216,638 and 325,149, respectively. The latter is statistically significant at the 0.001 level and the former is in the 95% confidence level of the latter. Therefore we could conclude that the setting of minimum housing standards contributes significantly to achieve the policy objectives, a decrease in the number of households, which are below the threshold.

This research aims to analyze the role of social care services after the unification, assuming that the unification would occur in 2020 in a peaceful manner. While much has been discussed about the unification in recent years inside or outside academia, most of discussion tends to focus on political and economic dimensions. Also, social policy studies on North Korean defectors have increased, but few pay attention to social policy strategies after the possible unification. In this context, this study explores various explicit and implicit roles of social care services and possible strategies after the unification. As research methodology, it employs one of the scenario methods, ‘TAIDA’, for projecting and simulating uncertain future. In so doing, first, it reviews South and North Korean socio-economic experiences during last two decades as feedback and German unification experiences as feedforward. In addition, it utilizes a expert survey. Based on the reviews together with the survey result, it discusses various influences of social care services after the unification and draws policy implications. This research aruges that social care services could have profound effects on the stability of socio-economic conditions after the unification.

As Korean society grows rapidly older, a systematic analysis of the determinants of labor supply behavior among the elderly becomes a prerequisite for designing more effective senior employment policies and income security regime for the elderly. Literatures review shows that a majority of previous researches have been ignoring the problem of "endogenous predictor" especially when it comes to the estimation of the effects of the two key variables, education and non-labor income, on labor supply decisions among older people. They have failed to take into consideration the unobserved heterogeneities which might affect both labor supply decisions of the elderly and their levels of education and non-labor income, which means, according to some econometric literatures, that the estimated coefficients of the two predictors can be inconsistent. The paper tries to redress the endogeneity problem by employing a panel logit model with data from the 1st. to 4th. wave of the KLoSA(Korean Longitudinal Survey of Ageing) to estimate the effects of key predictors on the probability of getting jobs among older people(ages of 60 or older). Both a random effects and a fixed effects model reaffirms that non-labor income has a negative effect on the chances of being employed. And a random effects model shows that the effect of education is also negative, as has frequently been reported by previous studies. That means the effects of education and non-labor income on elderly employment remain negative after the effect of unobserved heterogeneities is controled for and the problem of endogenous predictors is redressed through an appropriate panel data analysis. These findings mean, in turn, that when Korean baby-boomers, who had acquired an unprecedentedly higher level of education and were expected to enjoy ever- larger amount of non-labor income than their preceding generations, retires in near future, their incentives to work will become much weaker and the lack of labor-force and the burden of financing increased public pension expenditure will become more troublesome. The paper concludes with recommending some policy initiatives helpful to solve these expected problems.

This study was carried out to empirically analyze the hypothesis that the impact of the welfare status on the welfare attitudes is moderated by each individual's level of confidence in government. To do this, this study focused on the welfare status known as the significant predictors of welfare attitudes and measured the welfare status as a gap between ‘welfare contribute’ and ‘welfare benefit’ in a single dimension, which is defined as ‘material sacrifice’. Also, this study examined the main effect of material sacrifice and trust in government on the welfare attitudes and moderating effect of trust in government on relationship between material sacrifice and welfare attitudes. This study was performed with secondary data from 8th year of 「2013 Korea Welfare Panel Study」. Hypothesis of this study were verified using hierarchical multiple regression analysis. The major findings of this study are summarized as follow. ‘Material sacrifice’ was found to be negatively associated with the welfare attitudes. However, as the confidence in which social policies will be carried out competently by government increases, it was confirmed that the negative effect of material sacrifice on the welfare attitudes was moderated. It suggests that self-material interests associated with welfare could be moderated by beliefs and expectations about the government's functions, which means that expanding the reliance on the social policy is an important task in order to lead a social consensus for the welfare expansion.

This study aims to look at the current status of college graduate youth' participating in Individual Training Account System of Korea and analyze the effects of their participation experience on the labor market outcomes. To achieve this, this study used the data from 2012 Graduates Occupational Mobility Survey(GOMS) and for analysis, used both multiple regression analysis and binomial logistic regression analysis. As a result, it was found that the number of young people who had ever heard about the Individual Training Account System was 2,707 individuals (27.6%), and among them, the number of young people who had actually participated in the System was 695(25.7%). As a result of analyzing the effect of participation experience with the Individual Training Account System on the outcomes of labor market, it was found that participation experience had a positive and significant impact on whether they were employed and the form of employment (permanent position), whereas it did not have a positive impact on average monthly wage. Based on these results, this study drew implications for further studies and suggested policy tasks for improving the policy effectiveness of the Individual Training Account System.

This study analyses the effects of the major educational policies, focusing on the private tutoring prohibition policy(PTPP), on the intergenerational class mobility(ICM) by using Korea Labor and Income Panel Study(KLIPS) 1st-12th surveys. Because private tutoring( shadow education) can be effective for academic achievement of children of above middle classes that spend most private tutoring expenditure and have more information on education, the private tutoring prohibition policy can increase the intergenerational mobility. This study confirms this possibility. Even when the overlapping effect of the middle school equalization polity is controlled for, there is still high effect of the PTPP. We think that we still need to examine the level of intergenerational mobility with PTPP cohort with that of later cohorts in the future. We also emphasize the compositive effect of the several consistent policies such as middle school and high school equalization polices and the PTPP and length and continuity of the policies for the higher mobility.

The permanent disability benefit(PDB) system whose purpose lies in helping affected workers with their self-realization through compensating them for their work-related injury or disease and facilitating their timely return to work is very important in terms of social welfare. Actually, the portions of PDB’s in all WCI expenditures have been on the sharp increase. In spite of its positive aspects like this, however, an excessive amount of PDB’s may have negative impacts on the affected workers’ will to work or return to work, and increasing trends in the amount of PDB’s payable in annuity will remain in an aging or aged society a potentially risky factor posing a threat to the soundness of WCI budgets. In this respect, the author attempted herein to identify the long-term reality of trends in the number of claimants entitled to PDB’s and the amount of PDB’s payable to them through making the long-term budget projections of PDB’s; address problems with PDB’s payable in annuity, which are or will potentially be one of the gravest burdens in securing the soundness of WCI budgets; and discuss how to optimize the amount of PDB’s through studying & analyzing overseas cases and income replacement rates and what kinds of improvements are thinkable. It’s recommended to reduce the absolute amount of benefits payable in annuity in a phased way considering claimants’ life-cycle instead of sticking to the current system, which takes the form of lifelong pension plan.

This study examines whether formal home care has led to a reduction in family member’s allocation of time to care of elderly and changing the allocation of other time: informal care, market work, leisure, etc. Long-term care for the elderly is not the entire burden of elderly families anymore due to the increasing of the formal home care service for elderly since mid-2000’s. This study uses triple difference(DDD) methods for evaluating policy reforms when reforms are equally and nation-wide accessible and analyzes data from the 2004 and 2009 Time Use Survey Data of the National Statistical Office in Korea. The treatment group is composed of the families of the elderly who need care and low- and middle- income family. Controlling for demographic characters, the three-way interaction term has statically significant and negative impact on care time of family members in treatment group statistically significant. The results reveal that the policy changes in elderly home care service affect time allocation of family members with old adults, which decreases caregiving time in a daily life. This result becomes apparent when we limit the case of women. But the level of reduction is not enough to change other kinds of time-informal care, market work, leisure, etc. The results indicate that formal home care for the elderly can reduce the burden of caregiving in families, but only minimally.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of public attitudes toward welfare spending in relation with the perception of welfare level. Data from the national survey of ‘the SSK Good Government Research Unit’ are used to perform a logistic regression analysis of the association between welfare attitudes and government perceptions, political orientations, and socio-economic backgrounds. The most prominent finding is that the determinants of welfare attitudes differ markedly between the two different groups of welfare perception. The empirical results say that persons living in a corrupt government tend to prefer welfare spendings despite having low level of welfare, and persons living in a unjust government tend to prefer welfare expansion because welfare level must be low. Persons living in a government of great capacity tend to have positive attitudes to welfare spending despite having a high level of welfare, whereas persons living in a government of less capacity tend to have negative attitudes to welfare expansion because the level of welfare is too high beyond government capacity. This distinction between the two perceptions of welfare level provides a systemic understanding of public attitudes toward welfare spending