KJC Korea
Journal Central

This study compares and analyzes precarious labor market in Korea and Japan in terms of gender and occupational class. Previous studies have analyzed precarious labor limited to the level of employment type such as non-standard workers. This study reconceptualizes precarious labor in terms of the combination of employment relations and income level. In addition. we analyzed whether there are differences in the characteristics of precarious labor between Korea and Japan. In order to analyze the labor market precariousness in Korea. we used data from the 17th Korea Labor Panel Survey (2014) and for Japan. we used the 9th (2012) data from the Keio Household Panel Survey. As a result. we could confirm the feminization of labor market precariousness and horizontal division by occupation in both Korea and Japan. Also. ordered logistic regression analysis showed that the more women. and those in their 60s or older. the less skilled service workers. or the manufacturing workers are likely to face labor market instability in both Korea and Japan. The results of this analysis reflect the fact that Korea and Japan have experienced similar changes in the labor market structure with institutionalized employment protection system based on male workers.

This paper aims to reveal the background and issues of the current reform proposals for social insurance in Germany and to draw their implications for Korea. The essence of the German social insurance crisis is that of normality of industrial society on which it has been based, revealing itself by the dual crisis of finance and dualization. Reform proposals are regarded as diverse responses to the crisis of the normality within individual social insurance schemes. They are searching for transforming health insurance into citizen’s insurance, pension insurance into various alternatives including all worker’s insurance and citizen’s pension, unemployment insurance into employment insurance. One of the commonalities of the them is that they attempt to reconstruct the old normality. However, due to the economic recovery, the historical experiences of improving social insurance, and high satisfaction, they are expected to struggle with the gradual improvements rather than radical shift from their tradition. In Korea, where the maturity of social insurance is low, it is necessary to mark the crisis faced by German social insurance as a teacher. We need to go back to the fundamental spirit of social policy and redraw the blue prints of social policy by opening minds to plentiful alternatives in the eyes of normality reconstruction.

Along with the well-established evidence on the negative effect of social isolation on physical and mental health, increasing attention has been paid to multi-dimensional nature of social isolation. One line of study on social isolation has discussed different pathways between objective and subjective social isolation and health. Another stream of the research focused on the possibly non-linear association between social isolation and health by age cohort groups. Drawing from the two lines of research, this study aimed at empirically examine to what extent objective and subjective social isolation are associated with physical and mental health independently and how the associations vary by three age cohorts(i.e. the middleaged, the young old, the old-old). Data came from the first wave of Korean Social Life, Health and Aging Project (KSHAP) (N= 814). Findings showed 1) objective subjective isolation were significantly related with worse physical and mental health, interestingly, subjective social isolation was associated with mental health only, 2) pattern of association between social isolation and physical health varied by age cohorts. Specifically, compared to the middle-aged, the young old with higher objective social isolation exhibited lower level of physical health, while the old-old with higher subjective social isolation were likely to experience lower physical health. Based on the findings, we discussed implications and suggestions for future research and relevant policy/program development for ameliorating objective and subjective social isolation

This study aims to examine the level of precariousness among young adults in South Korea and analyze the factors affecting their subjective well-being by adopting the three forms of precariousness suggested by Rodgers(1989) such as lack of resource, uncertainty and disempowerment as its analytical framework. Structural Equation Model was used for analyzing the path model of self-rated health, income level and social support(three forms of resource) affecting subjective wellbeing through uncertainty and disempowerment. Study population include young adults aged between 19 to 34 with a sample size of 415 using data of the 8th wave of the Korean General Social Survey(KGSS), 2010. Study population is divided into lower-age group (aged between 19-26) and upper-age group (aged between 27-34) in order to examine the differences between age groups by using Multiple Group Analysis. Study results show that three forms of resources, uncertainty and disempowerment had direct effect on the subjective well-being of South Korean young adults and disempowerment had the most significant effect among the factors. In addition, self-rated health and income level had indirect effect on subjective well-being through both uncertainty and disempowerment while social support had indirect effect on subjective well-being only through disempowerment. Results from the Multiple Group Analysis indicate that among the two age groups, income level only has a significant effect on subjective well-being in the upper-age group. In addition, disempowerment had greater effect on subjective wellbeing among upper-age group than the lower-age group. Based on the study results, this paper suggested policy implications and discussion for further research.

The physical and psychological weaknesses of delinquent adolescents increase the possibility of socialization and the possibility of social exclusion. Therefore, this study aims to clarify the characteristics of the social exclusion through the Q methodology and to suggest policy and practical intervention directions. For this purpose, 36 statements about social exclusion were conducted through 15 prejudicial adolescents with the prior cooperation of the institution and the consent of the subjects. As a result of the analysis, four types were derived. Type 1 can be named as social disconnect type ‘Type 2 is total type’, type 3 is ‘poverty type’ and type 4 is ‘service type’. Based on this, it can be said that the characteristics of social exclusion of juvenile delinquents are complexity, inclusivity, individuality, universality.

In Korea, ‘spoon class discourse’ has attracted public attention in the press and among young people, which reflects that mass awareness that the class status structure is clearly rooted in the society becomes widespread. Although income distribution has been improved since late 2000s, it is interesting that Korean people’s subjective perception concerning class mobility and social justice has been worsemed. By using the survey data on people’s perception of opportunity inequality, this study finds that Korean people have by and large negative subjective awareness regarding socio-economic opportunity inequality, magnitude of opportunity inequality, and achievement by efforts, and that the degree of the negative perception is greater in accordance with the people’s subjective identification. The regression analysis reveals that the social status of respondents and their parents(-), experience of discrimination(+), age(-), and high education of college and above (+) have consistent effect over socio-economic opportunity inequality, magnitude of opportunity inequality, and achievement by efforts with statistical significance. More concretely, as people have lower subjective status identification at the time of parent generation and their own generation, as they have the experience of discriminatory misconduct, and as they are young and highly educated, they have negative or pessimistic perception regarding opportuinity inequality. In addition, it is revealed that the unemployed and non-regular workers have significantly negative perception on socio-economic opportunity inequality, magnitude of opportunity inequality, while negative perception on the magnitude of opportunity inequality and achievement by efforts is noticeable among high and middle income households.

The study found that the origins of modern Korean welfare regime are closely related to the political and economic order of the U.S. military rule between 1945 and 1948. The creation of developmental state in 1960s and 1970s can not be imagined from the standpoint of the U.S. military rule. The U.S. military government dismantled the labor movement and the farmers’ movement, and dealt a devastating blow to leftist political forces. Through this process, the U.S. military government turned the political landscape of the Republic of Korea, which was dominated by left-wing political forces in August 1945, completely transformed into the political landscape dominated by right-wing political forces. Moreover, it would not have been possible without the physical force of the US military government to transplant American capitalism instead of the social (democratic) state that the majority of the Korean people wanted. Through farmland reform, the traditional landowning classes were broken down, the revolutionary farmers turned into conservative peasants, and the distribution of factories owned by the Japanese led to the birth of a new capitalist class that was subordinated to the state. From the viewpoint of the welfare regime, the most significant meaning of the US military government is that it laid the foundations for the developmental state in the 1960s and 1970s in Korea.

This study was initiated based on the notion that the logic regarding case selection and a perspective for case analysis has never been discussed in previous studies on immigration policy despite its significance. Given the idea, this study investigated levels of integration of immigrants which were operationalized as 1) differences in general conditions of economic, labor, social, and political life between native born and foreign born and 2) level of quality of economic, labor, social life for immigrants. For that purpose, this study analyzed the secondary data set which was a combination of several secondary data sets. Results showed that the countries that belong to traditional immigration regime including Australia, Canada, and US showed higher levels of immigrant integration at various sub categories of integration. Countries that belong to new immigration regime such as Ireland revealed relatively high levels of immigrant integration. The findings from this study implied that integration of immigrants needs to be analyzed with consideration on characteristics of social security policy of each country along with immigration policy and cultural diversity of each country.

It is attempted here to explain change in welfare attitudes for two decades in 10 countries with the cohort effect, especially differences in societal values between generations. It was found that for the last 20 years pro-welfare attitudes of the public has been strengthened, on which the generation has impact, more by the cohort effect than by the age effect, and that the Millennials/Y-generation are the strongest supporters for the state welfare. Value-differences between cohorts, as a background factor for the cohort effect on welfare attitudes, are clear but show a kind of linear trend from the older to the younger cohorts. As for the cohort effect on welfare attitudes, it is expected, at least for the short-term future, in the direction toward supporting the expansion of the state welfare. Korean welfare attitudes show an exceptional pattern - preferring income inequality as incentives, and at the same time, the expansion of governmental welfare responsibility, which echoes recent arguments of contradictoriness and non-class-orientedness of Korean welfare attitudes. Especially, Korean Millennials/Y-G shows this contradictory welfare attitudes the most strongly, which is unique between 10 countries in this study, implying their fierce competition is being internalized. It is expected that the contradictoriness of Korean welfare attitudes may limit its possibility to back up welfare expansion in Korea.