KJC Korea
Journal Central

This research explores the introduction of the Youth Allowance policy in Seoul City as a result of the novel welfare politics in the form of insider-outsider cooperation, and analyses its success from the institutional activism perspective. Previous actor-centred welfare politics approaches focused on who leads on the policy-making while strictly discerning between the inside and the outside of the official polity. In contrast to such assumptions of the preexisting approaches, Youth Allowance policy was formed through the insiders and outsiders’ collaborative governance. The role of institutional activists as a bridge between the inside and the outside is highlighted in this research. Institutional activists with the Director of Seoul Innovation Bureau in center guaranteed the substantive participation of the outsiders and persuaded the sceptical government officials and the city councillors to materialize the policy ideas they came up with. They also actively defended it when the conflict arose with the central government on the implementation of the policy ideas. The case of Seoul city’s Youth Allowance policy demonstrates that the inside-outside boundary of an institution in welfare politics is blurring and that the potential for an institutional activist to serve a meaningful role in a welfare reform has increased. This case also serves as an example for the potential for a new type of social movement that can represent the outsiders of the labour market in Korean welfare politics.

Based on the criticism of the uniform view of the elderly, this study analyzed the inequality trend of income and assets by dividing the elderly group into three cohorts based on heterogeneity between them. The results are as follows. First, as a result of analyzing the income, assets share, and decile dispersion ratio after the financial crisis in 1999, the share of the middle class of the pre-liberation and post-liberation birth cohort have decreased. In particular, the decile dispersion ratio of the pre-liberation birth cohort tended to be worse than that of the other cohorts. On the other hand, the baby boom birth cohort showed a favorable dispersion ratio overall, indicating a difference in results between cohorts. Second, as a result of the Gini coefficient, the baby boom birth cohort showed an improvement in inequality as they entered old age, but cumulative inequality was observed in the other cohorts. Especially, the income inequality of the pre-liberation birth cohort was the highest. Third, as a result of Atkinson Index, except for the baby-boom birth cohort, it was confirmed that there was cumulative inequality due to the age effect. In particular, the level of asset inequality was significantly higher than income inequality in all cohorts. The result of this study shows that the aspects and degrees of inequality between elderly cohorts are different. Based on these results this study insists that efforts to design targeted policies for each elderly cohort are needed, and also suggests seeking effective income security policies for the elderly and sustainable elderly welfare policies. This study has significance in that the elderly cohort was subdivided to analyze inequality trends and to derive characteristics of individual groups.

The basic income for the lifetime selection period is a system that unconditionally guarantees the right to receive the minimum and sufficient basic income for a certain period of time selected by oneself during the working life. The concept of basic income use rights during the lifetime selection period is a necessary system in the transition period. It is a gradual and moderate approach that complements the limitations and fills the cracks faced by the current Korean social security system, and contains a forward-looking value that supports real freedom and challenging actions as active citizens based on the stable basic life of each individual. It also contains the government's nudge role to lead moral citizens rather than moral hazard while supporting the real freedom of individuals in the face of increased anxiety due to personalization of risk. In the sense that it enables the challenge as a free and creative active citizen based on stability, the proposal of the right to use basic income for the lifetime selection period can be an alternative to the developmental future that contains the uncertain but considerable opportunities led by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In addition, while the basic income for the lifetime selection period is well harmonized with the current social security system, it can contribute to a good policy experiment for the future social security and distribution system by scientifically verifying various issues related to the introduction of basic income.

Return migration, as an emerging trend of international population movement of Koreans, has recently attracted scholarly attentions. This is an empirical study of Korean emigrants, of which the primary aim is to establish a knowledge base of who has a (higher) desire to return. This study unprecedentedly adopted a quantitative research design, involving Korean Australians. While most of past studies utilised a binary analysis model, which was considered as having a limitation in reflecting the continuity of the concept of intention, this study implemented a linear regression analysis. Independent variables were constructed as economic, adaptation, and personal life cycle categories. The insights obtained by this study trigger the necessity for follow-up studies, which would test the applicability of the findings to other Korean migrants and further to non-Korean migrants in general. The findings of this study revealed the importance of structural factors including the experience of discrimination and the social security system in return migration intention, which would enable informed policy making for migrants.

Although the socialization and expansion of insurance for eldercare services in Korea have improved, the necessity of a social safety net for the primarily female in-home care workers is rarely discussed. There is no social safety net for workers’ health, even though in-home care workers are exposed to various occupational risks in poor working environments. Therefore, this study aims to reveal the occupational health risks faced by female in-home care workers of Long-Term Care Insurance policy in Korea, and to design a social safety net in order to protect them from those risks. This study uses qualitative research methods to analyze how in-home elderly care workers experience the existing pre-preventative and post-compensational social policies designed to protect them from occupational risks and industrial illnesses. In particular, this research analyze the mismatch between the institutional context of occupational risks and the current social security system for workers’ health. Based on these research findings, this study finally suggested how the social security system for care workers’ safety and health could be reconstructed. This study has an implication that provides an in-depth analysis of the experience and the structural context in health risks and the social safety net for in-home care workers’ health, and this has been rarely discussed before.

The purpose of this study is to examine the public's perception of the quality of Korean society, to identify factors related to the quality of society, and to explore whether the perceptions of social quality are associated with life satisfaction. A survey of 1,000 adults was conducted in December 2018 to examine the quality of society in four areas: socio-economic security, social inclusiveness, social cohesion, and social empowerment. Findings show that respondents evaluate that the overall quality of Korean society is not high. They answer that Korean society is not safe from dangers and Koreans live insecure lives. The public recognizes the level of social inclusiveness is low in Korean society. Regarding social cohesion, respondents answer that Korean society have low levels of social trust, transparency and fairness. With regard to social empowerment, less than half of the respondents are positive about being able to participate in important decisions that affect their lives. The results of regression analysis show that marital status, education level, employment types, and social class are closely related to the perceptions on the quality of society. Among the four conditional factors of social quality, socio-economic security, social inclusiveness, social cohesion, and social empowerment are positively associated with life satisfaction. We discussed ways to improve the quality of Korean society.