Abstract
The chapter examines the nature and trends of economic inequality in Korea in relation to social welfare policy. To that end, it examines “dualization” trends in three dimensions: the labor market, social welfare, and political power. First, for the labor market, the chapter analyzes how the income gap and access to vocational training has changed. Second, regarding social welfare, it examines differences in pension benefits and other social welfare divides. Finally, to evaluate dualization in respect to political power, this study traces the changes in union membership and the election abstention rate among the different population groups. In conclusion the author argues that the South Korean welfare system originated from a status-oriented design and that liberalization pressure now enhances the welfare system’s dualization in comparison to other OECD countries. The labor market is divided into regular and non-regular workers, men and women, big and small enterprises. The welfare system is also divided into company welfare/public welfare and regular/non-regular workers. These divides are related to the power divide in union membership, social networks, and political participation. These results show that the developmental design of employment relationships and social policy in the Korean case can be easily converted into neo-liberal reform and therefore tends to increase inequality along broader socio-economic and even political dimensions, which in turn affects the quality of democracy.
The original version of this chapter has been published in an academic journal with the title “Three Dualization Processes in Korea: The Labor Market, Welfare Policy, and Political Representation,” Development and Society 45(2): 297–326.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
There have been continued debates since the publication of the “Three worlds of welfare state (Esping Andersen 1990),” to find a proper typology for the South Korean (hereafter: Korea) welfare state. For example, some categorize Korea as falling between liberal regimes where social policies are usually absent (Cho 2001; Choi 2003), and continental conservative regimes where segmented and family oriented social policies are common (Nam 2002; Kim 2005). In addition to this, others recently concluded that the Korean welfare state is a hybrid one, as the East Asian style developmental welfare system is recently mixed with more protective characteristics (Hudson and Kühner 2012). Otherwise, both of Japan and Korea are regarded as having segmented, family oriented welfare regimes similar to southern European countries (Estevez-Abe and Kim 2014). Therefore, it is clear that Korea has both characters of liberal and conservative systems (Powell and Kim 2014).
- 3.
Different levels of equality and social solidarity are correlated to the strength of organized labor. The power resource theory holds that the stronger the labor movement (strength of labor unions, social democratic political parties) the more such pressures can be resisted, thus preserving higher levels of social solidarity. See especially Korpi (1983, 1989).
- 4.
Macro-corporatism (and tripartism) continues to produce higher levels of social solidarity by promoting ongoing compromise among groups with divergent economic interests. In this context the government can intervene directly in wage bargaining and impose settlements (Katzenstein 1985; Martin and Swank 2012).
- 5.
Liberal countries generally have flexible and high levels of inequality, with welfare policies focused on poverty prevention. Nordic welfare states generally have low levels of income inequality, encompassing trade unions, and universalistic welfare state policies. Continental, southern European regimes’ industrial trade unions tend to represent inside labor (Palier and Thelen 2010) and their social policy benefits are proportional to contributions. Unemployment and non-standard work usually leads to incomplete, insufficient social rights (Häusermann 2012, 30–1).
- 6.
Even though Korean economic development was achieved through export-oriented industrial policy (not ISI), the Korean government has generally protected domestic industry through trade policy. In this regard, highly developed insider protection can be partly explained by the delayed nature of industrialization.
- 7.
Korean labor law does not allow non-standard employees to be members of enterprise unions and has from the start prohibited workers from organizing on an industry or national level. Authoritarian regimes in Korea used labor laws to institute single unionism and to forbid unions from forming links to the political opposition (Sohn 2014).
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Kim, HJ. (2018). A Dualized Democracy? The Labor Market, Welfare Policy, and Political Representation in Korea. In: Mosler, H., Lee, EJ., Kim, HJ. (eds) The Quality of Democracy in Korea. Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63919-2_7
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