Contestations over rights: from establishment to implementation of the National Basic Livelihood Security System in South Korea

Abstract

International human rights are implanted in specific social, political and cultural contexts within which the rights are interpreted and contested by different social actors. This contribution examines contestations over the right to social security in South Korean society through the example of a social assistance system. It draws attention to how the state had long promoted an individual and familial duty of welfare support, and how South Korean non-governmental organisations (NGOs) utilised human rights language to enhance state welfare responsibility. It then examines how legal rights are interpreted, administrated, and contested at the micro level through interactions among different actors, such as claimants and welfare officials.

Keywords:

• Economic
• social rights
• poverty
• welfare
• South Korea
• Confucian values

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor, Diane Elson, for her encouragement, guidance and support throughout my study. Thanks go to Ryan Hill for his careful reading and comments. Thanks are also due to the editors of this collection and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Notes

A. Woodiwiss, Human Rights (New York: Routledge, 2005), 3.

Ibid., 3.

B.S. Turner, ‘A Neo-Hobbesian Theory of Human Rights: A Reply to Malcolm Waters’, Sociology 31, no. 3 (1997): 566.

Damien Short, ‘Sociological and Anthropological Approaches’, in Human Rights: Politics and Practice, ed. Michael Goodhart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 98.

The term ‘right to social security’ in this study is used as specified in the ICESCR. Accordingly, social security system includes both social insurance system and social assistance. However, when the term ‘right to social security’ is used in relation to the NBLSS, it refers to the social assistance element of social security.

R.A. Wilson, ‘Introduction’, in Culture and Rights: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Jane K. Cowan, Marie-Benedicte Dembour and Richard A. Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 1–26.

Shannon Speed, ‘At the Crossroads of Human Rights and Anthropology: Towards a Critically Engaged Activist Research’, American Anthropologists, 108, no. 1 (2006): 71.

As a participant observer, although I had decided not to break into the conversations between street vendors and welfare officials that took place during the claiming process, there were times when I felt compelled to interfere, such as when street vendors were bullied or humiliated. In the face of unfair (at least from my view) treatment, not defending street vendors was considered to be unethical.

A. Wilson, ‘Human Rights Culture and Context: An Introduction’, in Human Rights, Culture and Context: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. R.A. Wilson (London: Pluto, 1997), 4.

T. Kim, ‘The Social Construction of Welfare Control: A Sociological Review on State Voluntary Sector links in Korea’, International Sociology 23, no. 6 (2008): 819–44.

I.S. Han, ‘Kwangju and Beyond: Coping with Past State Atrocities in South Korea’, Human Rights Quarterly 27 (2005): 998–1045.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ministry of Labour, ‘History of the Employment Insurance’, http://www.ei.go.kr/jsp/int/HPINT1100L.jsp (accessed February 10, 2010).

See, for example, H.-J. Kwon, ‘Beyond European Welfare Regimes: Comparative Perspectives on East Asian Welfare Regimes’, Journal of Social Policy 26, no. 4 (1997): 467–84; E. Reiger and S. Leibfried, Limits to Globalization: Welfare States and the World Economy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003); I. Holiday, ‘East Asian Social Policy in the Wake of the Financial Crisis: Farewell to Productivism?’, Policy and Politics 33, no. 1 (2005): 145–62; I. Peng and J. Wang, ‘Institutions and Institutional Purpose: Continuity and Change in East Asian Social Policy’, Politics and Society 36, no. 1 (2008): 61–88.

D. Elson, ‘Women's Rights are Human Rights: Campaigns and Concepts’, in Rights: Sociological Perspectives, ed. L. Morris (London: Routledge, 2006), 107.

R. Madsen, ‘Confucianism: Ethical Uniformity and Diversity’, in The Globalization of Ethics, ed. W.M. Sullivan and W. Kymlicka (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 117–33.

Ibid.

H.A. Palley, ‘Social Policy and the Elderly in South Korea: Confucianism, Modernization, and Development’, Asian Survey 32, no. 9 (1992): 787–801.

H. Kahn, World Economic Development: 1979 and Beyond (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1979); B.I. Koh, ‘Confucianism in Contemporary Korea’, in Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity: Moral Education and Economic Culture in Japan and the Four Mini-Dragons, ed. W. Tu (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 191–201.

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R. Howard, Human Rights in Commonwealth Africa (Totowata, New Jersey: Rowman & Littlefield, 1986), 17.

K. Kwon, ‘Economic Development in East Asia and a Critique of the Post-Confucian Thesis’, Theory and Society 36, no. 1 (2007): 55–83.

See the movement's website, http://saemaul.com/english/ (accessed June 1, 2010).

Ibid.

President Secretariat of Republic of Korea, 1976, cited in Kim, ‘The Social Construction of Welfare Control’.

Park, 1979, cited in D. Shin, ‘Financial Crisis and Social Security: The Paradox of the Republic of Korea’, International Social Security Review 53, no. 3 (2000): 86.

H. Lee, ‘Civil Society and Welfare Reforms in Post-Crisis South Korea’, in Canada-Korea Social Policy Symposium II, 27–28 January 2005, Toronto, http://www.utoronto.ca/ai/canada-korea/papers/Lee.CanadaCSOfa.doc. (accessed August 20, 2008).

Kim, ‘The Social Construction of Welfare Control’.

Choi, 1992, cited in Palley, ‘Social Policy and the Elderly in South Korea’.

H. Lee, ‘Globalization and the Emerging Welfare State: The Experience of South Korea’, International Journal of Social Welfare 8 (1999): 29.

MOHSA,1994, cited in Shin, ‘Financial Crisis and Social Security’.

The family law brought up a long struggle of women's groups to reform the law, resulting in a modest reform in 1977 and a comprehensive reform in 1989 that abolished, among others, the inheritance discrimination between son and daughter and the abolition of the family head system in 2005. Although women's movements in South Korea is an important topic, it is beyond the scope of this contribution.

S. Sung, ‘Women Reconciling Paid and Unpaid Work in a Confucian Welfare State: The Case of South Korea’, Social Policy and Administration 37, no. 4 (2003): 342–60.

E. Cho, ‘Caught in Confucius’ Shadow: The Women's Struggle for Legal Equality in South Korea’, Columbia Journal of Asian Law 12, no. 2 (1998): 161.

Ibid., 164.

Ibid., 165.

Ibid., 164.

Ibid., 165.

Wilson, ‘Introduction’, 6.

Korea National Statistical Office, ‘Unemployment Rate’, http://www.nso.go.kr/ (accessed February 11, 2010).

S.I. Park, 1994, cited in T.S. Kim and B.D. Son, Poverty and Social Policy (Seoul: Chongmok 2004), 132.

H.J. Lee, M.G. Kim, D.M. Roh, S.H. Kang, J.Y. Yu and W.S. Lim, The Structure of Poverty in Korea (Seoul: Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, 2006), 61.

Ibid.

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I. Peng and J. Wang, ‘Institutions and Institutional Purpose: Continuity and Change in East Asian Social Policy’, Politics and Society 36, no. 1 (2008): 61–88.

H.J. Kwon, ‘Advocacy Coalitions and the Politics of Welfare in Korea after the Economic Crisis’, Policy and Politics 31, no. 1 (2003): 69–83.

Sarangbang Group for Human Rights, ed. Right to Live with Dignity: Report on Economic and, Social Rights after the IMF Crisis (Seoul: Saramsaenggak, 1999).

Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Concluding Observations on South Korea (E/C.12/1/Add.59, 2001), para. 4.

NGO Coalition for the NBLSS, Statement, http://blog.peoplepower21.org/Welfare/ 352 (accessed June 1, 2010).

Ministry of Health and Welfare, Introduction to the National Basic Livelihood Security System, http://team.mohw.go.kr/blss/contents/contentsView.jsp?no=1&menu_cd=B_02_01_01 (accessed March 23, 2004)

H. Lee, ‘Civil Society and Welfare Reforms’.

S.W. Kang, S. Heo and H.W. Chung, Analysis on the NBLS Establishment Process (Seoul: Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, 2004).

Ibid., 38.

Ibid., 41.

Ibid.

Daily Human Rights News Archive, 24 July 1999, http://www.sarangbang.or.kr/kr/info/hrinput/hr_list.php?page=1&order=1 (accessed February 11, 2010).

Kang, Heo and Chung, Analysis on the NBLS Establishment Process, 42.

Woodiwiss, Human Rights, XIV.

Kang, Heo and Chung, Analysis on the NBLS Establishment Process, 4.

Daily Human Rights News Archive, see, for example, 12 November 1998; 26 November 1998; March 1999, 24 July 1999, http://www.sarangbang.or.kr/kr/info/hrinput/hr_list.php?page=1&order=1 (accessed February 11, 2010).

Wilson, ‘Introduction’, 1–26.

Initials were used for the names of my interviewees who wished to be anonymous while full names were used for those who wanted me to do so.

Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2005 Guidelines on the Implementation of the National Basic Livelihood Security System (Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2005), 25–6, http://www.mw.go.kr/front/jb/sjb030301ls.jsp (accessed May 17, 2008).

Korea National Statistics Office, Korea Social Index 2007, http://www.estat.go.kr/egs_board/bbs/board.php?bo_table=estat&wr_id=111 (accessed October 29, 2008).

D. Narayan and P. Petesch, eds, Voices of the Poor: From Many Lands, 2002, http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2002/03/01/00009494602021604090737/Rendered/PDF/multi0page.pdf (accessed April 28, 2005).

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