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Abstract
Korea is facing diverse pressures: prevalence of precarious jobs, polarization of job quality as well as opportunities of skill development, weakened family functions and increase of non-traditional families, barriers in balancing work and family responsibilities, low fertility rate and most rapid ageing of population in OECD countries, uncoordinated services and so on. The old social risks now are intertwined with new social risks; thereby Korea is facing complicated reform tasks in several policy fields. This paper attempts to elaborate the context of these challenges and to zero in on the characteristics of Korean welfare state restructuring. Issues on work–family balance and labour market polarization are discussed.
Notes
1. It slightly rose to 1.13 in 2006 and was estimated at 1.25 in 2007. The causal explanations are under detailed scrutiny.
2. The Korean government (with Kim Youngsam as president) actively started to pursue globalization strategy from the mid-1990s.
3. Lee Myeongbak administration officially abrogated vision 2030 as of 3 April 2008.
4. This in nature maintains original social stratifications based on market status, and strengthened stratified outcomes in coverage, benefit level and overall social protection.
5. As of 2003, public expenditure on social services is only 14.7%, compared with 15.4% of basic income guarantee, and 69.9% of four social insurances out of total expenditure. The percentage ratio of social service expenditure to GDP is only 0.4%.
6. This has caused deepened inequality in welfare provision and unstableness of programme implementation, which is often determined by the head of local government.
7. Considering the existing relatively low level of tax, and proposed several welfare visions of current government, this double-binding message could mislead and be misinterpreted by the people, and could ruin the possibility of comprehensive welfare.