Download or read book The Political Economy of the Small Welfare State in South Korea written by Jae-jin Yang and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-28 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains why the Korean welfare state is underdeveloped despite successful industrialization, democratization, a militant labor movement, and a centralized meritocracy. Unlike most social science books on Korea, which tend to focus on its developmental state and rapid economic development, this book deals with social welfare issues and politics during the critical junctures in Korea's history: industrialization in the 1960–70s, the democratization and labor movement in the mid-1980s, globalization and the financial crisis in the 1990s, and the wind of free welfare in the 2010s. It highlights the self-interested activities of Korea's enterprise unionism at variance with those of a more solidaristic industrial unionism in the European welfare states. Korean big business, the chaebol, accommodated the unions' call for higher wages and more corporate welfare, which removed practical incentives for unions to demand social welfare. Korea's single-member-district electoral rules also induce politicians to sell geographically targeted, narrow benefits rather than public welfare for all while presidents are significantly constrained by unpopular tax increase issues. Strong economic bureaucrats acting as veto player also lead Korea to a small welfare state.
Download or read book The Small Welfare State written by Jae-jin Yang and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-24 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a period of rapid change for welfare states around the world, this insightful book offers a comparative study of three historically small welfare states: the US, Japan, and South Korea. Featuring contributions from international distinguished scholars, this book looks beyond the larger European welfare states to unpack the many common political and institutional characteristics that have constrained welfare state development in industrialized democracies.
Download or read book South Koreans in the Debt Crisis written by Jesook Song and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-18 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Koreans in the Debt Crisis is a detailed examination of the logic underlying the neoliberal welfare state that South Korea created in response to the devastating Asian Debt Crisis (1997–2001). Jesook Song argues that while the government proclaimed that it would guarantee all South Koreans a minimum standard of living, it prioritized assisting those citizens perceived as embodying the neoliberal ideals of employability, flexibility, and self-sufficiency. Song demonstrates that the government was not alone in drawing distinctions between the “deserving” and the “undeserving” poor. Progressive intellectuals, activists, and organizations also participated in the neoliberal reform project. Song traces the circulation of neoliberal concepts throughout South Korean society, among government officials, the media, intellectuals, NGO members, and educated underemployed people working in public works programs. She analyzes the embrace of partnerships between NGOs and the government, the frequent invocation of a pervasive decline in family values, the resurrection of conservative gender norms and practices, and the promotion of entrepreneurship as the key to survival. Drawing on her experience during the crisis as an employee in a public works program in Seoul, Song provides an ethnographic assessment of the efforts of the state and civilians to regulate social insecurity, instability, and inequality through assistance programs. She focuses specifically on efforts to help two populations deemed worthy of state subsidies: the “IMF homeless,” people temporarily homeless but considered employable, and the “new intellectuals,” young adults who had become professionally redundant during the crisis but had the high-tech skills necessary to lead a transformed post-crisis South Korea.
Download or read book The Routledge International Handbook to Welfare State Systems written by Christian Aspalter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-01-12 with total page 683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Developing countries may not have full-fledged welfare states like those we find in Europe, but certainly they have welfare state systems. For comparative social policy research the term "welfare state systems" has many advantages, as there are numerous different types/models of welfare state systems around the world. This path-breaking book, edited by Christian Aspalter, brings together leading experts to discuss social policy in 25 countries/regions around the world. From the most advanced welfare state systems in Scandinavia and Western Central Europe to the developing powers of Brazil, China, India, Russia, Mexico and Indonesia, each country-specific chapter provides a historical overview, discusses major characteristics of the welfare state system, analyzes country-specific problems, as well as critical current and future trends for further discussions, while also providing one additional major focal point/issue for greater in-depth analysis. This book breaks new ground in ideal-typical welfare regime theory, identifying now in total 10 worlds of welfare capitalism. It provides broad perspectives on critical challenges which welfare state systems in the developing and developed world alike must address now and in the future. It will be of great interest to all scholars and students of social policy, social development, development and health economists, public policy, health policy, sociology, social work and social policy makers and administrators. This book is a reference book for researchers and social policy administrators; it can also serve as a textbook for courses on comparative social policy, international social policy and international social development.
Download or read book The Korean State and Social Policy written by Stein Ringen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-27 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: the birth of the state -- The state meets modernity -- The state meets business -- The state meets voluntarism -- The state meets democracy -- Conclusion: the anatomy of the state.
Download or read book The Korean Welfare State written by Kyungbae Chung and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-19 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the evolution of the Korean welfare state over the last several decades and the challenges it currently faces as a rapidly aging society. Since the turn of the 21st century, the Korean welfare state along with the economy has rapidly matured, increasing both the scope of social welfare coverage and the fiscal capacity to pay for these benefits.
Download or read book Globalizing Welfare written by Stein Kuhnle and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the welfare state’s origins in Europe, the idea of human welfare being organized through a civilized, institutionalized and uncorrupt state has caught the imagination of social activists and policy-makers around the world. This is particularly influential where rapid social development is taking place amidst growing social and gender inequality. This book reflects on the growing academic and political interest in global social policy and ‘globalizing welfare’, and pays particular attention to developments in Northern European and North-East Asian countries.
Download or read book Korean Workers written by Hagen Koo and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forty years of rapid industrialization have transformed millions of South Korean peasants and their sons and daughters into urban factory workers. Hagen Koo explores the experiences of this first generation of industrial workers and describes its struggles to improve working conditions in the factory and to search for justice in society. The working class in South Korea was born in a cultural and political environment extremely hostile to its development, Koo says. Korean workers forged their collective identity much more rapidly, however, than did their counterparts in other newly industrialized countries in East Asia. This book investigates how South Korea's once-docile and submissive workers reinvented themselves so quickly into a class with a distinct identity and consciousness. Based on sources ranging from workers' personal writings to union reports to in-depth interviews, this book is a penetrating analysis of the South Korean working-class experience. Koo reveals how culture and politics simultaneously suppressed and facilitated class formation in South Korea. With chapters exploring the roles of women, students, and church organizations in the struggle, the book reflects Koo's broader interest in the social and cultural dimensions of industrial transformation.
Download or read book Healthy Democracies written by Joseph Wong and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do the pressures of economic globalization undermine the welfare state? Contrary to the expectations of many analysts, Taiwan and South Korea have embarked on a new trajectory, toward a strengthened welfare state and universal inclusion. In Healthy Democracies, Joseph Wong offers a political explanation for health care reform in these two countries. He focuses specifically on the ways in which democratic change in Taiwan and South Korea altered the incentives and ultimately the decisions of policymakers and social policy activists in contemporary health care debates.Wong uses extensive field research and interviews to explore both similarities and subtle differences in the processes of political change and health care reform in Taiwan and South Korea. During the period of authoritarian rule, he argues, state leaders in both places could politically afford to pursue selective social policies—reform was piecemeal and health care policy outcomes far from universal. Wong finds that the introduction of democratic reform changed the political logic of social policy reform: vote-seeking politicians needed to promote popular policies, and health care reform advocates, from bureaucrats to grassroots activists, adapted to this new political context. In Wong's view, the politics of democratic transition in Taiwan and South Korea has served as an effective antidote to the presumed economic imperatives of social welfare retrenchment during the process of globalization.
Download or read book Pathways to State Welfare in Korea written by Gyu-Jin Hwang and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2006 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the development of the Korean welfare state, arguing that it presents a unique challenge to existing theoretical propositions underlying social policy development. Drawing on both Western and Korean literature, it examines the implementation of social policy programs both before and after 1987, discussing their impact on Korean economic, political and social life and the potential for further development of the Korean welfare state.
Download or read book South Korean Social Movements written by Gi-Wook Shin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the evolution of social movements in South Korea by focusing on how they have become institutionalized and diffused in the democratic period. The contributors explore the transformation of Korean social movements from the democracy campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s to the rise of civil society struggles after 1987. South Korea was ruled by successive authoritarian regimes from 1948 to 1987 when the government decided to re-establish direct presidential elections. The book contends that the transition to a democratic government was motivated, in part, by the pressure from social movement groups that fought the state to bring about such democracy. After the transition, however, the movement groups found themselves in a qualitatively different political context which in turn galvanized the evolution of the social movement sector. Including an impressive array of case studies ranging from the women's movement, to environmental NGOs, and from cultural production to law, the contributors to this book enrich our understanding of the democratization process in Korea, and show that the social movement sector remains an important player in Korean politics today. This book will appeal to students and scholars of Korean studies, Asian politics, political history and social movements.
Download or read book The East Asian Welfare Model written by Roger Goodman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-12-05 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many politicians and observers in the West, East Asia has provided a broad range of positive images of the state's intervention in society. Neoliberals grew excited by popular welfare systems that cost little in expenditure and bureaucracy. Social-democrats thought they had found a model for social cohesion and equality. In fact the reality in East Asia is rather different from these stereotypes. In this book six specialists of six different societies in East Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, Singapore and Hong Kong) examine the role of the state in their welfare systems. There are detailed case studies on pensions, health insurance, housing and personal social services. They provide an up-to-date detailed account of how these systems have developed as well as an examination of the question of whether these welfare regimes are the natural outgrowth of cultural traditions or the result of economic and political conditions. This broad-ranging and detailed study will be welcomed by both students and policy makers as the first proper academic study in English to have such a wide coverage of this topic. Its clarity and authority should come as a welcome alternative to the more common misconceptions about Asian society.
Download or read book Social Development And Social Policy International Experiences And China s Reform written by Dongtao Qi and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2016-10-27 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social policy reforms driven by profound social changes have been a popular and pressing topic worldwide in recent years in both policy and academic circles. In this book, prominent social policy scholars from Europe, North America, and Asia discuss the history of social policies, compare different social development models, and analyze the challenges facing these economies' social policy reforms. The book provides comprehensive and comparative perspectives and updated data on social development and social policy reforms in the world's major economies, and particularly, in mainland China.
Download or read book Korea Confronts Globalization written by Yunshik Chang and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-08-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Korea Confronts Globalization looks at the way in which the phenomenon of globalization has impacted on Korean society in terms of national identity, corporate change, labour markets, democracy, tradition and social policy, and the implications for Korea's social cohesion in a continually globalizing world. While becoming more open to the outside world, South Korea has remained a cohesive national community with a strong nationalist reaction against the globalization of Korea and with Koreans constantly reminding themselves of the need to retain their national identity. They have also learned to cope with various forms of conflict arising from diversified interests in a complex society and the South Korean government is now making a serious attempt to establish a welfare state with various schemes designed to help the poor and needy to maintain a minimum level of ‘decent’ living. But it is uncertain whether South Korean society will continue to remain cohesive. Social inequality is increasing and the class divisions appear to be hardening and as such can Korea remain cohesive? As a volume looking at the political and social implications of globalization in modern South Korea, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Korean and East Asian studies, comparative sociology, development studies and politics
Download or read book Disrupting Kinship written by Kimberly D. McKee and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2019-03-02 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the Korean War began, Western families have adopted more than 200,000 Korean children. Two-thirds of these adoptees found homes in the United States. The majority joined white families and in the process forged a new kind of transnational and transracial kinship. Kimberly D. McKee examines the growth of the neocolonial, multi-million-dollar global industry that shaped these families—a system she identifies as the transnational adoption industrial complex. As she shows, an alliance of the South Korean welfare state, orphanages, adoption agencies, and American immigration laws powered transnational adoption between the two countries. Adoption became a tool to supplement an inadequate social safety net for South Korea's unwed mothers and low-income families. At the same time, it commodified children, building a market that allowed Americans to create families at the expense of loving, biological ties between Koreans. McKee also looks at how Christian Americanism, South Korean welfare policy, and other facets of adoption interact with and disrupt American perceptions of nation, citizenship, belonging, family, and ethnic identity.
Download or read book Normative Foundations of the Welfare State written by Nanna Kildal and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-05-07 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book conveys analyses, perspectives and interpretations of the normative foundation of the unique 'Nordic welfare state model' which are relevant across the globe.
Download or read book The Korean Developmental State written by Kyung Mi Kim and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-04-25 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes, from a historical comparative perspective, the Korean economic development model, the extent to which it has changed from its classical model, and what constitutes its changes and continuity. Unlike studies claims the dissolution of Korean developmentalism, the book holds that the Korean state maintains its characteristics of state-led capitalism despite significant changes in policies and instruments rather than converge toward an AngloSaxon-style free market system. It emphasizes that the continuity of state-led capitalism is compatible with institutional change. Some institutionalists insist that the continuity of Korean developmentalism is based on path dependency. In contrast, this book argues that Korean capitalism could sustain its state developmentalism by changes in policies and instruments to improve national industrial competitiveness in the changed context of international competition. This book will be of interest to East Asian scholars, comparative economists, and those curious about the future of the Korean peninsula.
