This paper attempts to explore social bases of the Korean welfare state by analyzing the Korea's part of the ISSP(International Social Survey Program) data, an world-wide public opinion survey data. Until now most research on the East Asian welfare regimes have focused on the analysis of the formal institutional and program structures of the welfare system or public social expenditures, and their comparisons among countries. However, the recent inclusion of some East Asian countries to the ISSP survey data allows us to explore the people's ideas and perceptions about the various areas of the government roles including the economy and social welfare, helping explore certain aspects of the social bases of the welfare system based on the individual cognitive level.
It has been argued that one of a plausible regime type of characterizing some East Asian countries is a 'developmental welfare regime,' which had emphasized the state's architectural role in constructing the welfare system to help the state-led economic growth and rapid industrialization strategy. Perhaps the Korean case is one of the best examples. However, Korea has experienced an extensive welfare reforms toward a 'universalized' insurance system since the financial crisis in the late 1990s, even though the heavy influence of the globalization and the neo-liberalism. Observing this trend, some commentators claim that the Korea has gone beyond the stage of the developmental welfare regime toward a post-developmental one.
This paper, as a preliminary research applying these data to the Korean case, framed various dimensions of the social bases of the welfare system based on the previous theories on the development of the welfare state, including individual characteristics, education and skill specificity, labor market status, political partisanship, and region and religion. The statistical analysis based on the ISSP data reveals that the Korean welfare system does not have any strong and coherent social bases regarding particular groups, classes, and partisanships to support its expansion toward the universal welfare state as causality level. The Korean people's idea of welfare still remains in the narrow concept of welfare, a residual concept of welfare helping exclusively the low-income people rather than a universal one of welfare supporting a wide range of social insurance system. The majority of the Korean people continue to support a wide range of the roles of the state, especially the economic growth and regulation, even though a relatively long and strong exposes of the neo-liberal ideology. These findings imply that the institutional legacies of the developmental state still remain strong in the Korean people's perception in the role of the state, restraining the emergence of the policy reform agenda toward a universal concept of the welfare system.

We prolong a comparative about the Korean and Mexican welfare regimes. Mexico has paradoxically secured the dualized character of its system, with the construction of new institutions that serve to further embed the segmentation and stratification of the social security and social protection system. South Korea regime has been abandoning a residual system and can be placed in new characteristics: the institutionalization of universalism, linked to limited markets and governed by public action (health), with declining familialization (but still socially strong), South Korea is clearly a hybrid case.
In this paper, we will analyze the last social policies and social and political debates in the two countries. In what extent these new policies influence the Korean and Mexico welfare regime? In what extent these social and political debates enhance, debilitate or confront the most important Korean and Mexico social coalitions, important foundations of the welfare regimes? About Mexico, we will discuss the new programs created to cover the poor people with a limited health insurance and to include a partial noncontributory pension system. About South Korea, we will discuss the modifications in the national health system to diminish the household expenses and also the expansion of the pension system. Concerning the social and political debates in Mexico, we will explore the results of government proposition (2009) about new instruments of tax policy designed to fight poverty. In relation to social and political debates in South Korea, we will look at government intention (2008-2009) to reform the health system with the objective to enhance competition; specially, we will include the debates about this issue in the context of candlelight movement (2008).

 

 

Full paper: EASP 2010 Paper Enrique Valencia Health South Korea and Mexico PDF.pdf

This paper presents a formal model of social policy development. The model shows that the development of social policy depends both on the social policy preferences of voters and on the political institution which mediates the preferences of voters. In the direct democracy, median voter's social policy preference is critical because he is Condorcet winner in a pairwise vote. But in the representative democracy, political parties design social policy to win the support of a majority of voters. Hence, the political institution like electoral rule may affect social policy outcome. The model presented in this paper contrasts 3 alternative constitutional features and investigates how they affect social policy outcome. After presenting this formal model, this paper shows comparative patterns of 16 OECD countries including Korea and Japan which provide empirical support for my argument. In result, this papers emphasizes that policy preferences of voters and political institution may be key variables to explain social policy development and divergence among welfare regimes.

Name : Hong, Kyung-Zoon

Institution: Sungkyunkwan University

E-mail Address : zookie@skku.edu

 

Full paper: Sahyun Kim_Kyungzoon Hong_2010_The effect of the welfare state institutions on welfare attitude.pdf

Proponents of activation policies assume that labour force participation leads to enhanced social inclusion. Activation or 'making-them-work-longer' policy is also supported as a key element for 'active ageing'. However, there is limited evidence to support this explicit and widely accepted link between paid work and social inclusion, especially regarding those who find themselves marginal to the labour market, including older persons. This study, using a framework of social network and social relationships to assess the impact of paid work on social inclusion and participation in old ages in the Korean context, delivers contrasting arguments based on in-depth interviews with thirty four retirees.
The study underlines the importance of individual retirees' social network types in evaluating the effects of post-retirement working in enriching the social relationships and participation of retired persons. In doing so, it presents six different types of social network as emerged from the interviews; namely, work-oriented, family-centred, diverse and active, diverse but loose, socially isolated and disengaging. For instance, work cannot be treated as a valued means for self-fulfilment and social engagement for family-centred or disengaging persons in the same way that it could be for the work-oriented. The diverse and active type would find their social relations enriched via active participation in volunteering - not necessarily via a paid work. Moreover, work can have both inclusive and excluding effects. The study concludes that paid work is neither the only nor the best way for every older person's social participation and inclusion in later life. It accordingly suggests a diversified policy to meet individual needs in terms of enhancing social participation and in turn quality of life in old ages.

 

Yunjeong Yang
Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Oxford
yunjeong.yang@gmail.com

 

Full paper: Yangyunjeong_2010_WorknSocialNetwork.pdf

Faced with aging of the Taiwanese population, changing of the traditional familial structure and marital behavior, and diminishing familial care for the elderly; day care centers have become increasingly important in the daily lives of the elderly, assisting their continuance in social interaction. This study focuses on the specific care designs and functionalities of two day care centers that tailor to the needs of the elderly.
 The study utilized the three major components of successful aging proposed by Rowe and Khan (1998) to analyze two day care centers established by the YMCA in Tainan, Taiwan. Through interviews with the residents, the study assesses the effects of different settings, environmental surroundings, and operational models on the daily lives of the disabled elders and dementia patients.   
The study shows that the day care center employing the single unit care design tends to reestablish the sense of family in the community and facilitates social interaction. However, the day care center employing the multi-units care design, separating disabled elderly and dementia patients into different groups according to the severity of their condition, provides the appropriate care and space needed, and improves interaction within the groups. Both types of care designs help the elderly remodel ideal personal roles and become active participants in daily living in their respective communities. Combined with professional assistance and planned activities, day care centers aid the elderly to remain closely connected to their families and communities, and support their aging in place.

Following Holland, Germany, Japan and Korea, Taiwan government is planning to implement long-term care insurance system in 2011. In order to complete the task quickly, Taiwan government started to put together a draft law in 2009 and plans to submit to the Congress in 2010. The reasons for the haste steps toward carrying out long-term insurance by the government are as follows. 1. A rapid growth of aging in the near future. 2. Unstable economic growth. 3. Weakened care resources by family. The aims of the new insurance system are easing burden on family and increasing employments.

The purposes for implementing the long-term care insurance are to ease burden of elderly care as well as to create new employment opportunities. However, it is difficult to carry out the law in 2011 due to various problems of the present long-term care conditions in Taiwan. These problems are care services differences among local governments, shortage of care workers, and misunderstanding of care work by society. It is possible to infer that these problems are caused by the foreign care worker policy which implemented without much thought.

To keep up with the rapid aging population, needless to say, it is necessary to reconstruct present care policy. However, it is necessary to consider whether the long-term care insurance system would to be the only measure to be reviewed. Based on this viewpoint, I will review the foreign care worker policy in Taiwan and then point out problems of the policy. Then, point out an idea of multiethnic cooperative society model in order to deal with the society which characterized with increasing in foreign wives and the foreign care worker policy.

 Name: MingFang, HSU
 Institution: Department of Kansei Design, Hachinohe Institute of Technology
 Email address: zyo@hi-tech.ac.jp

 

 

Full paper: HsuMingfang_2010.pdf

In the late 2000s, both Korea and Japan encountered challenges from the slowdown of economic growth, which has been the main resource of welfare state, and the change of modern family structure, which has been one of the basic units of welfare provision and the source of labor power. The 1990s is the turning point for Korea and Japan in terms of economic and social policies. Economic crisis made them search for a new way of adjustment. The responses of the government in the process of recovery from financial crisis of Korea raised the interests in the links between economic policies and social policies. Japan was also exposed to the pressures to reform economy policies and social policies after the bubble economy.
Demographic changes including aging population and the transition or the collapse of modern family structure have begun to affect the industrialized societies and increase the interests in family policies. Particularly, welfare both in Korea and Japan has heavily depended on the provision from family comparing to other developed countries. Thus the changes of family structure bring about the concerns on family policies both in terms of welfare provider and labor power source.
In this paper, I analyze how Korea and Japan response to the change of economic and social environments considering the link between labor market policies and social policies incorporating family policies, particularly concerning on balancing work and family life. The differences in parental employment structure and the characteristics of labor market make the different characteristics of welfare system of Korea and Japan.

Dongchul Jung
(Yonsei University)

Korea has undergone dramatic social changes since the economic crisis of 1997. Among the many changes, this study focuses specifically on the changes that took place within family culture. Korea, as an asian country with strong tradition of confucianism, had placed more emphasis on the patriarchal relationship until about a decade ago. But there are signs that the importance of patriarchal relationship is beginning to lessen whereas the matriarchal relationship takes more importance in everyday lives(ex. practical help given by the women's parents on child care).
Does such trend imply that the Korean society is shifting from the patriarchal to a matriarchal society? It would be difficult to conclude within one research, but this study certainly attempts to take the first step. In order to achieve such objective, this study analyzes the emotional and economic relationship between the parents of both sides and the household according to income level. The analysis begins with two main hypotheses as shown below.

Hypotheses 1 :  Households belonging to a higher income class will share more emotional exchange with the women's parents than the men's.
1-1 : The degree of emotional exchange with the men's parents will not vary according to household income level.
1-2 : The degree of emotional exchange with the women's parents will increase according to household income level.

Hypotheses 2 : There will be more economic exchange with the men's parents than the women's parents regardless of income level.
2-1 : The degree of economic exchange with parents of both sides will rise with the income level
2-2 : There will be more economic exchange with the men's parents than the women's parents regardless of income level.

Byung-Don Son
(Pyeongtaek University, bdson@ptu.ac.kr)
So-Chung Lee
(Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, snowvill@kihasa.re.kr)

Today's mainstream youth problems are at once national and transnational. They are deeply domestic because perceived problems surrounding youth are always intimately bound up with particular cultural debates, values and interests that shift over time. But underlying categories such as the Japanese otaku ('nerds'), hikikomori (withdrawn youth) and NEET (jobless/excluded youth) hardly rise or fall in strictly isolated habitats: they draw influence from foreign debates, get circulated globally by the international news media, and they thus also shape youth problem discussions elsewhere. This is the first reason to broaden our approach to youth problems beyond the confines of national borders.
   The second reason to adopt an international approach is perhaps even more interesting theoretically: based on accumulating evidence, it can now be hypothesized that youth debates are shaped by highly similar social mechanisms across developed societies. It is these mechanisms that account for the initial emergence of particular problems (the synchronic dimension) as well as their transformation over time (the diachronic dimension). Only based on an awareness of these mechanisms can one carry out informed cross-national comparisons of youth problems, and subsequently, of youth policies.
   This paper strives to open up a new field of comparative inquiry by exploring the above themes. It builds upon a legacy of youth studies conducted in the Japanese context while also citing examples from other East Asian societies (that share certain cultural and institutional features with Japan) and the international news media. The final section of the paper begins a discussion on comparative methodology in relation to youth problems and suggests promising topics for further case studies.

Tuukka Toivonen, PhD (Oxon)
JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Sociology, Graduate School of Humanities,
Kyoto University
tuukka.t@gmail.com

Marriage between locals andiage  immigrants from Southeast Asian countries has becomes a popular phenomenon inamong Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. [Above issue??-not clear] focused on [the trade marriage-this should be clarified] and female immigrantsFor example, the number of marriage immigrants in Taiwan increased from 127 a year in 1982 to 52,036 in 2003. The numbers decreased after 2003 because of the interviewing requests for marriage immigrants. Both the Korean and Taiwanese governments have put a lot of efforts into solveing the social adaptation problems derived from the cross-national marriages.
According to the Taiwanese government statistics, of all marriages between locals and foreign nationals, there werethe female marriage immigrants amounts to 48,601 (86.4%) marriages with female immigrants in 2008, and the male marriage immigrant was 7,642 (13.6%) marriages with male immigrants. The social adaptation problems that the male immigrants faced presented as issuesthe results of the intercourse of social class, gender, and race.
Qualitative research and in-depth interviews were usedadopted to collect data from 13 immigrant males. Their nationalities included Jordanian, Indian, Thailand, Burmesea, Indonesian, Chinesea, British and AmericanUK, and USA.
1. The eEmployment anxiety due to being theas a breadwinner of the family in Taiwan: Although the male immigrants may face the language difficulties similar toas the female immigrants, they have more pressure in finding full-time jobs and 'being a real man' into supporting the family as they said. IfOnce they cannot find a stable job, they displayshowed a great deal of anxiety at home. According to the government statistics (MOoI, 2004), 71.8% of the male immigrants have full-time jobs, compared with 35.5% of the female immigrants.
2. Gender inequality within the cultural context: son-in-law vs. daughter-in-law: A number of female immigrants have comecame to Taiwan because of trade marriage[??]. Their husbands and the families regarded them as 'propertyies'. Therefore, the female immigrants felt they had a lower status at home. Compared with the female immigrants, the male immigrants receiveget more approval from their wives' families. The wives' families and the parents-in-law provided a lot of help for the foreign sons-in-law with a lot of help,s including child-careing and job-seeking.
3. 'We are spoiled Americans' - racial issues in cross-national marriages: Male immigrants from the UK and USA had fewerconfronted less adaptation problems because the host society, in general, shows them a welcominge attitude. They described themselves as beingen 'spoiled' by the Taiwanese. However, the male immigrants from Southeast Asian countries stated that Taiwanese looked down onof them because of their dark skin. Even though they residestayed in Taiwan throughwith the legal marriage, they arewere quite often called 'foreign labour' andwith discriminated againstion. Their children arewere even excluded from the school activities because of their skin colour.

 

Full paper: YuChingYeh_2010_Social Adaptation of Male Immigrants.pdf