• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.277-306
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• 2017

This article empirically explores the impact of minijobs in the wake of the Hartz reform in Germany on women's employment relationship. Theoretically it is of great significance to examine whether the minijobs play an active role as a bridge in leading the minijobbers to regular, socially secured jobs or not. Several interviews as well as secondary data I could get during my sabbatical in 2015 were used to test the theory. One of the main findings was the fact that the minijob labor market opened doors wide for women in Germany, particularly for career-interrupted women, students or pensioners. However, the minijob can easily become a trap of lowest income and poverty for women. Most women minjobbers cannot go over to regular, socially secured jobs. Especially in terms of collective industrial relations, it considerably damages the power of industrial unions and the legal binding force of collective agreement. In conclusion, this study makes it clear that the labor market segmentation theory rather than the transitional labor market theory is valid in accounting for the reality of minijob in Germany. In other words, the minijob in Germany has a Toijan Horse Effect. It also suggests, from a practical viewpoint, that German industrial unions or works councils organize the minijobbers and that the coverage of collective agreements be extended to the minijobbers. Consequently, the time-selective part-timer model put into practice in Korea in 2014 is not only invalid but also undesirable.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.1-16
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• 2001

This paper is to examine the trends and structures of unemployment as well as its spatial patterns in Germany. Germany once achieved a well-developed employment system and full employment. Since 1970, however, unemployment has been one of the major issues in Germany. During the last three decades the unemployment rate has risen to unprecedented levels and stayed high. After the German unification, especially, labor market is characterized by the mass unemployment and the structural selective process of unemployment to be imposed on German workers. And regarding to the spatial patterns of massive unemployment, this study shows critical disparities between South and North Germany being overlapped with new disparities between East and West Germany. We can explain the regional differentiation of unemployment on the base of typical mismatch of labour market allocation. It is also shown that massive unemployment is related not only to policy shifts in labor market but also to structural transformation after the unification.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.75-110
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• 2003

It is urgent to systematically understand vocational training and qualification systems in advanced nations in order to evaluate and reform the Korean counterparts. In the British case, the system has been transformed from the market-led one to the state-led one while the German system is still classified as a corporatistic one. This structural difference is crucial to understand their performances and the German one won a relatively more positive evaluation in its performance. However, the structure and function of the German system has lately revealed numerous limitations in face of the political unification and long duration of economic recessions. This study shows that those differences in structural and functional features and recent developments of the systems in two nations are closely associated with their differences in educational philosophies and occupational cultures, roles of the state and employers, and operation mechanisms of training courses and vocational qualifications systems. Understanding those national differences raises a fundamental question on the hasty prescription of some domestic studies that a few policies in the foreign systems must be implanted to reform the Korean counterpart without understanding the fundamental difference between the domestic and those foreign systems.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.49-64
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• 2021

Apprenticeship education in Korea started approximately in 2005, and is divided into government-led apprenticeship education and Gyeonggi-do-led apprenticeship education. Apprenticeship education for textile and clothing-related majors in Korea is a very different process compared to Germany, where the country, companies, and schools have cooperated with each other with a long tradition, and there are many points to be supplemented. In order to explore the literature on apprenticeship education in Germany and Korea, and to understand the phenomena or actual conditions that have not been shown in the literature, interviews were conducted with two German professors living in South Korea. As a result of the analysis, Germany's long tradition and positive perception of vocational education are the basis for the establishment of apprenticeship education, and it is positioned as a system of education process. Various associations related to apprenticeship education make systematic training manuals, and then distribute certificates to trainees who have completed these courses. Therefore, companies promote the stability of the job market by educating local talents through apprenticeship training to nurture industrial manpower. Currently, in Korea's apprenticeship education, a series of procedures for developing educational courses such as company discovery and job analysis for each company are entirely entrusted to vocational high schools. Therefore, public confidence and solidity in apprenticeship education were found to be insignificant. This study has limitations in that it cannot confirm a phenomenon that has not been shown in the literature review, there is insufficient research on German literature, and the number of samples interviewed is small. However, if, based on the results of this study, an association dedicated to apprenticeship education is created in Korea and a systematic curriculum is developed, it will be able to contribute to establishing the stability of the textile and apparel labor market in the future.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.12 no.10
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• pp.169-177
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• 2012

Due to the influences of global financial crisis, countries are putting their efforts on the enhancement of appropriateness and transparency of director compensation. In several countries including Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy, listed companies and financial institutions in certain levels make public announcement for compensations of individual directors, not the averages. Recently, even Asian countries including China, Hong Kong, and Singapore are introducing individual director compensation public announcement policies. On the other hand, in cases of companies, which must submit annual reports, under current Korean capital market laws and enforcement ordinances, they are obligated to mention 'total wage paid to all executives in that business year' on the annual report, but does not have to mention individual wages of each executive. About this, at the 17th national assembly, revised bill for the Securities and Exchange Act for companies to mention wages of each executive. The financial world is opposing to open individual director compensation to the public as they concern about the shrinking of outstanding human resources recruitment, breach of corporate confidence, privacy invasion, deterioration of labor-management relations, and downfall of the executive's management will as director compensation will be standardized downward; however, if public opening of individual director compensation is forced, domestic companies will prepare more objective and rational standards when they calculate director compensations, and moreover, it will prevent arbitrary intervention of dominant shareholders. Therefore, to clearly and efficiently control director compensation, we need regulations for obligating public opening of individual director compensation.

• 한국사회정책
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.3-43
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• 2018

The digital revolution has brought about both positive expectations and negative concerns. Many experts predict that the current technological revolution, so-called "Fourth Industrial Revolution", which is expected to increase productivity in a disruptive way, has significant implications on employment and the labor market. In subsequence, the possible demise of the traditional employment system could markedly undermine the comtemporary welfare state. As a result, basic income has emerged as an alternative. However, little welfare state research has conducted the systematic review on the impact of the present technological revolution on employment and welfare states. In this paper, we will start to review the gist of the digital revolution and critically review recent studies on its effects on employment and welfare states together with actual case studies. In particular, we will investigate the experiences of platform economies of Uber and Amazon Mechanical Turk, and the German experience from 'Work 4.0'. Finally, we will discuss key issues of future welfare state reforms. This research argues that the effects of the technological revolution on employment and welfare state policies would be enormous, but they will be most likely to be mediated by domestic political and policy institutions. It emphasizes the importance of high-quality social investment that would enable individuals to flexibly adapt technological changes and support creative human capital resource. But, high-quality social investment could not be sustained without the decent social protection system that universally provides security to people.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.215-235
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• 2018

Policy concerns related to raising fertility rates are not only common interests among the OECD countries, but they are also issues of great concern to South Korea whose fertility rate is the lowest in the world. The fertility rate in South Korea continues to decline, even though most of the national budget has been spent on measures to address this and many studies have been conducted on the increase in the fertility rates. In this regard, this study aims to verify the effectiveness of the detailed factors affecting the fertility rate that have been discussed in the previous studies on fertility rates, and to investigate the overall trend toward enhancing the quality of life and increasing the fertility rate through macroscopic and structural studies under the recognition of problems related to the policy approaches through the case studies of the European countries. Toward this end, this study investigated if a high quality of life in advanced countries contributes to the increase in the fertility rate, which country serves as a state model that has a high quality of life and a high fertility rate, and what kind of social and policy environment does the country have with regard to childbirth. The analysis of the OECD Better Life Index (BLI) and CIA fertility rate data showed that the countries whose people enjoy a high quality of life do not necessarily have high fertility rates. In addition, under the recognition that a country with a high quality of life and a high birth rate serves as a state model that South Korea should aim for, the social characteristics of Iceland, Ireland, and New Zealand, which turned out to have both a high quality of life and a high fertility rate, were compared with those of Germany, which showed a high quality of life but a low fertility rate. According to the comparison results, the three countries that were mentioned showed higher awareness of gender equality; therefore, the gender wage gap was small. It was also confirmed that the governments of these countries support various policies that promote both parents sharing the care of their children. In Germany, on the other hand, the gender wage gap was large and the fertility rate was low. In a related move, however, the German government has made active efforts to a paradigm shift toward gender equality. The fertility rate increases when the synergy lies in the relationship between parents and children; therefore, awareness about gender equality should be firmly established both at home and in the labor market. For this reason, the government is required to provide support for the childbirth and rearing environment through appropriate family policies, and exert greater efforts to enhance the effectiveness of the relevant systems rather than simply promoting a system construction. Furthermore, it is necessary to help people in making their own childbearing decisions during the process of creating a better society by changing the national goal from 'raising the fertility rate' to 'creating a healthy society made of happy families'