• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.1-28
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• 2018

This paper studies and evaluates the present situation of three decades of 'Minjoonojoundong' in Korea with a long-term perspectives. It had grown up during 1987 labour regime era and has declined abruptly since 1998. The backdrop of this decline was the transformation of labour regime from the 1987 regime to the dependent neoliberal one. The Korean labour movement did not respond to the changed structural conditions as it sustained its old strategies, militant unionism. Now the 'Minjoonojoundong' in Korea has met three difficult problems that are connected with each others. They are militant economism, political economism and formal industrial unionism. However the 'Candlelight Revolution' occurred in 2016 winter has opened a chance of regime change that could strengthen the 'Minjoonojoundong'. The revolution was primarily a political one. But it also created a dramatic situation change in labour politics. The candle-citizen demanded radical change of the polarized Korean society and overflown contingent workers. So it is a time of radical and overall innovation for the 'Minjoonojoundong' and KCTU. And they have to keep the long-term strategical vision of labour regime change.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.179-209
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• 2018

Three dacades of time have passed since the Korean labour movement experimented its political empowerment struggle. Generally it has failed for all some positive results. But unfortunately there were no critical and intellectual reflections regarding the failure within the labour movement. This study drew three conclusions. Firstly, the success or failure of political experiments was caused mainly by the labour regime changes of the Korean society. Secondly, the motive power was provided not by the progressive party, the Democratic Labour Party, but by the trade union movement and organization, the Minjoonochong. Lastly, the Candle-Light revolution in 2016 has produced some new conditions for the second stage of political empowerment praxis in Korean labour movement.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.55-74
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• 2020

This study examines the policy direction and specific countermeasures for addressing possible port labour issues from the perspective of Just Transition which may be raised by closing coal fired power plants in Korea. Current energy transition policy and port labour policy in Korea are reviewed and case studies in the countries which has experienced closure of coal fired power plants are undertaken. Although it varies from country to country, a similar approach was found that the employment problem of coal fired power plant closures and measures based on Just Transition regime to mitigate the negative impacts that occur in the region are the key to successful transition. It is suggested that countermeasures for port labour should be institutionalized for providing stakeholders with legal stability covering labours not only directly employed by the plants but also employed in entities in the whole supply chains.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.1-28
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• 2018

Now labour policy of Moon Jae-in Administration is very different from the labour reform politics of the past ages in its structural conditions. Especially the difference is in the fact that the new labour policy is originated from the Candlelight Revolution in 2016 which has resisted to the 20years-long neoliberal domination. This kind of change in the political situation made a optimistic prediction with regard to the possibility of successful labour reform. However the future is in many points so uncertain that we could not confirm the success of labour reform at all. The uncertainty always resides in the structural unbalance between labour movement power and capitalist state power bloc in Korea. In this sense strategical orientation and practices of the democratic labour movement(KCTU) are very critical to produce some positive outcomes.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.38 no.7
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• pp.67-77
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• 2000

This study reviews and analyses the policy changes happened in Britain regarding the family and children. Traditionally Britain has employed non-interventionist policies for the family and child care assuming the family as a private domain. This policy had been reinforced during the Thatcher regime. However the traditional families that Beveridge had idealized have been rapidly disappearing and child poverty has become critical concern for Blair's New Labour government with the rising number of lone parent families. The New labour's child and family-friendly policies to enhance the family life have been examined on the basis of government reports on Child Benefit, WFTC, Child Support Agency and the plans to support parents and to implement the child and family-friendly practices.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.53-81
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• 2000

Between 1980 and 1997 the Korean textile and clothing industry (KTCI) experienced the transformation of export-led accumulation regime rooted in domestically-derived price competitiveness into the combination between foreign mass production involving the geographical extension of productive forces and quality strategy based on upgrading technology and automation involved in the domestic market for high quality and price products. This restructuring of the KTCI is rooted at the crisis in the export-led growth regime implemented unity 1980 due to the rapid increase in wage levels by the ‘great labour movement’occurred in 1987. In particular, increased wage and collective bargaining realized through labour empowerment led to the crisis in the conjoin between mass production and mass export based on long working hours and low wage structure. The aim of this paper is to explore the transformation of development modes between 1980 and 1997 that can help us in understanding the fundamental reasons for the restructuring of the KTCI. To this end, the paper identifiles the changing accumulation regimes between 1980 and 1997 mediated by wage-labour relations, inter-firm relations and state-film relations, which are insitutional forms of the modes of regulation.

• 한국사회정책
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.345-375
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• 2018

This study examines labour market and unemployment protection policies as a configuration in 12 OECD countries in order to investigate how countries from different regime conform to or diverse from previous welfare state regime discussion, and to examine its relationship with poverty and inequality. In analyzing the combination of the unemployment insurance, the unemployment assistance, and active labour market policy, firstly, fuzzy scores of unemployment insurance was calculated by analyzing the strictness of eligibility, duration of benefit and the generosity of income replacement rate. For unemployment assistance, the ratio of public assistance expenditure to the GDP in each country and the ratio of unemployment benefit level to the average wage in each country have been considered. As for the active labour market policy, the total expenditure per GDP of this policy was converted into fuzzy points and analyzed. As a result, 5 types in 2005 and 6 types in 2010 were generated. Specifically, 'assistance type(iAp)', 'insurance type (Iap)', 'comprehensive safety net type (IAP)', 'weak safety net type(iap)' were analyzed. This paper suggested policy implication for South Korean case, which consistently had high score for weak safety net type(iap).

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.91-114
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• 2017

This paper shows that when children's ability is heterogeneous, a parent's choices about educational expenditures and fertility follow a pooling equilibrium or a separating equilibrium. Which of the two equilibria will prevail depends on the probability of getting a high-ability child as well as productivity differentials in producing children's adult human capital. Adopting the model of Acemoglu's (1999), this paper presents that the outcome of the pooling choice in the pooling regime and the outcome of the separating choice in the separating regime make the growth rate of human capital higher than otherwise. In addition, as the probability of a high-ability child increases, the growth rate of human capital in the separating equilibrium exceeds that in the pooling equilibrium.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.39 no.6 s.105
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• pp.933-954
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• 2004

This paper considers critically the conceptual development of international environmental security, and to explore some limitations which seem to have made difficult the construction of regional environmental governance among North-East Asian countries. The recently emerging concept of environmental security has turned the traditional or realistic meaning of security to the neo-liberal and the political-economic one. On the basis of a reconsideration of these newly developed meanings of security, this paper has reviewed critically some work which have focused on the concepts of environmental regime and of environmental governance. To formulate a true environmental governance, it is suggested that we need a theoretical analysis on the economic and political contexts and a practical development of civil society. From this point of view, the economic structure of labour division, the political tension and military opposition in the region, and the immaturity and exclusiveness of civil consciousness can be pointed out as some limitations of environmental security to be constructed in the North-East Asian region. A true environmental security in this region requires formation of reciprocal economic relationship, development of regional institutions for political trust among countries, and improvement of interaction between non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.69 no.1
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• pp.103-123
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• 2017

This article examines the existing literature on the intersection of care and migration in Europe and the potential contributions of the Korean case. The paper reviews the three bodies of research: care, migration and their intersections. When defined as social reproductive labour, the concept of care not only captures individual/family level of experiences but it can also be an effective tool to analyse the diversity of the welfare state and the path of its evolution. Furthermore, in the context of globalisation and international migration, the concept of care can help overcome so-called 'the methodological nationalism' in the welfare state research. Accumulated evidence shows that only by applying a transnational perspective to the relationship between such social realities as class, gender and race, can we properly examine the dynamics of care distribution. Existing care-migration nexus research has found a widely observed trend of the 'migrantisation of care' in European welfare states; however, the actual modality of care-migration intersection varies reflecting historical and institutional contexts. This is why care-migration nexus research must go beyond the well-known welfare regime types. The Korean case can expand the geographical coverage and theoretical applicability of the intersection research by including a new welfare state regime type (productivist or developmental welfare states) and new patterns of migration (co-ethnic migration and marriage migration) which were rarely dealt with in this scholarship.