• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
• /
• v.65 no.2
• /
• pp.103-130
• /
• 2013

Although both ecosystem theory and empowerment have become the most prevalent candidate for integrated paradigm for social welfare practices, they could not overcome completely the long-standing and sharp divides between micro and macro practices, that is, between subject and structure as a main explanatory element in social welfare realm. Along with such traditional dualism and tension, a new emerging divide between modernism and postmodernism regarding intrinsic mission and roles of social welfare has urged strongly to develop the overarching theoretical framework for social welfare practice. In this regard, this study aims to recast the ecosystem theory and empowerment through the reflexive modernization theory of critical sociologist Anthony Giddens. With relatively strong emphasis on human capability coined as the reflexivity, Giddens's own creative theory of modernization can be thoroughly expected to provide a solid foundation of integrated paradigm enough to bridge the existing dualisms in social welfare theory and practice. Especially, his unique account of integrated way of how human agency is involved in the construction of social structure and how to transform each other recursively has profound implication for empowerment to be adequate and proper comprehensive framework for social welfare practice.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
• /
• v.42 no.3
• /
• pp.5-32
• /
• 2011

The purpose of this study is to examine the research trends of social welfare in North Korea and to make suggestions for the further research. This study analyzed a total of 99 articles(from 1972 to 2009) related to social welfare in North Korea. The main findings of this study are as follows: First, the approaches of change within system are needed and this can make well-balanced perspectives. Second, the perspectives of external-totalitarian must be rejected and the immanent-critical approaches should be addressed. Third, in terms of study contents, ideological, institutional and practical studies need to be extended. Fourth, micro studies should be more developed. Fifth, in the research method, the quantitative research method, and the synthetic and comparative strategies should be more employed. Finally, use of original text should be further conducted.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
• /
• v.49 no.1
• /
• pp.335-374
• /
• 2018

It is anticipated that the introduction of ICT to street-level welfare administration will smoothen communication processes between frontline officials and recipients by intensifying welfare information sharing and distribution. However, through a case study of ICT-mediated street-level welfare administration in South Korea, this article claims that ICT can deteriorate frontline official-recipient relationship into more distrustful and disempowered directions. This study demonstrates that ICT tends to replace face-to-face rapport building between officials and recipients with mechanical checking and complaining processes. ICT-based welfare administration can also disempower the autonomous interactions of street-level actors by surveiling every working step of frontline officials and the daily lives of recipients. Through an investigation into street-level bureaucracy in an information society, this study criticizes the dehumanization tendency of ICT-mediated human services and raises a question in the roseate vision on social welfare informatization.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
• /
• v.47 no.3
• /
• pp.85-111
• /
• 2016

This study aims to analyse major changes of Mental Health Promotion and Welfare Service Support Act(MHPWSSA) and critically discuss these changes based on the major discourses on Mental Health Act revision. For this purposes this study reviewed literatures and government reports to understand human rights discourses, welfare discourses, and prevention discourses. Secondly, the major changes of MHPWSSA were analysed and discussed based on those discourses. This study found that MHPWSSA defined the concept of people with mental disorders narrowly, tightened the involuntary admission procedures, introduced welfare service support provisions and mental health promotion provisions. But this study shows that the new legislation may well be criticised due to neglect of the concept of disability and people with psychiatric disability, involuntary admission without mental capacity assessment, neglect of the basic values and principles of self determination and independent living common in welfare of the persons with disability. And the new legislation may be criticised due to overuse of the concept of mental health promotion as encompassing promotion, prevention, treatment and rehabilitation.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
• /
• v.57 no.3
• /
• pp.31-50
• /
• 2005

The perspectives on the gender equality are various. Therefore the relationship between social policy and gender equality must be thought in the sense of the following question: What kind of gender equality pursue social policy? In spite of the mentioned question the mainstreaming discussion about the relationship between social policy and gender equality focuses on how a social policy leads to gender inequality. The debate about the perspective with which social policy pursues to conglomerate or abolish gender inequality is not popular. In this study the Korean National Pension System is analysed according to the gender neutral approach, the gender recognition approach, the gender reconstruction approach and the gender reinforcement approach. As a result, the Korean National Pension System has a character as a gender neutral approach. Therefore the critics on the National Pension System should focus on this perspective. In the future, when the pension credit system, the guarantee of right to pension in the case of divorce and the basic pension guarantee would be introduced, the Korean National Pension System could be featured as a field of social policy that has a gender recognition approach.

• Journal of Labour Economics
• /
• v.24 no.2
• /
• pp.163-196
• /
• 2001

This paper is a critical assessment of 'productive welfare policy' of the Kim Dae-jung adminstration and I tried to make several recommendations as alternatives. Quite contrary to concept of 'productive' welfare, which promotes less government intervention and more market-friendly approach, the Kim Dae-jung adminstration seems to have been moving in the opposite direction. As alternatives, I suggested i) work-fare rather than cash assistance, ii ) Employment Insurance Account to cover non-regular workers, iii) Medical Savings Account for minor medical services to reform medical insurance, and iv) enhancement of labor market flexibility by abolishing mandated retirement allowances in Korea I finally proposed the tuition and fellowship support program to the low-income group to enhance their economic status in a knowledge-based society.

• 한국사회정책
• /
• v.25 no.3
• /
• pp.37-71
• /
• 2018

Since 2016, public and political interest on basic income has been increased beyond academic interest. The recent debate on basic income has expanded on issues regarding to the concrete implementation of basic income moving further than the debate on conception of the basic income in the abstract level. This study examines major critiques of basic income which was raised from social policy area and makes a counter-argument on these critiques. Major points summarized as follows. First, the problem of jobs and social insurance exclusion is not serious enough to call for basic income. Second, existing social security systems will be crowded out by excessive financial burden if basic income is introduced. Third, policies to cultivate citizens' capacities to cope with a technological change should be given priority over basic income. This study disputes these critiques by counter arguing four points. First, it is necessary to reconstruct welfare state based on basic income, given the labor market changes, such as long-term trend of employment change, newly emerging employment of platform companies, and inconsistency of platform labor and social insurance. Second, hypothesis of crowding-out effect on social security system is just a criticism that can be applied to the basic income initiative of the right-wing. Also, it is unable to find a logical basis or evidence of this hypothesis from the historical process of welfare state development or previous studies. Third, it is necessary to discuss how to reconfigure existing social security system and basic income which are complementary to each other and also have consistency with labor market as a configuration, not as a matter of choosing between basic income and social security system. Fourth, de-laborization does not mean a refusal to labor but a free choice, and the basic principle of social security is not needs but right. In conclusion, in order to develop more productive debate on basic income, it requires more sophisticated discussion and criticism from the point of view of the distributive justice; the debate on the sustainability of social insurance-centered welfare states; and debates on the political realization of basic income.

• 한국사회정책
• /
• v.25 no.1
• /
• pp.45-70
• /
• 2018

After critically assessing the effectiveness of basic income as an alternative to the existing social security system, this article argues that basic income is fundamentally incapable of providing an adequate protection for those in social risks or welfare needs. The proponents of basic income often claims that technological innovations will lead to the end of work and thus that basic income will be required for all citizens in the future. Moreover, they emphasize that labor market flexibility is making a large segment of work forces unstable working poor, what is often called the precariat who are not effectively protected by the existing social insurance programs. For them, basic income is the best source of social protection for the precariat of today and the citizens in the future, freeing them from the necessity of having a paid work. This article, however, points out the ineffectiveness of basic income as social protection due to its unustainably high cost that comes from unconditional benefit provisions regardless of levels of income, social risks, and welfare needs. Also it challenges the simplified 'Luddites' image of workless society in the future, arguning that techological unemployment can be overcome by new job creation as seen in Silicon Valley and job sharing following working time reduction. It maintains that it is more cost-effective and reliable to strengthen the welfare state based on the principle of reciprocity that aims at 'universal sufficient protection for those in social risks and welfare needs.'

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
• /
• v.59 no.3
• /
• pp.229-252
• /
• 2007

Traditional quantitative approaches to comparative social policy research in welfare state have mostly focused on cross-national variations in social policy. More recently, they have attempted to account for disparities in the local provision of social policy. However, heavily relying on traditional theories of welfare state development (e.g., industrialism theory, power resource approach, and state-centric thesis), most of them seem to have explained the local variation from a central or national perspective, thereby completely ignoring the local perspective. Furthermore, their theoretical bases have been exclusively derived from the social context of post-war era. In tackling these issues, this study aims at localizing and updating the theoretical framework of local welfare policy in the post-industrial age. The framework provided in this study calls for a shift in the theoretical perspective towards more local and new approaches (e.g., new social risks, new public management and intergovernmental relations).

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
• /
• v.59 no.3
• /
• pp.253-280
• /
• 2007

This study explores the discoures of family and family policy in the legislative process of Strong Family Act. Critical discourse analysis was used. The results are follows. The Strong Family Act made family issue as a political agenda in spite of much critics. The characteristics of the family discourse in "strong family camp": 1) The emphasis on the moral principle in family 2) denial of deinstitutionalization of family 3) regarding the family problem as a moral and individual problem 4) regarding the state as managing and controling the family. The characteristics of the family discourse in "critical camp": 1) strong family discourse is related to "the family" ideology 2) regarding the family problem as a social, structural problem 3) regarding the state as subsiding, supplementing families. The characteristics of the family policy discourse in "strong family camp": 1) casual efficiency as justifying logics 2) family policy as means to recover family values 3) deunifying the family policy. On the one hand, the characteristics of the family policy discourse in "critical camp": 1) social consensus and academic discussion as justifying logics 2) regarding the family policy as a means of gender equality and strategical point of welfare state expansion. The discourse of family and family policy, especially 'Strong Family Discourse" resulted in conjugation of nationalism and neoliberalism.