• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.1-41
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• 2007

Since Korea experienced a 'jobless growth' in 2003, creating jobs in the service sector has been considered as a top priority employment agenda. However, despite high employment outcomes in services, labor productivity remains stagnant in the service sector in recent years. A great deal of concern has been raised regarding newly created service jobs. Critics say low productivity in the service sector will harm the engine of economic growth in our country. This paper investigates the side of the demand for quality of labor, namely, the demand for skills as one of the main source of low productivity in the service sector. To analyze the changes of skills demand, this paper suggests the concept of job-based skills instead of worker-based skills and presents the way of constructing measures of job-based skills. By means of common factor analysis using job information in the Korean Dictionary of Occupational Titles, I extract 4 direct measures of job-based skills, such as cognitive skills, physical skills, fine skills, interactive skills. These skill measures are used to explore and to test how the skill structure changed in the service sector during 2002-2006. Empirical Results show that whereas the goods sector makes progress toward upskilling being represented by increased cognitive elements and softenization of tasks, the service sector, although high-educated workers increased, exhibits trends of deskilling in the sense of job-based skills during 2002-2006 in Korea. The trend of deskilling however does not seem a general aspect in the overall service sector. Rather, it seems a compound process that high-skilled jobs are created, but, on the other hand low-skilled jobs requiring physical labor are produced at the same time.

• The Southeast Asian review
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.111-158
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• 2018

This paper pays attention to the recent increase of young Koreans working in the low-skilled service sector in Singapore. Such rapid increase largely results from the Korean government's initiatives to promote labour migration of young people and the concurrent proliferation of migration agencies, against the background of growing youth unemployment in South Korea. By exploring the motivations and trajectories of young people's labour migration to Singapore, this study examines to what extent they think their expectations have been met and how they interpret their migration and work experiences. There has been little research that examines the actual voices of young migrants as part of migration studies, whilst the majority of previous research focuses on the evaluation of government support programmes based on job matching rates, surveys of participant satisfaction and etc. Young people who went to Singapore to improve their English language skills and qualifications for future employment in Korea have become frustrated due to low-skilled service jobs that consist of low pay and high labour intensity. Their credentials are devalued and they experience deskilling through this migration process. Most of them were discontent with the Korean migration agencies they used and critical about programmes offered by government institutions and universities/colleges. Despite being subject to deskilling, they did try to actively cope or resist this situation. This study focuses on the various ways these migrants attempted to manage the gap between their initial expectations and reality. It also demonstrates how these migrants interpreted their work experiences after returning to Korea: whilst most of them did not cash off their Singapore work experience for a decent job after returning to Korea, they did not define their experience as a complete failure. Adding to cultural, social capital they gained through this experience, they acquired 'mobility capital' which includes confidence, the desire to move, and capacity to control one's own movement.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.55
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• pp.164-183
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• 2011

Technology innovation of digital convergence in recent years of the media sector has produced a series of significant changes in journalist labor. This study analyzes how recent introduction of convergent newsroom changed the nature of journalist labor and what strategy the management used to control journalists within the technologically innovated working condition with case of CBS. As the labor process theory tells us, the analysis found that technological innovation in the newsroom has encouraged a couple of aspects regarding labor process. First, losing control over their own labor journalists have undergone the process of significant deskilling. Second, the management have made a constant effort to introduce ideological and political apparatuses with twofold purposes, effective control over workers on one hand and concealing oppressive labor conditions on the other. The effort generated journalists' acceptance of new news-making routine and their consent on labor-management culture founded upon naive familism, which at last resulted in reinforcement of corporate power and isolation of labor society by separating internal labor market.

• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.204-227
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• 2018

This paper seeks to interrogate the very assumption of "sociality" in social media at a conceptual level and substantiate it with the help of information collected on aged people's use of conventional media $vis-{\grave{a}}-vis$ so called "social media" from the field work. Although global literature has written the obituary of mass media and promoted the "sociality" of social media, one needs to critically engage with such statement. Such statements have been an outcome of the established status of the "post broadcast" model of media where conventional media is in existence for some time and accessible to everyone in society. Further, this paper seeks to explore the interplay of new media in the life of the aged population in select areas of Kolkata city in the state of West Bengal, India. There are few studies on the ageing population's use of new media in the Indian context. While many of the studies reveal the new media literacy among the youth, this is unimportant as both the new media and the youth are relatively young as a field of research in media studies in India. What is missed in the earlier studies is, how new media plays an important function in the life of the aged population. How do older adults engage with the skilling and deskilling process of media literacy in their everyday life? And finally, do new media provide an extension to their on-going social relations? With the help of substantive details, the present study addresses the aforementioned queries.