• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.37
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• pp.171-193
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• 1999

The ultimate goal of rehabilitation is social integration. Reemployment is, for the disabled workers, the primary source of not only income, but also identity and interaction. Unfortunately, for most disabled workers employment represents only a yet-to-be-fulfilled hope, a close but inaccessible goal, a daily reminder that they are not among the majority. The purpose of this study is to estimate reemployment rate in the industrial injured and to find factors affecting reemployment of disabled workers owing to industrial injury, and to make policy implication for the better industrial injury compensation rehabilitation system. The data were obtained through telephone interview with disabled worker who completed work injury compensation process in 1996-1997. The final sample was consisted of 1,060 respondents. The major findings were that almost lout of 3 disabled worker returned to work, and that the factor affecting reemployment of the disabled workers were severity injury, ADL(activity of Daily Living), the perception of disability severity, controlling for the demographic factors such as sex, age, education, marital status. The results indicated that psychosocial factors as well as physical function had influces on returning to work. The current findings suggests that rehabilitation services and policy aimed at enhancing vocational rehabilitation program and rehabilitation engineering services, and improving psychosocial resources should be considered by rehabilitation professionals and policy makers.