• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.67 no.4
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• pp.5-29
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• 2015

Intergenerational relations in Korea show very unique characteristics. In political arena, young and old generations clash each other intensely, while they maintain a high level of intergenerational solidarity in policy realm. A logistic regression analysis reveals that generational cleavage plays a key role in affecting voting decision and evaluation of governmental performance. It also suggests that in policy realm, normative, functional, and affectional types of solidarity influence people's attitudes on social policies very strongly. If the current government continues to neglect its promises for expanding welfare, the dual structure of generational cleavage in political arena and intergenerational solidarity in social policy realm can soon be turned into a conflictual structure. Therefore, an active initiative to increase intergenerational justice should be taken in order to attain a long-term, sustainable intergenerational solidarity and coexistence.