• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.66 no.4
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• pp.53-75
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• 2014

The current status of Korean social work can be summarized as multiple complexities and ambiguities not only in ideological but in practical aspects. Although they have long been considered as an unique feature of social work as one of representative human service professions, the extent of such complexities are now reaching the culmination enough to raise the questions about the very nature of social work practice. This study aims to analyse such ambiguities and complexities around the field of social work in a systematic ways with the theory of liquid modernization, an creative framework for modern society, coined by Zygmunt Bauman who is now considered as one of the leading sociologist and thinker. The study shows clearly that social work in Korea is nowadays entering the phase of liquid modern society and specific features of liquidity of modern society such as consumerism, privatization, corruption of publicity etc are founded in the areas of social work. To make it worse, social work are thinking about the anachronical response to this flow of liquidity by selecting the strategies useful in solid modern era, not in the liquid one. In this context, the study suggests that social work practice have to prepare to adequate measures to secure its own autonomy and sustain genuine identification from the ruthless melting power of liquid modern society.