This study was first presented at the workshop “Varieties of Capitalism in Asia” at Korea University in Seoul. I would like to thank Stephan Haggard, Byung-kook Kim, Moo-kwon Chung, and Joe Wong for their thoughtful comments and insights. I am especially grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and Heejung Chung and Yuiryoung Jung for their research assistance.Google Scholar

1. Regini, Marino, “The Dilemmas of Labour Market Regulation.” In Gøsta Esping Andersen and Marino Regini, Why Deregulate Labour Markets? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Crouch, C., Industrial Relations and European State Traditions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).Google Scholar

2. Mishra, Ramesh, Globalization and the Welfare State (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1999); Mishra, Ramesh, The Welfare State in Crisis (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1984).Google Scholar

3. Rudra, Nita, “Globalization and Decline of the Welfare State in Less Developed Countries,” International Organization 56, No. 2 2002); Kang, Myung-Sei and Ma, In-Sub, “Opportunities and Constraints of Tripartism and Welfare Reforms Under the Kim Dae Jung Government,” paper presented at the meeting of the Korean Political Science Association, December, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Brandt, Nicola, Burniaux, Jean-Marce, and Duval, Romain, “Assessing the OECD Jobs Strategy: Past Developments and Reforms,” Economic Department Working Paper No. 429 (Paris: OECD, 2005).Google Scholar

5. Saint-Paul, Gilles, “The Political Economy of Employment Protection,” Journal of Political Economy 110, No. 3 2002); Frenkel, Stephen J. and Peetz, David, “Globalization and Industrial Relations in East Asia: A Three-Country Comparison,” Industrial Relations 37, no. 3 (1998); Kim, Dong-One and Kim, Seongsu, “Globalization, Financial Crisis, and Industrial Relations: The Case of South Korea,” Industrial Relations 42, no. 3 (2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Kim, Dong-One and Kim, Seongsu, “Globalization, Financial Crisis, and Industrial Relations,” p. 343.Google Scholar

7. Olson, Mancur, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

8. Chung, Heejung, “Different Paths for Flexibility: Deregulated Employment Protection or Temporary Employment,” paper presented at the ES-PAnet conference “Making Social Policy in the Postindustrial Age,” University of Fribourg, Switzerland, September 22–24, 2005; Mishra, , Globalization and the Welfare State. Google Scholar

9. International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Economic Outlook (May 1994).Google Scholar

10. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), The OECD Jobs Study: Facts, Analysis, Strategies (Paris: OECD, 1994).Google Scholar

11. IMF, World Economic Outlook, p. 36.Google Scholar

12. This section draws heavily on Yang, Jae-jin and Moon, Chung-in, “South Korea: Globalization, Neoliberal Labor Reform, and the Trilemma of an Emerging Welfare State.” In Tulchin, Joseph S. and Bland, Gary, eds., Getting Globalization Right (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005); Esping-Andersen, Gøsta and Regini, Marino, Why Deregulate Labour Markets? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Regini, Marino, “The Dilemmas of Labour Market Regulation.” In Esping-Andersen and Regini, Why Deregulate Labour Markets? ; Huber, Evelyne and Stephens, John D., Development and Crisis of the Welfare State: Parties and Policies in Global Markets (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).Google Scholar

13. Soskice, David, “Divergent Production Regimes: Coordinated and Uncoodinated Market Economies in the 1980s and 1990s.” In Kitschelt, Herbert et al., Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Esping-Andersen, and Regini, , Why Deregulate Labour Markets? ; Hall, Peter and Soskice, David, Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

14. Esping-Andersen, Gøsta, Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, ch. 5); Lodovici, Manuela Samek, “The Dynamics of Labour Market Reform in European Countries.” In Esping-Andersen, and Regini, . Why Deregulate Labour Markets? pp. 32–35; Iversen, Torben and Wren, Anne, “Equality, Employment, and Budgetary Restraint: The Trilemma of the Service Economy,” World Politics 50, no. 4 1998).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. Superficially this seems like an echo of what Americas call “workfare.” But workfare in the United States implies that social benefits are conditional on accepting work, while Nordic productivism implies that the welfare state must guarantee that all people have the necessary resources and motivation to work.Google Scholar

16. EPL version 2 is calculated on the basis of weighted average of indicators for regular contracts, temporary contracts, and dismissals. For detailed information, see OECD, Employment Outlook: Employment Protection Regulation and Labour Market Performance (Paris: OECD, 2004), Annex 2.A1.Google Scholar

17. This study uses OECD labor market statistics-indicators (updated July 15, 2005, www.oecd.org). Countries included in the analysis are the United States (USA), the United Kingdom (UK), Canada (CAN), New Zealand (NZL), Australia (AUS), Ireland (IRL), Switzerland (CHE), Sweden (SWE), Norway (NOR), Finland (FIN), Denmark (DEN), Germany (DEU), the Netherlands (NLD), Belgium (BEL), Austria (AUT), France (FRA), Spain (ESP), Portugal (PRT), Japan (JPN), and Korea (KOR).Google Scholar

18. Brandt, Burniaux, and Duval, , “Assessing the OECD Jobs Strategy.”Google Scholar

19. Cameron, David R., “The Expansion of the Public Economy: A Comparative Analysis,” American Political Science Review 72, No. 4 1978); Katzenstein, Peter J., Small States in World Markets: Industrial Policy in Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985); Geoffrey Garret and Peter Lange, “Political Responses to Interdependence: What's ‘Left’ for the Left?” International Organization 45, no. 4 (1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Olson, , The Logic of Collective Action.Google Scholar

21. Estevez-Abe, Margarita, Iversen, Torben, and Soskice, David, “Social Protection and the Formation of Skills: A Reinterpretation of the Welfare State.” In Hall, and Soskice, , Varieties of Capitalism.Google Scholar

22. Korean labor was placed under the tight corporatist control of the authoritarian developmental state for economic and political reasons. First, the government's strategy for export-oriented industrialization was predicated on export price competitiveness in the world market. Thus, the economic imperatives were such that workers' collective action should be kept minimal and wages tightly controlled. Second, the security threat emanating from the Communist North led the South Korean government to be overly sensitive to union activities. For fear of the radicalization or “politicalization” of the labor movement, unions should be atomized and independent from outside “reddish” activists.Google Scholar

23. OECD, “Pushing Ahead with Reform in Korea: Labour Market and Social Safety-Net Policies” (Paris: OECD, 2000); Koo, Hagen, Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001); Yang, Jae-jin, “Corporate Unionism and Its Impact on the Korean Welfare State,” Korean Political Science Review 39, no. 3 (2005).Google Scholar

24. OECD, “Pushing Ahead with Reform in Korea,” p. 44.Google Scholar

25. Shin, Kwang-yung, “Korean Industrial Relations and Political Turnaround” (in Korean), Quarterly Sasang 9, No. 2 1997); Koo, Hagen, “The State, Minjung, and the Working Class in South Korea.” In Koo, Hagen, ed., State and Society in Contemporary Korea (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

26. Ministry of Labor (Korea), “Analysis of the Economically Active Population in 2004” (in Korean).Google Scholar

27. OECD, “Pushing Ahead with Reform in Korea,” p. 53.Google Scholar

28. Ministry of Labor (Korea), “Analysis of the Economically Active Population in 2004.”Google Scholar

29. It was the first general strike since the US military government outlawed the Korean Communist Party and leftist labor organizations in March 1947. The KCTU led the general strike, mobilizing 5 million workers for twenty-six days and costing a production loss of 3 trillion won—US$3 billion. See Yang, Jae-jin, “The 1999 Pension Reform and a New Social Contract in South Korea” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 2000), p. 129.Google Scholar

30. Rhodes, Martin, “The Political Economy of Social Pacts: ‘Comparative Corporatism’ and European Welfare Reform.” In Pierson, Paul, ed., The New Politics of the Welfare State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

31. OECD, “Pushing Ahead with Reform in Korea”; see also Table 1.Google Scholar

32. OECD, “Pushing Ahead with Reform in Korea,” pp. 63–64.Google Scholar

33. Kim, Yu-Sun, Labor Flexibility and Nonstandard Workforce Increase (in Korean) (Seoul: Korea Labour and Society Institute, 2004), p. 17. Regular workers are defined as employees that work for more than one year and are paid “regular” wages, meaning that they are paid the standard wage plus overtime pay. Nonregular employment refers to temporary and daily work, plus atypical work such as part-time and on-call work. Temporary workers are employed for a determined length of time, usually longer than a month and shorter than a year. Daily workers are employed on a daily basis.Google Scholar

34. Gazier, Bernard and Herrea, Remy, “Escaping from the Crisis and Activating Labor Market Policies in Asia: Some Lessons from European and French Experience with a Special Focus on South Korea,” paper presented at the international conference “Flexibility vs. Security? Social Policy and the Labor Market in Europe and East Asia,” Seoul, November 30–December 1, 2000, p. 344.Google Scholar

35. The discrepancy is somewhat overblown, especially for health insurance, since means-tested health assistance is provided for low-income workers not covered by the health insurance program. Also, health insurance works on a household basis, whereby a considerable number of noncovered nonregular workers are protected through (male) breadwinners' health insurance.Google Scholar

36. As of 2000, only 10.8 percent of workers in workplaces with fewer than five employees are regular workers, while 89.2 percent are nonregular workers. By contrast, 86.4 percent of workers in firms with more than 300 employees are regular workers. See Choi, Kyungsoo, “A Study on the Definitions of Employment Status to Measure Employment Structure Changes and Their Status” (in Korean), Nodongkyungjenonjip 24, No. 2 2001).Google Scholar

37. Korea's social insurance schemes are basically funded by payroll contributions split between the employer and the employee—in the case of company workers—and by individuals, in the case of the self-employed. Without a contribution history, no one can claim benefits.Google Scholar

38. The effectiveness of wage subsidy programs has often been disappointing in terms of bringing the unemployed back into unsubsidized work, because subsidized jobs are created that would have been created even without the subsidy, and workers who qualify for a subsidy simply replace others who do not. See Martin, J., “What Works Among Active Labour Market Policies: Evidence from OECD Countries' Experiences,” OECD Economic Studies, No. 30 (2000).Google Scholar

39. Hankook Daily, March 29, 2004; Hankyureh, September 20, 2004; Hankookgyungje, July 21, 2005.Google Scholar