Comparative Study of Effectiveness Pronatalist Policies in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore 2015-2023

Over the past 10 years, South Korea has chosen inconsistent strategies with respect to the US–South Korea alliance. On the one hand, Seoul disagreed with Washington about the extended role of United States Forces Korea and the deployment of US missile defence systems in East Asia. On the other hand, these problems ironically coincided with South Korea's strong support for the USA in operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. What explains the inconsistency of South Korea's alliance policies? Major schools of thought in international relations have offered explanations, but their analyses are deficient and indeterminate. This article looks at the South Korea–China–North Korea triangle as a new approach to explaining the puzzling behaviour of South Korea. The model shows that South Korea's alliance policies are driven by two causal variables. First, North Korea is an impelling force for South Korea to remain as a strong US alliance partner. This encourages Seoul to maintain cooperation with Washington in wide-ranging alliance tasks. Second, South Korea's policies are likely to reflect the way the nation perceives how useful China is in taming North Korea. The perceived usefulness of China causes Seoul to accommodate China and decrease cooperation with the USA. This might strain the relationship with the USA should South Korea evade alliance missions that might run contrary to China's security interests.

Since the beginning of the Sunshine Policy, South Korea has pursued a flexible and moderate engagement and economic policy towards North Korea, even at the cost of increased tensions with Washington. But while South Korea's policy on inter-Korean relations has undergone a fundamental change, its security policy continues to be rather conservative, firmly grounded in Cold War parameters. This disparity between South Korea's foreign and security policies forms the theme of this chapter. It argues that the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun era should be regarded as a hedging period during which South Korea has sought to change the North's behaviour and interests, while at the same time it has continued with its conservative security policy. The chapter concludes that unless North Korean relations with South Korea and with other regional states, including security relations, undergo some fundamental transformation, the disparity between South Korea's engagement and security policies will continue. Keywords: Cold War; Kim Dae-jung; North Korea; Roh Moo-hyun; security policies; South Korea; Sunshine Policy; Washington

The article examines the conceptual foundations of foreign policy strategies that underpin South Korea's cooperation with Central Asian countries. The political and economic significance of the Central Asian region is growing in the global arena. South Korea aims to establish its own distinct position in the region by utilizing foreign policy tools, including the 'Global Korea' strategy, providing official development assistance to Central Asian countries and implementing the 'New North Policy'. Nonetheless, the implementation of South Korea's foreign policy strategies concerning Central Asian countries is complicated by the dynamic nature of similar strategies employed by major regional players, including China, the United States, Japan, and Russia.In both domestic and foreign science, the Central Asian region has not garnered the attention it deserves regarding the economic interests of the Republic of Korea. Analyzing South Korea's foreign policy strategies towards Central Asian countries reveals that, although these strategies have several positive aspects, there are also shortcomings in their implementation.The authors conclude that South Korea has diversified its traditional relationships in recent years and made considerable efforts to strengthen bilateral relations with partners in Eurasia, aiming to leverage the resources available through the continental Eurasian partnership. The Republic of Korea perceives the Central Asian countries as a potential resource to countering China's influence in the Asian region, while also serving as a crucial counterbalance to Russia's position in the Eurasian continental policy.

What is the origin of South Korea's North Korea policy under the Moon Jae-in presidency? Are there any underlying assumptions and perspectives behind this policy? What kind of ideas and values have played out in South Korea's policy toward North Korea? By both exploring the idea of nationalism in current world politics and showing its influence on South Korea's policy discourse and orientation, in this article we argue that nationalism is still a powerful political ideology that affects state foreign policy and plays out as a strong variable in trying to make sense of South Korea's North Korea policy. To test this argument, we analyze recent inter-Korean interactions and illustrate how ethnic nationalism shaped the Moon administration's North Korea policy. As long as ethnic nationalism dominates policy debates and affects the policy orientation, the prospect of inter-Korean relations will not be promising.

The Asian financial crisis of 1997 led to output declines in South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. In response, the three countries have turned to fiscal policy to stimulate output. This study investigates the empirical evidence on the viabiltiy of fiscal policy for these three Asian countries using data starting in the 1950s. While fiscal expansion can raise output under certain theoretical conditions, deficit spending implies higher taxes that could eliminate even transitory effects. This article explores these issues, and examines the empirical relationships between government spending, taxes, and output in these three Asian tigers. The literature includes varying views on the links between fiscal policy, government spending, and output. The tax-and-spend hypothesis of Buchanan and Wagner (1978) and Friedman (1978) is that taxes lead to government spending. On the other hand, according to the spend-and-tax hypothesis of Peacock and Wiseman (1979), temporary increases in government spending lead to permanent tax increases. Meltzer and Richard (1981), describe fiscal synchronization and state that spending and taxes would adjust as the public chooses an optimal package of taxes and government spending. The related literature using Granger (1988) causality includes yon Furstenberg, Green, and Jeong (1986), Owoye (1995), Hasan and Lincoln (1997), and Darrat (1998). In addition, Koren and Stiassny (1998) consider whether taxes and spending are cointegrated. The dynamic responses of taxes, spending, and income are examined in this article using vector autoregression (VAR) analysis. Impulse response and variance decomposition are also included as in Baffes and Shah (1994) and Koren and Stiassny (1998), because coefficients of a VAR are difficult to gauge. Impulse responses trace the reaction of an endogenous variable to an innovation, capturing dynamic interactions and adjustment speeds. Variance decomposition measures the share of forecast error variance due to a shock to the system and own innovations would explain the forecast error variance of exogenous variables. This article focuses on real government spending, taxes, and gross domestic product. Fiscal policy could affect interest rates, and in turn investment spending. Interest rates could be included in the study, but it is not clear which rate to use and expected inflation clouds the issue. The empirical links between the fiscal variables and output may provide some indication of the viability of a more active fiscal policy stance in these Asian economies. The article is organized as follows. The next section briefly describes the recent history of fiscal policy in South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. Section II presents empirical tests of fiscal policy and output, while Section III concludes. I. The Recent History of Fiscal Policy in South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand have achieved relatively high growth since the 1960s and in all three countries, macroeconomic policies have focused on export-led growth. Thailand's growth, in particular, was very high during the 1990s. Among the three countries, South Korea and Taiwan share many similar features in terms of economic growth, size, population, and dependency on energy imports. With regard to their characteristics, public spending patterns are also similar in these three countries. Mundle (1999) points out that public spending has been under 30 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in Taiwan, 25 per cent in South Korea, and 20 per cent in Thailand, relative to an average of about 50 per cent for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The relatively low spending levels in these three countries has been combined with government surpluses or low deficits. Episodes of inflation have generally been followed by fiscal restraint, at least up to the financial crisis of 1997. Since the crisis, along with structural reforms, South Korea and Thailand have been pursuing expansionary fiscal policy to revive economic growth. …

PurposeSouth Korea has shown ultra-low fertility since the 2000s despite a massive expansion of pro-natal policies. The purpose of this research is to analyse institutional and socio-cultural configurations surrounding Korea's pro-natal policy and provide implications as to why the comprehensive packages have not produced intended outcomes.Design/methodology/approachThis study assumes institutional complementarities, suggesting that the effectiveness of policy depends on various support factors. Drawing out insights from the framework of de-familisation, the authors construct a gender and family framework to analyse the pro-natal policy configurations in Korea.FindingsLabour market policies in Korea have explicitly aimed to support dual-earner couples and protect women's employment status after childbirth. However, the dualistic labour market and remaining female-caregiver norms lead to the polarisation of couples into dual earners and male breadwinners. In family policy, the government has rapidly increased affordable childcare services, but widespread distrust in private services and generous birth-related cash benefits formulate a tension between de-familisation and continued familisation. Other welfare programmes that attach welfare rights to marital status also prolong female-caregiver norms in institutional arrangements. The findings suggest that the ambivalence between recent policy developments and the existing arrangements can limit the effectiveness of the policy packages.Originality/valueThe framework based on institutional complementarities addresses the limitations of previous studies concentrating on the statistical testing of individual policy effects. A similar approach can be applied to other countries showing major policy efforts but producing unsatisfactory outcomes.

BackgroundPopulation growth is determined by fertility, mortality and migration rates. Fertility is the prime determinant of population growth, which is highly associated with family planning, literacy, urbanization, and expansion of health system. In many part of Africa, its level is more than twice the replacement level. In Ethiopia, a significant decline in fertility mainly in the urban setting has been reported over the past decade, yet there is a paucity of information on the level of the decline. Therefore, this analysis aims to assess the level of fertility in Harar Health and Demographic Surveillance System (Harar HDSS) Eastern Ethiopia.MethodsHarar HDSS is an urban HDSS located in the city of Harar, eastern Ethiopia. It was established in 2011. All the population under surveillance are followed regularly and updated every six month for any change in the population demographic characteristics. Data were collected on a face-to-face interview to record demographic and socio-economic characteristics. Data were entered into customized HRS-2 software used for capturing longitudinal data and exported to computational software for analysis. For this analysis fertility data of the year 2013 were used. Fertility levels were analyzed using descriptive statistics.ResultsThe total population of Harar HDSS in 2013 was 30,055. Of these, 15,701 (52.2 %) were females and 14, 354 (47.8 %) were males. The crude birth rate and general fertility rate for the year 2013 were 20.3 and 64 births per 1000, respectively. In 2013, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) was 1.9 births per women of reproductive age. The 25 to 29 age group has the highest age-specific fertility rates (128.1 births per 1000 women), followed by the 20 to 24 year old women (89.3 births per 1000 women).ConclusionTotal fertility rate was relatively low. However, there were a significant number of births among adolescent women. Improving and sustaining access for reproductive health care for young women is highly recommended.

Prospects for Fertility Decline in Africa

IntroductionThis article focuses on the role of identity in the formation of South Korea's foreign policy behavior. Given its geopolitical location at the intersection of neighboring powers' strategic and economic calculations, Korea has been profoundly influenced by the fluctuating regional environment. Indeed, it has inhabited different identities in relation to neighboring countries at different historical junctures. For example, throughout the Japanese occupation of 1910-1945, the Korean War of 1950-1953, and the Cold War, different identities took the form of opposition to Japan, and then North Korea, that is,. an adversarial identity; and, in the case of the U.S., an associational identity.With the demise of the Cold War it was assumed that tension on the Korean Peninsula would ease. In addition, the Republic of Korea's (ROK) dramatic policy shifttoward the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), exemplified in President Roh Tae-woo's 7/7 Announcement in 1988-calling for peaceful coexistence-generated an expectation that inter-Korean relations would improve. Indeed, the South's rapprochement toward the North during the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moohyun governments resulted in significantly improved relations. One outcome was the emergence of an affirmative associational national identity toward Pyongyang. However, these rapprochement approaches were abruptly halted by the Lee Myung-bak government.This alerts us to the problematized nature of the South's sense of national identity vis-a-vis the North. An affirmative identity collided with the archetypical adversarial and sat uneasily with serious concerns about Pyongyang's emerging nuclear ambitions, a development which had begun to reshape the post-Cold War regional security environment and to pose a serious challenge to South Korea. This article argues that the essential tension around the nature of changing ROK national identities toward the DPRK holds the key to understanding the sources of Seoul's different foreign policy behaviors.The article proceeds in three parts: firstly, it explores the constructivist analysis, which argues that identity-constructs drive a state's behavior. Building on a critique of the conventional constructivist approach, it suggests how the key concept, identity, recurrently addressed in conventional constructivist texts, might be refreshed, and introduces an alternative analysis of a state's foreign policy development. Secondly, it explores the formation of South Korea's national identity toward North Korea during the Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003), Roh Moo-hyun (2003-2008), and Lee Myung-bak (2008-) governments, and examines how national identity has been constructed and reconstructed in the interplay of domestic, regional and international political realities. It develops a typology that sets out the different ROK policy manifestations and investigates its foreign policy behavior by exploring the historical development of inter-Korean relations and examining the continuities and discontinuities of policy behavior toward North Korea from 1998 onwards. It traces the emergence of the contested nontraditional national identity adopted by South Korea (i.e., affirmative identification toward North Korea), examines how it shaped conceptions of national interests, and investigates subsequent policy outcomes. To conclude, it synthesizes and reflects on theoretical and empirical findings and briefly explores policy implications.Theoretical ApproachesStates determine policy in response to external threats, not only according to the distribution of power and interest, but also to the weight of ideas. The article focuses on how a state may develop a range of foreign policy options based on identity.Conventional ApproachesThe concept of identity has achieved scholarly recognition in recent mainstream international relations ( IR) debate. One result has been a marriage between mainstream IR schools of thought and conventional constructivism. …

Purpose This paper aims to present the trajectory of corporate family-friendly policies (FFPs) in South Korea, as it evolved from an emerging economy to a developed country. The adoption of FFPs by South Korean corporations since the 1960s has been shaped by a dynamic interplay of cultural, political, economic, legal, social and organizational forces. The authors use the example of South Korea to propose a three-stage conceptual model for the adoption of FFPs in emerging economies. Design/methodology/approach Adopting the institution-based view, the authors explore the theoretical framework for implementing FFPs in corporations in emerging economies. This paper uses South Korea as a case study, reviewing its economic and corporate transitions from the early 1960s through 2023. The authors analyze cultural and macro-level forces, including political, economic, legal and social contexts to understand their impact on the adoption of FFPs. Findings The adoption of FFPs in South Korea encompassed three historical stages – embryonic, stagnant and leaping. The embryonic stage brought the birth of social interest in a worker-friendly environment, alongside rapid economic growth. In the stagnant stage, economic growth plateaued, resulting in stalled discussions of FFPs. In the leaping stage, economic recovery raised employee expectations, societal demands for FFPs to address ultralow fertility rates intensified and corporations adopted FFPs. All three stages are apparent in an emerging economy that is undergoing rapid growth and industrialization. Originality/value There has been scant investigation into the historical adoption of FFPs by emerging economies. The findings enrich the international literature by proposing a developmental model of the adoption of FFPs in emerging economies.

We provide a comprehensive review of family policy in South Korea (Korea hereafter) for international readers. Alarmed by recent social and demographic changes, the Korean government has started to establish explicit family policies from the mid 2000s. These policies have signified a symbolic attention shift to family matters in the history of social policy in Korea. In this paper, we focus on three areas of family policy: (a) work-family policies, (b) a healthy family policy, and (c) a policy for multi-cultural families. Work-family policies aim to help working families with young children balance work responsibilities and family caregiving through multiple leave options and child care support. The Framework Act on Healthy Families, the first explicit family policy in Korea, requires local governments to provide family services through Healthy Family Support Centers. The Multi-Cultural Family Support Act also established a formal support system for multi-cultural families with immigrant spouses, a population group that has recently increased in Korea. We further discuss the domestic and comparative contexts of Korean family policy and provide suggestions for the remaining challenges.

In South Korea, low fertility rate has become a big social issue, making the term ‘ultra low fertility rate’ common. Currently, South Korea, like many other leading industrialized countries, is coping with the problem of low fertility with a focus on the work-life balance policy. Unfortunately, South Korea’s work-life balance policy has been criticized as not so successful. Especially, it has been pointed out that the policy effects are being compromised because ‘it is not because there is no system, but the existing system does not work properly.’ This means that work-life balance policy in South Korea has a structural and fundamental problem. In this regard, it is necessary to reflect on policy discourses and instruments that determine the goals, directions and content of the policy. The result of the analysis in this paper reveals that South Korea’s work-life balance policy consists of the discourse of ‘raising the fertility rate’ and its policy instruments. It mobilizes citizens for the national goals of social reproduction and sustainable growth. It could be said that this reversal of purpose and means was because the policy makers and executives were buried in developmentalist thinking―in pursuit of materialistic social development. In this respect, in order for South Korea’s work-life balance policy to be on its way, it is urgently required that it should shift its policy paradigm to change practices and cultures. This paper argues that such a paradigm shift should be based on a ‘Social Quality Approach’. Only when we pursue humanistic social development in the planning and implementation of policies and continue to monitor and supplement related systems under this stance, can we achieve a stable and effective work-life balance policy.

SummaryBackgroundSeveral high-income countries, including Japan, have adopted pro-natalist policy to counteract declining fertility rates. However, the effectiveness of these policies varied across different studies and countries. This study aims to conduct an initial systematic review to identify effective policies that have reversed declining fertility rates. Subsequently, it will apply them to Japan’s context through scenario-based secondary analysis. The goals are to project Japan’s total fertility rate (TFR) up to the year 2035.MethodsWe conducted searches in major electronic databases from their inception until March 27 2025 to investigate the impact of fertility policies. We also extracted a variety demographic and public expenditure data from the OECD, World Bank, and IMF databases for the years 1990–2022. A Bayesian hierarchical regression model was used to estimate and project Japan’s TFR trends up to 2035 in Japan, analyzing the effects of significant fertility policies on these trends.FindingsOur analysis included a total of 61 studies focusing on pro-natalist policies, identifying cash benefit policies—such as payment at birth, allowances, paid maternity and paternal leave, childcare coverage, and tax exemptions—as the most influential. Unpaid maternity leaves, universal two-child policy, and Assisted Reproductive Technology health insurance coverage also showed potential to boost fertility, although further research is needed. Countries like Australia, Greece, Hungary, France, and the UK allocate over 1.3% of their GDP to family cash benefits, contrasting Japan and Korea, where the allocation is less than 1%. Our findings indicate that Japan’s current cash benefit policies are unlikely to significantly reverse the fertility decline by 2030 (12% likelihood) and 2035 (29% likelihood). However, should Japan enhance its cash benefits to levels observed in Australia, Hungary, and France by 2030, the probability of reversing Japan’s fertility decline could rise significantly to 79%, 70%, and 69%, respectively. Even if cash benefit policies are scaled up by 2035, the probability of reversing the decline fertility rate is projected to be around 60 or more.InterpretationCash benefits emerged as the most effective fertility policy in high-income countries, although such benefits in Japan were notably modest. Elevating Japan’s cash benefit scheme could potentially lead to higher TFR.FundingHIAS Health, 10.13039/100030883Hitotsubashi University; Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research, Japan.

This article presents a comparative case study of the fertility reduction policies in the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea) and the Republic of China (ROC or Taiwan) from 1961 to 1992.1 Drawin...

This research has two main goals: (i) to examine fertility desires (number of children) in sub-Saharan Africa: levels as compared to other major regions and recent trends; and (ii) to assess the extent to which fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa is contingent on decline in fertility desires (singly and in combination with other reproductive changes).