Korean Labor Research Articles

An Analysis of Response Pattern and Panel Attrition in KLIPS(Korean Labor and Income Panel Study)

In this paper we used the KLIPS(Korean Labor and Income Panel tudy) data that surveyed from 2006(wave 9) to 2009(wave 12). Other previous studies are concerned with the panel attrition in the early wave, but this study classifies the response pattern and investigates some factors that influence panel attrition when the panel tends to stabilize. It was revealed that panel attrition was influenced by relocation and housing type through the logit model. Besides it was appeared that panel attrition was affected by the monthly living expenses and the overall household income through the decision tree.

“I'm my mother's daughter, I'm my husband's wife, I'm my child's mother, I'm nothing else”: Resisting traditional Korean roles as Korean American working women in Seoul, South Korea

Synopsis In recent years, return migration trips to the ancestral homeland by diasporic individuals have been increasing, often framed as a search for roots and a sense of belonging and home. This study offers a gendered analysis of return migration based on the work narratives of second-generation Korean American women in the South Korean context. Through an examination of the experiences within the South Korean labor market, the study found Korean American women relied heavily on dominant notions of white privilege and patriarchy that upheld a hierarchical relationship of the US to South Korea. These interlocking ideologies constructed the US as a modern, gender egalitarian country that has achieved gender equality, while South Korea remained constrained by traditional patriarchal attitudes and practices that left little room for successful women in the workforce. In response, the participants create new identities that highlight their agency as the ideal cosmopolitan worker in a rapidly globalizing South Korean economy.

A Causal Analysis of Youth Inactiveness in the Korean Labor Market

A Causal Analysis of Youth Inactiveness in the Korean Labor Market

Human rights, human wrongs: literatures of captivity

Following Richard Rorty's lead, this article does not foreground debates on human rights to the exclusion of the literary; instead, it examines bodies of literature that articulate and express these concerns about human rights, sometimes explicitly, but more often by implication. It is within this context that we argue that a new sub-genre of writing can be discerned and shaped, one we label ‘literatures of captivity’. This article considers the ways in which these narratives manifestly open a discursive space that both allows and enables the exploration of what, exactly, constitutes human rights. This exploration of the violation of human rights, in a manner not so freely available in state-sponsored discourse (the law), is also disseminated and packaged in ways that reach and influence a considerably wider readership or audience than codified statutes. We suggest that this is especially pertinent to life writings, focusing in particular upon case studies drawn from Japanese American internment narratives and memoirs of northern Korean labour camps.

The Effect of Protection of Temporary Workers on Employment Levels: Evidence from the 2007 Reform of South Korea

The authors investigate the effects of recent South Korean labor reform, which was designed to protect temporary workers, on the level of temporary, permanent, and overall employment in that country. Because the effects of employment protection legislation (EPL) on employment levels remain theoretically ambiguous, they must be determined by empirical analysis. The impacts of the reform on both temporary and overall employment are negative at first and fade away in two years after the reform, hence taking a U-shape in the post-reform period. The impact of the reform on permanent employment is, however, positive two years after the reform. At least in the short run, an increase in protection for workers comes at a cost of reduced levels of employment.

The Retirement Consumption in Korea: Evidence from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study

This paper examines the retirement consumption in Korea using the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study. This paper reports a significant post-retirement consumption fall among elderly households. The empirical results of this paper suggest that a reduction in work-related expenses is an important factor to explain the observed post-retirement consumption fall. In addition, this paper finds that the post-retirement consumption growth rate varies depending on each household's pre-retirement wealth level. The findings of this paper provide empirical evidence on retirement consumption in an emerging market with no matured public pension programmes.

Determinants of Labor Market Participation and Wages of North Korean Female Refugees in South Korea

This paper uses data from a survey on 289 North Korean female refugees who arrived in South Korea in 2007 to understand the determinants of their economic adaption in the South Korean labor market. More specifically, we look at the effects of job finding channels and government policies on the labor market participation and wages of these women. We find that job finding through both personal contacts and public employment networks increases the probability of finding employment, but the former, especially job finding through contacts with South Koreans, is the most effective route to finding employment. In addition, jobs with higher wages are acquired in employment attained from South Korean referrals, followed by South Korean government agencies and those from North Korean refugee contacts. We further find that labor market participation is negatively affected by both public benefits and private transfers possibly because of increases in the reservation wages of job seekers.

Wage Determinants Analysis by Quantile Regression Tree

Quantile regression proposed by Koenker and Bassett (1978) is a statistical technique that estimates conditional quantiles. The advantage of using quantile regression is the robustness in response to large outliers compared to ordinary least squares(OLS) regression. A regression tree approach has been applied to OLS problems to fit flexible models. Loh (2002) proposed the GUIDE algorithm that has a negligible selection bias and relatively low computational cost. Quantile regression can be regarded as an analogue of OLS, therefore it can also be applied to GUIDE regression tree method. Chaudhuri and Loh (2002) proposed a nonparametric quantile regression method that blends key features of piecewise polynomial quantile regression and tree-structured regression based on adaptive recursive partitioning. Lee and Lee (2006) investigated wage determinants in the Korean labor market using the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study(KLIPS). Following Lee and Lee, we fit three kinds of quantile regression tree models to KLIPS data with respect to the quantiles, 0.05, 0.2, 0.5, 0.8, and 0.95. Among the three models, multiple linear piecewise quantile regression model forms the shortest tree structure, while the piecewise constant quantile regression model has a deeper tree structure with more terminal nodes in general. Age, gender, marriage status, and education seem to be the determinants of the wage level throughout the quantiles; in addition, education experience appears as the important determinant of the wage level in the highly paid group.

Measuring Discrimination in South Korea: Underestimating the Prevalence of Discriminatory Experiences among Female and Less Educated Workers?

ObjectivesTo investigate the possibility that Koreans show different patterns in reporting discriminatory experiences based on their gender and education level, we analyzed the participants who answered “Not Applicable” for the questions of discriminatory experiences that they were eligible to answer.MethodsDiscriminatory experiences in eight social situations were assessed using the 7th wave of Korean Labor and Income Panel Study. After restricting the study population to waged workers, a logistic regression model was constructed to predict the probability that an individual has experienced discrimination based on the observed covariates for each of eight situations, using the data of participants who answered either Yes or No. With the model fit, the predicted logit score of discrimination (PLSD) was obtained for participants who answered Not Applicable (NA), as well as for those who answered Yes or No. The mean PLSD of the NA group was compared with those of the Yes group and the No group after stratification by gender and education level using an ANOVA model.ResultsOn the questions of discrimination in getting hired and receiving income, the PLSD of the NA group was significantly higher than that of the No group and was not different from that of Yes group for female and junior high or less educated workers, suggesting that their NA responses were more likely to mean that they have experienced discrimination. For male and college or more educated workers, the NA group had a PLSD similar to that for the No group and had a significantly higher PLSD than the Yes group, implying that their NA responses would mean they that they have not experienced discrimination.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that the responses of NA on the discrimination questionnaire may need different interpretation based on the respondents' gender and education level in South Korea.

Neo-Liberalism and the Positional Change of Working Classes in the Korean Labour Market

Neo-Liberalism and the Positional Change of Working Classes in the Korean Labour Market

The Impact of Taxes on Charitable Giving: Empirical Evidence from the Korea Labor and Income Panel Study

Households’ or individuals’ decision regarding charitable giving may differby type of recipient of the gift. In light of the relative paucity of empirical research on the impact of tax incentives on charitable giving outside Western countries, empirical research on this topic in South Korea is valuable in order to compare effects across difference tax regimes and in different institutional environments. We use the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS), whose panel structure helps alleviate the omitted variable bias that has often appeared in previous literature using cross-sectional data. This study aims to perform a robust estimation of tax price and income elasticities for charitable contributions in South Korea. First, we use exogenous changes in tax rates resulting from Korean Tax Reform to construct instrumental variables (IVs) for the change in the price of giving. Two tests are undertaken to determine whether the IVs are weak or not: a size-corrected test of a weak IV robust inference for the linear instrumental variable model with autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity recently devised by Finlay and Magnusson; and the LIML CUE-GMM estimation. We find that our instruments are not weak. Following Smith and Blundell, and Rivers and Vuong , we then estimate the random effect (RE) Tobit Model using acontrol function based on the IVs. Using the procedure developed by Mundlak, we estimated a fixed effect model from the RE Tobit model. The tax price and income elasticities from the pseudo-fixed effect Tobit model are found to be significant and the magnitudes are similar to those from the GMM fixed effect and CUE-GMM models. To investigate additional features of the conditional distribution of charitable giving in South Korea, we use the Censored Quantile regression with instrumental variables (CQIV) recently proposed by Chernozhukov, Fernandex-Val, and Kowalski. These estimate indicate that the price elasticity of charitable giving is very heterogenous among donors, while income has a quite uniform and positive effect over the whole range of the giving distribution significantly.

Overcoming Labor Market Problems and Providing Social Services

The situation of the Korean labor market and welfare system evolved in the 2000s during a period that witnessed civil society playing a prominent role both as a provider of welfare and an inspirer for the implementation of welfare schemes (Labor Market and Welfare System in South Korea section). Emergence of a New Form of Collaboration Between Civil Society and Government section details the process that led to the installation of an ambitious minimum income scheme (the National Basic Livelihood System) and established the basis for a new form of collaboration and partnership between civil society and government in the fields of poverty alleviation and work integration. As a next step in this direction was enacted in 2006 the Law for the Promotion of Social Enterprises, which is presented and discussed in Social Enterprise Model As An Original Way of Addressing Different Social Issues section in reference to other experiences and social enterprise models. The conclusion insists however on the difficulties of preserving what was originally a balanced collaboration between government and civil society in a traditionally state-centered country.

Perceived Discrimination and Self-Rated Health in South Korea: A Nationally Representative Survey

BackgroundThere is mounting evidence that discriminatory experiences can harm health. However, previous research has mainly focused on the health effects of racial discrimination in U.S. or European countries although there is pervasive discrimination by gender, age, education and other factors in Asian countries.MethodsWe analyzed the data from the 7th wave of Korean Labor and Income Panel Study to investigate the association between perceived discriminatory experience and poor self-rated health in South Korea. Perceived discriminatory experiences were measured in eight situations through a modified Experience of Discrimination questionnaire. In each of eight situations, the lifetime prevalence of perceived discriminatory experience was compared between men and women and the main causes of those experiences were identified separately by gender. After adjusting for potential confounders, we examined the association between perceived discriminatory experience and poor self-rated health in each of eight social situations and also checked the association using the number of situations of perceived discriminatory experiences.ResultsFor both men and women, education level and age were the main sources of work-related perceived discriminatory experiences. Gender was one of the main causes among women across eight situations and more than 90% of women reported their gender as a main cause of discriminatory experience in getting higher education and at home. Discriminatory experiences in four situations were positively associated with poor self-rated health. The odds ratio for poor self-rated health for those exposed to one, two, three or four or more social situations of perceived discrimination were respectively 1.06 (95% CI : 0.87–1.29), 1.15 (95% CI : 0.96–1.55), 1.59 (95% CI : 1.19–2.14), and 1.78 (95% CI :1.26–2.51).ConclusionThere is consistent association between perceived discriminatory experience and poor self-rated health across eight social situations in South Korea.

No More Illusions of Denuclearization

No More Illusions of Denuclearization Sue Terry (bio) Much has been made of the motivation behind the United States' development of nuclear weapons during World War II and the strategic implications of its unprecedented nuclear status in the war's immediate aftermath and the postwar international order. Less attention has been paid, however, to the specifics of subsequent states' paths toward the possession of nuclear weapons. The only notable exception is North Korea, the newest and most secretive member of the nuclear club, whose journey to that coveted status has been closely chronicled for two decades. Nuclear diplomacy vis-à-vis Pyongyang since the 1990s has been a mainstay of international politics, headlining international news and triggering heated debates in both policy and academic circles. And while few have presumed that diplomacy could entice other nuclear weapons states—Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Israel, and Pakistan—into giving up their weapons, the notion that North Korea's far more powerful neighbors could and should persuade the aid-dependent North Korean leadership to bargain away its nuclear weapons program has persisted. Jonathan Pollack's new book on the history of North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons—No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons and International Security—should finally put that myth to rest. The author demonstrates with ample historical evidence and rigorous analysis that the North Korean leadership "does not treat nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip, and instead views these weapons as central to its identity and security planning" (p. 207). Most North Korea watchers, except for the most optimistic assessor of U.S. negotiating skills (or the most patronizing assessors of North Korea's), came to adopt this view in the wake of the North's second nuclear test in May 2009. Pollack also makes a strong case that Pyongyang crossed the nuclear Rubicon in 2009 by chronicling the sequence of events following the breakout of the second North Korean nuclear crisis in October 2002 and leading up to the May 2009 test. But Pollack does much more than simply draw the conclusion that a nuclear North Korea is here to stay. He presents a comprehensive history of how and why the North Korean leadership secretly pursued nuclear weapons, [End Page 175] going as far back as the germination of Kim Il-sung's nuclear aspirations in the 1940s and 1950s. Chapter 2, dubbed "Nuclear Memories and Nuclear Visions," is especially good in laying out the historical events that alerted Kim Il-sung to the charms of nuclear weapons. Pollack points out that during World War II, when Japan was the colonial master in Korea, "major chemical and industrial facilities linked to Tokyo's clandestine nuclear-weapons programme were located in northern Korea, and Japan was...exploring for uranium and various rare earth metals in the northern half of the peninsula." He goes on to write that "Moscow undertook uranium mining in northern Korea as early as 1946, presumably relying on Korean labour" (p. 44). During the Korean War, faced with intermittent nuclear threats by the United States, Kim Il-sung showed interest in nuclear science: "The DPRK National Academy of Science was established in 1952, with uranium exploration, basic research in nuclear physics and the training of nuclear scientists identified as early priorities." In the postwar recovery period, Kim called for a "ten-year plan for science and technology...for a comprehensive survey of North Korea's natural resources including uranium, and advocated an active programme of research in atomic energy, the training of scientific personnel, and pursuit of nuclear applications to the DPRK's economic development" (p. 48). Of course, statements of interest in nuclear science do not equal the technical ability or the concerted effort to develop nuclear weapons, and the author is careful not to read too much into these early signs of nuclear aspiration. Pollack dates North Korea's serious nuclear development efforts to the mid-1970s—unlike some South Korean experts who see the 1960s or even the 1950s as the genesis of its nuclear program. As Pollack notes, there is no "documentary evidence to substantiate this assertion," just defector testimonials (p. 48). At the same time, Pollack does describe in detail Pyongyang's...

Scientific Management in <i>East Goes West</i>: The Japanese and American Construction of Korean Labor

I do not want to treat efficiency as mere technique or method. There no other way for humankind beyond efficiency. I wish to emphasize that the way of man in fact efficiency. --Ueno YSichi (187-89) In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first. --Frederick Winslow Taylor (7) System, system, system! --Reporter for the Detroit Journal, after visiting a Ford plant (qtd. in Nevins and Hill 461) New York, the 1920s. Two friends on a desultory stroll across Brooklyn Bridge pause to take in the city skyline. The Korean student, Han, revels at the spectacle of New York's gleaming structures, while his mentor, Kim, stands grimacing beside him. Han effuses, What a Picture! The arched City Hall against the afternoon sunset, these long columns and these high towers. What different from the Grand Canal of Venice or the Hankang of Hanyang! ... [This city] links humanity to the world of mechanism, the world of mass production, this magnanimous gigantic structure.... All the work of a short time, in a small space. It would have taken men in different ages hundreds of years to accomplish this.... The craftsman may have worked in deadening monotony, the engineer may have planned in routine formation. But the product emerges with individual creativeness, a monument to the American age. Precise, exact, swift, poignant, and powerful. (Kang, East 245) What impresses Hart more than the sheer scale of New York the fact that these monuments were made with such celerity and precision. It efficiency--a rhythm so distinct from Europe and Asia--that enchants, but also unsettles Han; beneath the surface of Han's wonder lies a quiet acknowledgment of the individual sacrifice needed for the New York building to rise--the worker and designer must labor in anonymous tedium. On the other hand, Kim has a decidedly more sardonic outlook: This island, he muttered, is rockbound. It can't grow any more. Yet the inhabitants in it increase more and more. Probably it no longer than the span of a century since the New York of today emerged, from rural farmlands.... Now all the depraved creatures and exiled souls in humanity gather to help the big city's growth and add to the radical scare.... Well, science that tries to explain the how-and-where of truth, from simple to complex, from particular to general, no help to me. (245-46) Kim's despondency perhaps reflective of the dark modernist vision of America ruled by an efficiency bereft of a humanistic center. He sees New York as a collection of alienated souls fueling the city's unmitigated expansion. Unable or unwilling to accept efficiency without purpose, Kim--as Han's double--has been left hopelessly behind by the modern age. With these two disparate views, Younghill Kang sets the crux of his argument in East Goes West (1937), an admonition of all that can be achieved through efficiency, both beauteous and terrible. Crafted with strong autobiographical elements, the novel chronicles Chungpa Han's arrival and education in America, where he discovers the limits of his racialized potential through a series of humble jobs while pursuing his studies. Han comes to realize that the art and literature so valued in Asia goes unappreciated in America; instead, ruthless efficiency and market logic rules over all. Han's and Kim's comments hold an additional layer of complexity, for they speak as former colonial subjects. The rise of the burnished metro-pole and the desperate mass of people from rural origins would have been familiar scenes first encountered in colonial Korea and imperial Japan. Hidden behind Han's and Kim's views regarding the American way of efficiency lies an echo of the past--the Japanese way of efficiency. In America, Han learns that this efficiency has a name: Taylor. In this essay, I reconfigure Kang's critique of American capitalism as part of a more expansive argument about colonial labor and manufacturing techniques. …

Chronic Health Conditions, Depression, and the Role of Financial Wellbeing: How Middle Age Group (45-64) and Older Adults (65-79) Differ?

This study investigates the association between chronic health conditions (CHD) and depression with a focus on the mediating effect of financial strain. We tested if age makes any difference in the effect of CHD and financial strain on depression. The data comes from the 2006 Korea Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA) collected by the Institute of Korean Labor Research. The sample consisted of information from 8,961 individuals ages 45-79. Separate analyses were done for middle-age (45-64) and older-adult groups (65-79). There were significant financial portfolio differences among CHD patients and non-CHD, for both age groups, that may constitute the impact of a health event on financial wellbeing; in addition, the associations of CHD on depressive symptoms were different by age groups. The mediating effect of financial wellbeing on the association between CHD and depressive symptoms was verified; in addition, the role of financial wellbeing on the association was especially strong for the older-adult group. The effect of CHD on depression was contingent on the amount of net assets and annual personal income. Implications are discussed based on the findings.

Labor Solidarity in the Era of Neoliberal Globalization

Under the context of neoliberal globalization, governments have pursued marketdriven economic reform policies and large firms have adopted the business model of shortterm profit maximization. In this context, intensification of labor polarization has produced growing concerns over the solidarity crisis faced by the labor movement in Korea, which reveals serious weaknesses in internal and external solidarity requiring rectification in order to overcome labor polarization. Internal solidarity of the labor movement in Korea has been weakened by union members’attitude of self-interest toward job security and economic gain, by fragmented co-worker relations, and by intensified competition among activist factions for political power within unions. The most crucial factor constraining external solidarity of the Korean labor movement is the legacy of enterprise unionism, which has produced differentiated interest structures between organized and unorganized workers, while hindering the two worker groups from fostering a common ground of union activities and political vision. Reflexive leadership of labor movement, substantiation of industrial unionism, and fostering of communitarian activism are recommended for revitalizing labor solidarity.

정규직 및 비정규직 근로 형태가 주관적 건강상태에 미치는 영향

Purpose: This study was aimed to examine the effect of employment status upon the subjective health status. Methods: The data of the study were from the 11th Korean Labor Panel Data, obtained by using a face to face interview method. These data were analyzed by ANOVA, t-test and multiple regression using the SPSS program. Results: There was a significant, statistical difference on the subjective health status according to employment status. The subjective health status of non-regular workers was lower than that of the regular workers. The significant predictors of the subjective health status of all subjects were economic status, age, gender, education, marital status, drinking, employment status, and egular work time. The significant predictors of the subjective health status of workers were age, economic status, gender, and education. The significant predictors of the subjective health status of non-regular workers were age, economic status, marital status, gender, education, and regular work time. Conclusion: These results indicate an association between the subjective health status and employment status. The subjective health status may be affected by instability of temporary employment. The additional research to clarify the role of employment instability is recommended. Research on social policy to resolve health inequalities is recommended.

Management Insights

Management Insights

Stars and Misfits: Self-Employment and Labor Market Frictions

Recent evidence has shown that entrants into self-employment are disproportionately drawn from the tails of the earnings and ability distributions. This observation is explained by a multitask model of occupational choice in which frictions in the labor market induce mismatches between firms and workers, and misassignment of workers to tasks. The model also yields distinctive predictions relating prior work histories to earnings and to the probability of entry into self-employment. These predictions are tested with the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study, from which we find considerable support for the model. This paper was accepted by Lee Fleming, entrepreneurship and innovation.