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Using two nationally representative data sets, we examine the wages, benefits, and social insurance of contingent workers compared with standard employees in South Korea. In addition, we measure employers’ investments in their contingent workforce. Our results indicate that contingent workers have become the dominant form of labor in South Korea after the 1998 Asian financial crisis and are faced with working conditions that are discriminative compared with those of standard employees. We also find that employers’ investments in contingent workers as human resources, as well as the upward mobility of contingent workers, are limited in the Korean labor market. Overall, our findings provide a comprehensive understanding of the working poor, including the social exclusion of contingent workers in an advanced developing economy.

This study explores the manner in which gender inequality in the transition into self-employment is associated with the institutional contexts of family and labour market structures in the East Asian countries of Japan, Korea and Taiwan. This work contributes to theoretical debates on gender inequality and entrepreneurship because prior research on female self-employment has lacked a theoretical viewpoint on the mechanisms by which conditions for female entrepreneurship depend on the macro-structural arrangements of family and labour markets. By evaluating female employment in light of the patriarchal Confucian ideology, I examine gender disparities among individuals in terms of effects of paternal self-employment, their experiences as family workers and their marital status on their transition into self-employment. The results of this study show that women in Japan and Taiwan do not benefit from the self-employed status of their fathers as much as their male counterparts. Additionally, female family workers in the three countries had considerable disadvantages in becoming self-employed, which implies that female family workers continue to be exploited by self-employed owners, namely, their husbands. In contrast, the effects of marital status, with both sexes, on their transitions into self-employment differed widely among the three countries, reflecting the various barriers to self-employment and the differing conditions for female employment in each country. Overall, this study demonstrates that gender inequality in the transition into self-employment is related to family structures unique to these East Asian countries. This study, however, did not compare the dynamics of self-employment between East Asian societies and other industrialised nations. Future studies should explore whether the findings of this study are applicable to other industrialised societies.

This paper aims to deal with the history and main features of social enterprises in South Korea, where a specific legal framework was enacted in 2006.

The analysis emphasises an economic sociological approach mixing economic considerations, political features and social aspects. The mobilised information comes from previous works realised by the authors on that topic as well as from updated statistics and data about policies, laws and regulations.

The study underlines that the emergence of social enterprises in South Korea was rooted in civil society and citizens' movements before it became a priority on the government's agenda. The result is the co‐existence of several forms of social enterprise with distinctive features: social enterprises certified by the official label, on the one hand, and de facto social enterprises, defined as such because of their practices, goals and values, on the other hand. Such a situation generates a growing tension between the priorities and values emphasised by the political sphere and by the civil society.

Social enterprise is an emerging field of interest and a recent phenomenon, constantly in progress; consequently, systematic data on the field are still lacking, and researchers do not have enough hindsight to learn definitive lessons and draw broad conclusions of statistical significance.

The paper sheds light on a phenomenon that is multi‐dimensional and is rapidly evolving. It provides a better comprehension of South Korean political choices and socio‐economic changes and can help to anticipate future evolutions and to shape related policies to deal with work integration and the promotion of welfare‐mix in the field of social services provision. It also brings information and learning for cross‐country comparative studies.

This paper aims to describe how the human resources development (HRD) policy has shifted from the national level to the sectoral levels; the paper also explains the changes that have been made in skills formation in the economy by presenting the emergence of Industry Skills Councils (ISC).

This paper presents perspectives of which include reviewing the change of governance and skills formation at the sectoral level.

Skills development strategy is needed both at the sectoral and national levels to cultivate the core competencies of Korean talents. The feedbacks based on the HRD practices implemented at the micro level are delivered to the state governments and business associations via the ISCs. The policymaking has thus become more decentralized from the state government, and it now reflects inputs from the practical field in the process of making new policies.

Korean skills regime is still difficult to classify because it does not follow the skills formation regime discussed in current scholarship. While the state government has played an active role in decision-making, financing and delivery of vocational training programs since the early phase of economic development, engagement by social partners has been limited in the Korean vocational education and training (VET) system. The participation of social partners in the Korean VET system has been limited, but various stakeholders such as the labor unions; trade unions; chambers of commerce; and small, medium and large enterprises have been engaged gradually in skills identification, formation, development and implementation within individual sectors.

The purpose of this paper is to consider a new way of estimating the gender wage gap by introducing individual risk attitudes that is applied to representative Korean data.

The selection bias via risk attitudes results in the overestimation of this wage gap. Women are more risk averse and hence prefer not to be active in the labour market or, if they are active, prefer to work in the public sector, where wages are generally lower than in the private sector. This paper explains the reduced gender wage gap by developing an appropriate sample-selection model, with wage decompositions corrected for selection.

Self-selection based on risk attitudes is shown to partly explain the gap that is popularly perceived as reflecting gender discrimination.

It is the first attempt to explain the gender wage gap by looking at the individual risk preference through work status selection.

The purpose of this paper is to examine gender differences in occupational status among South Korean workers in 1988 and 1998. In 1988, the South Korean National Assembly enacted an Equal Employment Opportunity Act. The goal is to better understand how occupational status differs by gender between these time periods.

Using the “88 and 98 Occupational Wage Bargaining Survey on the Actual Condition (OWS),” the paper examines occupational differences by gender and log wage using OLS.

Occupational segregation by gender was more extreme in 1988 than 1998. In 1988, 83.3 percent of all female workers were employed in three broad occupational categories. Few women (5.4 percent) worked as professional, technical or administrative workers. By 1998, 11.5 percent of female workers were employed as professionals. The highest paid occupational categories, in South Korea, have the lowest percentage of female workers. Women benefit from additional educational experience, though less so than holds for men, and from being in a union (in 1988). Women are penalized, in terms of occupational status prestige, when working in large firms and when married.

If South Korea aims to make full use of the human capital of all workers, measures need to address how women might enjoy returns on their educational investment that approach those realized by men. Further, efforts to integrate women into professional occupations categories might be examined.

Little has been explored with regard to occupational gender differences in South Korea. This work provides a better understanding of occupational status differences by gender and how they vary across time.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of the National Pension Scheme (NPS) on the economic well-being of older people in South Korea.

It analyses older people aged 60 and over sampled from the third wave of the Korean retirement and income study.

The analysis shows a gendered effect. The NPS is positively associated with the economic well-being of only older men. This gendered impact is probably attributable to the inherent patriarchal structure of the NPS that is based on the strong male bread-winner model.

The results suggest that promoting the female labour market participation, and also reforming the gender structure of the NPS and South Korean labour market, can be a potential policy option to amend gendered economic well-being in later life.

Drawing on the six-dimensional framework of the Anholt-GfK Nation Brands Index (NBI), the purpose of this paper takes a government-to-business (G2B) perspective of international marketing by shedding light on how governments (as sellers) can harness their nations’ brand image to attract businesses (as buyers) to invest in the country.

Using Korea as context, this study interviewed Korea-based foreign multinational companies (MNCs) to elucidate how nation brand had influenced their FDI decisions to establish R&D centres in Korea. Purposive sampling identified 36 MNCs from diverse countries and industries that had set up R&D centres within the last decade. Individual in-depth interviews probed the MNCs’ views of Korea’s nation brand in regards to their FDI decisions. Recorded interviews were transcribed and analysed for common themes.

Five key thematic attributes of Korea’s nation brand emerged: rigid labour market, pro-FDI government, Chaebols’ dominance, strong nationalism and rapid industrialisation. These attributes relate to NBI’s dimensions of people, governance, investment/immigration, culture/heritage and exports, respectively. The dimensions impacted Korea’s nation brand differently.

This study contributes to nation branding research by applying the Anholt-GfK NBI to empirically investigate nation brand’s influence on attracting business investments at a macro-G2B level. The findings are particularly useful in guiding government policy-makers and trade organisations on running nation-brand promotions and marketing campaigns for FDIs. The findings will also benefit foreign businesses who are considering injecting capital investments into a country.

The need for greater representation of women in the Korean workforce is a critical issue, as evidenced by the scarcity of women in managerial positions. Women make up only 7 per cent of the managerial and executive workforce. Using the notion of opportunity structures, suggests that the Korean Government has played a key role in limiting the progress of Korean women workers. Examines that role empirically via a sample of employed Korean women. The data indicate that some government acts, such as ratification of laws including a quota system and maternity leave, have expanded Korean women’s career opportunities. Yet the lack of numerous other laws including those promoting equal employment opportunities, equal pay, denouncing sexual harassment, and more, have limited women’s opportunities. Highlights the Korean Government’s role in women’s career growth and discuss actions the Government could take to increase women’s opportunities and enable them to reach managerial levels.