The Political Economy of the Small Welfare State in South Korea

The Political Economy of the Small Welfare State in South KoreaAuthor(s): Jae-jin Yang\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9781108415903, 978-1108415903\nSynopsis\nThis book explains why the Korean welfare state is underdeveloped despite successful industrialization, democratization, a militant labor movement, and a centralized meritocracy. Unlike most social science books on Korea, which tend to focus on its developmental state and rapid economic development, this book deals with social welfare issues and politics during the critical junctures in Korea's history: industrialization in the [tel]s, the democratization and labor movement in the mid-1980s, globalization and the financial crisis in the 1990s, and the wind of free welfare in the 2010s. It highlights the self-interested activities of Korea's enterprise unionism at variance with those of a more solidaristic industrial unionism in the European.