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Comparative Perspectives on the South Korean Welfare System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Park Yong Soo
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South Korea's welfare system has undergone radical institutional expansion since the 1990s, largely as a consequence of the financial crisis of 1997. Despite these changes, however, public social expenditure remains extremely low in comparison with all other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The social insurance system and social welfare service sector remain underdeveloped. The current welfare system in Korea can best be characterized as a residual model in which state intervention remains limited and the family and the private market economy play the central roles in providing a social safety net. This situation is largely the legacy of the “growth-first” ideology, which has remained the dominant approach favored by the majority of Korea's political and economic decision-makers since the period of authoritarian rule (1961–1993), together with the adoption of Western European-style neoliberal restructuring, which was implemented following the financial crisis of 1997.

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Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 5 , May 2008 , e14
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
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Copyright © The Authors 2008

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