Week 8: Post your Blog Entries as Comments to my Main Post Each Week

Post by Sunday at midnight.

1. Mark Whitaker

2. The conflict over privatized health care in Korea, when 25% of Koreans are the full time working poor earning less than 860,000 won a month--the highest working poor percentage in the OECD

3. Seeing as how we are in the middle to talking about how consumption and quality of life is altered by different welfare state regimes, here's an editorial from the Korea Times about the conflict in Korea to change the welfare state regime around health care from "Scandinavian style" social rights to "liberal style" defend the market over people. It demonstrates a theme I have mentioned in class before: that in South Korea, there is a fight occuring over the future direction of the welfare state. Esping-Andersen argued that once the welfare state enclosed everyone, it was a political regime that was likely to remain and that only programs that are servicing a small minority are the ones in danger. So I am skeptical that hospitals in Korea will ever be privatized (and thus the prices will go up, and the massive amounts of people will not be covered at all--given Korea has the largest numbers of working poor in the OECD. That article is below as well.) I simply see this as a handful of greedy people attempting to privatize and thus rig the whole system to their tiny benefit against the vast majority that support the current more egalitarian system.

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INTRODUCTION

"Korea is one of the few OECD countries that do not allow profit-oriented hospitals, along with Japan and the Netherlands."

...

So the first thing Minister Yoon should do before talking about implausible remedial steps is to restore the budget for the public health care service for 2010, which his ministry has slashed to almost half of this year’s. [Government intentionally creating a public health crisis and the offering privatization as their only solution. Creating the crisis themselves.]

Already, the Korean government has been notorious for its meager spending on jobless allowances and other public welfare services, which is one-tenth that of other members of the so-called club of rich countries. If Koreans are deprived of cheap, convenient health care, there will be nothing left for Seoul to say in terms of welfare administration.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/koreatime_admin/LT/common/nview.asp?idx=974&nmode=2

[1]

04-29-2011 21:45
For-profit hospitals

Economic theory to derail medical system

There is at least one area in which economic policymakers should take a backseat. It is dangerous to see hospitals as an industry where free competition is encouraged. [For me, the same goes for agriculture or fisheries.] Korea must delay the introduction of for-profit hospitals until patients are ready to shoulder additional costs.

Strategy-Finance Minister Yoon Jeung-hyun rekindled the debate this week. He backs the scheme to attract foreign investment and ignite competition to improve the quality of medical services. He is right in saying that investor-owned hospitals will upgrade the quality of medical services, and create jobs. He misses the crucial point that upgrading quality entails a hike in costs.

The profit-seeking hospitals are necessary unless this leads to an increase in medical expenses.

It is questionable whether Korea badly needs foreign investment to run its hospitals.

Even without foreign capital, existing hospitals are thriving. As is well known, doctors hold one of the most highly-paid and coveted professions here. Even under state control, Korean doctors are ahead of or on par with Western peers in terms of skills. Many foreign patients visit Korea for treatment. The brightest high-school graduates are opting to enroll at medical schools. This illustrates the profession is still attractive.

With for-profit hospitals, doctors will rush to the highest-paying medical centers, widening the polarization of salaries. Many rural hospitals will disappear due to lack of profitability. Chaebol will build ultra-modern hi-tech hospitals, but only in Seoul and other major cities.

Competition will surely raise medical bills for all. Hospitals will increase money-making services and reduce unprofitable functions. This will help the rich enjoy extensive medical services while the poor will see hardships even in gaining access to hospitals in emergencies. This will create a polarization of medical service coverage.

Even under the current system, salaried people have seen a rapid hike in medical bills, which have been rising faster than wages. A lifting of price control will certainly raise bills.

The OECD reported that Korea would see the fastest rise in medical bills as the population has been aging fast. It sees a widening of the deficit in medical insurance funds, even under the current state-administered formula.

Koreans are still lucky to enjoy universal medical coverage regardless of wealth, status or location. Both the rich and the poor can gain equal access to hospitals, thanks to the egalitarian insurance coverage.

Yoon proposed the limitation of for-profit hospitals to Jeju and free economic zones. But once the plan is in place, all hospitals will become profit-seeking entities. This will surely raise medical fees.

A hasty decision might put the national medical system in an uncontrollable crisis.

Now is the time for Korea to balance quality and cost. A blind focus on quality is certain to raise medical charges and drive out the poor. Patients are ready to wait to see a doctor because it is cheap. The government should not deform the current faulty but efficient medical system.

http://koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2011/04/137_86145.html


[2]


Why does Korea require egalitarian health coverage? Several more articles with sets of data so we can think about what would happen if egalitarian health coverage were removed in this special Korean context:

04-25-2010 18:48
South Korea Industrial Deaths Highest in OECD [and thus injuries and deaths for the working poor would go up without health care covarege for the ones working full time]

By Lee Hyo-sik
Staff Reporter

South Korea has emerged from the ashes of the 1950-53 Korean War and become one of the world's major economies over the past six decades. But its success has come at the cost of the lives of many dedicated Koreans enduring poor working conditions.

And yet, Asia's fourth-largest economy still remains the most hazardous environment for industrial workers among advanced countries, according to the Korea Occupational Safety & Health Agency, Sunday.

It said the nation ranked at the bottom in industrial safety among 21 OECD member economies in 2006, with nearly 21 Korean workers out of every 100,000 dying from a range of industrial accidents.

Mexico was a distant second, as 10 out of every 100,000 workers in the Central American nation were killed in various industrial disasters in 2006, followed by Portugal (6) and Canada (5.9).

Britain was the safest place to work, with only 0.7 out of every 100,000 employees dying on the job, ahead of Norway (1.3) and Switzerland (1.4)

The agency also said industrial deaths here declined only 2 percent in 2006 from the previous year, while Australia and Hungary saw fatal industrial accidents fall by over 10 percent over the one-year period.

"'Despite some differences in the calculating of industrial deaths among OECD countries, Korea's number has been consistently higher than those of developed nations. The Korean government needs to strengthen its oversight of unsafe workplaces and force companies to improve worker safety. Workers themselves should also become more safety conscious," it said.

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http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/04/113_64827.html

Breakneck Four Rivers schedule faulted for workers deaths
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/474166.html

Four Rivers death toll reaches 17
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/473514.html

Four Rivers construction companies reduce contractual expenditures, pocketing $1.8B
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/463675.html


[3]

04-26-2011 17:48
Income polarization

Fair society meaningless without middle class

South Korea has shown strong economic performances despite the unprecedented financial crisis that hit the world in 2008. Per-capita national income returned to the $20,000 territory last year with 6.2 percent growth in gross domestic product (GDP). These achievements are now overshadowed by the widening income gap between the rich and the poor.

According to the National Tax Service on Monday, the top 20 percent of self-employed income earners made an average 90 million won ($83,000) last year, up 55 percent from 10 years earlier. On the other hand, the bottom 20 percent saw their income tumble by 54 percent. This finding should serve as a wakeup call to the government on the worsening polarization.

The nation has become a society in which the rich become richer and the poor poorer. The income disparity has already reached a dangerous level, plunging the disadvantaged deeper into dire straits. It also poses a threat to social cohesion and national harmony.

Concerns over the wealth gap have been amplified since the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. Since then the government has taken a series of measures to strengthen the social safety net, create jobs and ensure equal opportunity. However, these efforts have apparently made little progress in narrowing the disparity.

The [social democratic] liberal government under former Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun [instead of the Esping-Andersen use of the term] put stress on the redistribution of wealth and welfare of the needy. Unfortunately, they could not attain their lofty goal of narrowing the income divide. The conservative Lee Myung-bak administration is no different although he is trying to usher in a fair society. [I see nothing in his policies to do this, it's empty rhetoric from the current President.]

Past experiences prove that Korea cannot bridge the rich-poor gap with short-term or improvised prescriptions. The embedded cause of the problem lies in the nation’s socioeconomic structure based on excessive concentration of wealth on a small number of businesses and their owners.

Family-controlled conglomerates, or chaebol, are making more money than ever. Workers’ share of national income fell 59.2 percent in 2010 to the lowest level since 2004. This indicates unfair distribution of economic fruit among different economic players.

FOUR POINTS

An estimated 3 million people live in poverty.

An additional 2.5 million are classified as “working poor.”

As many as 8 million are part-time workers who earn about 60 percent of what full-time employees make.

The middle class, the backbone of a democracy [and the backbone of a politics that avoids violent class warfare], has continued to shrink, widening the divide into haves and have-nots.


It is high time that the Lee government shift from a quantitative growth policy to a qualitative one to rebuild the crumbling middle class. Let people enjoy a fair share of the economic pie. This is not to say that the administration should adopt socialist ideas. Closing income polarization is a minimum requirement for maintaining capitalism, market economy and democracy.

[GDP was a term invented by the U.S. military in WWII and into the Cold War. It was thus hardly a useful plan for anything else except military interests.]


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http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2011/04/172_85918.html

[4]

02-23-2010 17:30 News List
Number of 'Short-Hour' Workers Rising

By Kim Hyun-cheol
Staff Reporter

The number of those who worked less than 3.5 hours per day on average reached 963,000 last year, accounting for a record high of 4.1 percent of all Korean workers.

Statistics Korea reported Tuesday that since the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, the number of part-time workers has been on the rise, jumping from 1.6 percent in 1997 to 2.4 percent in 1998, to 2.9 percent in 2001 and to 3.3 percent in 2004.


People working 18 to 25 hours a week numbered 1.13 million last year, more than doubling from 558,000 in 1997.

The number of those working long hours, in contrast, has been declining over the same period.

The number of employees working more than 54 hours a week was tallied at 6.74 million, taking up 28.7 percent of all workers here.

The proportion of such workers has been steadily dropping since 2001, when they accounted for 42.1 percent of domestic employees.


[so 2001: 42.1% full time employees at more than 54 hours a week;
to 2011: 28.7% full time employees at more than 54 hours a week]

The statistics show that there could be a larger "working poor" class than officially accounted for here.

"It looks like there is already a substantial number of jobless people in Korean society," said Jung Yu-hoon, a researcher at Hyundai Research Institute.

Such a change in working hours is partly attributable to the recent trend of avoiding overtime, as well as a rise in workers voluntarily turning to temporary jobs.

Korea's jobless rate soared to 5 percent last month, the highest since March 2001, and the number of the jobless hit a 10-year high of 1.22 million. The youth unemployment rate also rose 1.1 percentage points to 9.3 percent.

The Lee Myung-bak administration pledged it would create 1.2 million jobs during its term, but the results to this point are far from the target.

In 2008, the administration's first year, 145,000 more people were hired compared to the previous year. However, the number fell by 72,000 in 2009.

hckim@koreatimes.co.kr

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http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2010/02/123_61283.html

[5]

SK claims highest rate of low-wage employment in OECD; edge of OECD

S.Korea claims highest rate of low-wage employment in OECD
Experts say S.Korea should institute livelihood support and job creation to assist the working poor
By Hong Seock-jae　

The ranks of the working poor are swelling. Members of this group, who are unable to escape from poverty no matter how hard they work, walk a tightrope getting by from day to day amid straitened circumstances, with the strong possibility of falling directly into the poverty class if they experience a sudden illness or unemployment.

Last year, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) announced that South Korea had the highest rate of low-wage employment among all its member nations, with its 25.6 percent rate putting it ahead of the United States (24.5 percent) and Japan (15.4 percent). In terms of the poverty rate among households with employed members, South Korea was far above the average for OECD member nations.

According to 2010 figures from Statistics Korea, a full 2.11 million workers in the country had earnings falling below the legal minimum wage of just 858,990 Won ($767) per month, or 4,110 Won ($3.67) per hour. Five years have passed since the 2006 creation of the Irregular Workers Protection Act, yet around 12.7 percent of workers are living below even the minimum wage.

A Korea Labor Institute report titled “Working Poverty-The Effects of Labor Market Uncertainty on Poverty” also indicated a trend of yearly increase in the poverty rate for households headed by someone of employable age (15 to 64 years), with a rise from 8.5 percent in 1997 to 10.9 percent in 2008.

Working poverty refers to a situation in which a household is classified as poor even though the head of household is at working age (18 to 65 years) and there is at least one person employed within the household. The increase has been in the percentage of families falling into this category. The leading example is the “880 thousand Won household,” earning its title because it receives the monthly pay of 880 thousand Won as calculated in 2007 by multiplying the 1.19 million Won average pay of irregular workers by 73 percent, representing the average relative pay rate for individuals in their twenties. In many cases, people are unable to escape from poverty despite engaging in high-intensity work, including small business operators, migrant workers, and artists, including film workers such as 32-year-old screenwriter/director Choe Go-eun, who died alone from poverty-related causes in a small rented room last month.

Experts said that the phenomenon could spread as even efforts to keep step with growth and distribution break down.


“Working poverty is a multidimensional and dynamic phenomena that is hard to capture through simplistic past concepts of poverty,” said KLI researcher Eun Soo-mi. “It assumes a structural form that reproduces a ‘triangular vicious cycle,’ where irregular employment leads to things like unemployment, thrusting workers into the poverty trap.”

The increase in irregular employment has also contributed to acceleration of the working poverty phenomenon, in which people have to struggle with poverty even while working. A 2009 supplementary census on economic activity showed that nearly half of irregular workers, or 41.1 percent, were struggling with low wages.

Experts said a linkage needs to be established between livelihood support for the working poor and job creation policy. They also stressed the need for a “secondary social safety net” for those without any access to social insurance and the basic livelihood security system.

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http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/463674.html

Protests continue as courts pay cleaning workers below minimum wage [even the Korean government breaks its own laws in paying its state workers]
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/464247.html

[Esping-Andersen said it depends on political organization, though upon looking at Korea, it seems that any working class movements are highly constrained in Korea to act on these material difficulties they face, because of repressive governments and a growing lack of civil rights in South Korea.]:

[6]

If political rights are included in your definition of quality of life, Korea's rate is going backwards:

U.N. rapporteur reports freedom of expression severely curtailed under Lee administration

The report supports continued criticism that human rights have been greatly curtailed by the Lee administration

» The report by U.N. Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression Frank La Rue entitled “Promotion and Protection of All Human Rights, Civil, Political, Economic, and Culture Rights, Including the Right to Development” to be submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

By Son Jun-hyun, Senior Staff Writer　　

　

A report that is to be submitted to the United Nations this year states that freedom of expression has receded substantially in South Korea under the Lee Myung-bak administration and recommends that the South Korean government initiate improvements. The report, written by U.N. Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression Frank La Rue following a May 2010 visit and investigation, serves as an important measure of the human rights situation in the country and is expected to draw charges from the international community that South Korea is an underdeveloped human rights nation.

The English-language report titled “Promotion and Protection of All Human Rights, Civil, Political, Economic, and Culture Rights, Including the Right to Development,” a copy of which was acquired Wednesday by the Hankyoreh, states that the scope of freedom of expression has diminished in South Korea since the candlelight vigil demonstrations against the full-scale resumption of U.S. beef imports in 2008.

The report also noted an increasing number of cases where individuals who present opinions that do not agree with the government’s position are prosecuted and punished based on domestic laws and regulations that do not conform to international law.

Over its length of 28 A4-sized pages, the report includes expressions of concern about or recommendations of amendments to the South Korean human rights situation in eight areas, including defamation and freedom of opinion and expression on the Internet, freedoms of opinion and expression during election campaigns, freedom of assembly, restrictions on freedom of opinion and expression for reasons of national security, and rights to free opinion and expression for government employees.

Citing the arrest of television news show producers who reported on U.S. beef, La Rue said that a number of criminal defamation lawsuits are being lodged in cases of expression for the public good and used to punish individuals who criticize the administration. Noting that prohibitions on defamation are also stipulated in civil law, La Rue recommended that the crime of defamation be deleted from the criminal code.

La Rue also made reference to a suit filed by the National Intelligence Service (NIS) claiming damages from Hope Institute Executive Director Park Won-soon for defamation. La Rue said that government officials and public institutions should refrain from filing civil suits on defamation charges in the interest of citizen monitoring of public officials.


La Rue welcomed a December unconstitutionality ruling on the Framework Act on Telecommunications, which has been abused to restrict freedom of opinion on the Internet, as witnessed in the “Minerva” case. With regard to the Internet real name system, he recommended examining other means of identity verification and applying the system only in cases where there are substantial grounds for believing the individual will commit a crime.

La Rue also recommended the abolition of the Korea Communication Standards Commission (KOCSC), expressing concern about the fact that the KOCSC is empowered to review and reject or suspend information whose distribution is prohibited by the Information and Communications Network Act, including information deemed defamatory or a matter of national confidentiality. He expressed concerns that the KOCSC, whose members are appointed by the president, might function as what amounts to a censorship organization deleting online criticisms of the administration, and he remarked on the absence of sufficient safeguards to prevent this.

La Rue recommended remedial measures to address the practice South Korea’s notification system for assemblies, which in effect has operated as a permit system. La Rue also recommended remedial measures to address in addition to the failure to properly guarantee freedoms of political opinion and expression for public school teachers, and he urged the abolition of Item 7 of the National Security Act stipulating punishment for acts of praise and sympathy for anti-state groups.

“The Lee Myung-bak administration, which goes on about ‘advanced Korea’ every time it opens its mouth, suffered a major embarrassment from the international human rights community despite being a U.N. Human Rights Council member nation,” said former National Human Rights Commission of Korea Policy Director Kim Hyung-wan. “The international embarrassment could have been avoided if the NHRCK had just done its job faithfully.”

La Rue submitted the report to the South Korean government on Jan. 31. It was confirmed that around ten government institutions, including the Ministry of Justice, the NHRCK, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST), the KCC, and the National Police Agency, have been examining the truth of the report’s claims since Feb. 14.

This is the first report from a U.N. special rapporteur for freedom of opinion and expression issuing recommendations to the government regarding the domestic human rights situation since a report issued 16 years ago in 1995 by Abid Hussain. At the time, Hussain recommended abolition of the National Security Act and the release of those imprisoned for exercise of freedom of expression.

A human rights group official who claimed to have examined the report said that it contained “a relatively accurate picture of the regression of human rights in South Korea.”

“Unlike the reports by international NGOs or individual countries, a U.N. report carries a high level of reliability and influence,” the official said.

The report is scheduled to be officially delivered to the UNHRC in June.

An official with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the report was “a draft for which Mr. La Rue requested that the South Korean government verify the accuracy of the content prior to formal submission to the UNHRC.”

“We are still in the stage of gathering opinions from the different offices and ministries, so if a government opinion is issued, I imagine it can be done at the official announcement in June at the UNHRC meeting,” the official added.

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/463878.html


[La Rue additionally complained he was shadowed by police agents and spied upon from Lee's Administration while he was in South Korea.]


Union members targeted by companies for claims
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/474511.html

Abuse of authoritarian-era law rife under Lee administration, says DLP chairwoman

"Democratic Labor Party Chairwoman Lee Jung-hee raised charges Monday of unreasonable police investigations for National Security Act violations, noting that the number of bookings under the Lee Myung-bak administration increased by 2.5 times over the Roh Moo-hyun administration while the indictment rate fell by half.

“The three years of the Lee Myung-bak administration have seen a sharp rise in the number of people booked on charges of violating the National Security Act, yet the number of individuals indicted has dropped substantially,” Lee Jung-hee said. “This shows the unreasonable numbers-focused law enforcement efforts of the police and their abuse of the National Security Act.”"

...

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/465868.html



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AN ARTICLE ON GENDER QUALITY OF LIFE AND WELFARE STATE


Women paying a steep price for maternity leave
Womenlink reveals taboo actions by major corporations to push out women requesting or returning from maternity leave
By Lee You-jin

“Kim,” 33, an employee at one of South Korea’s most well-known corporations, received the lowest marks possible in her performance assessment after returning early this year from maternity leave.

“I worked until I was eight months pregnant and my legs were all swollen to finish my duties,” she said. “How can this happen?”

“(The government) went on and on about how I should have the baby, and when I actually did the company treated me poorly,” she added.

At another major company, a woman in her thirties with three-and-a-half years of service was paged by the company last year while on maternity leave. When she arrived, she was urged to resign, finally quitting the company after repeated pressure.

An examination of counseling sessions shows that taboo practices by companies in connection with working women’s pregnancies and childbirth are persisting today. According to an analysis of 440 cases of counseling between January 2010 and March 2011 by the Korean Womenlink employment equality counseling office, labor counseling cases in connection with pregnancy and childbirth accounted for 116 of them, or 26.4 percent. Of these, terminations accounted for 30 cases, or 25.9 percent, leave-related counseling for 41 cases, or 35.3 percent, and prejudicial personnel treatment for 14 cases, or 12 percent.

“In most of these cases, women find it impossible to get promotions after giving birth or they end up with a gap in their work experience,” said Lee So-hui, an volunteer with the office.


Following a battery of counseling sessions over the month of April, the National Employment Equality Counseling Office Network found many examples of retirement recommendations and prejudicial personnel treatment in the case of regular positions, and examples of employees being unable to use their allotted one year of child leave during their contract period in the case of temporary employees.

“Recently, large corporations have been trying to terminate longstanding female employees with high salaries,” said Seoul Women Workers’ Association secretary-general Lee Bu-min. “The bigger problem in the case of temporary positions was the very option of child leave being closed off.”

According to the government’s employment insurance database, the number of individuals taking pre- and post-childbirth leave rose from 70,560 in 2009 to 75,742 in 2010, and the number of individuals taking child leave from 35,400 in 2009 to 41,733 in 2010.

However, the trend of increase has dropped off, with the rate of increase among individuals taking pre- and post-childbirth leave plummeting from 17.4 percentage points in 2008 to 2.9 percentage points in 2009 before recovering slightly to 7.3 percentage points for 2010. In the case of child leave, the rate of increase has declined continuously, from 37.6 percentage points in 2008 to 21.5 percentage points in 2009 and 17.8 percentage points in 2010. Women’s groups are saying the reason for this is linked with the increase in temporary positions stemming from the poor economic climate.

The government changed its method of providing child leave pay support in 2011, adjusting the level from its previous set amount of 500 thousand won ($460.88) per month to up to 40 percent of pre-leave pay or a maximum of one million won, and it has undertaken efforts to effect improvements in corporate culture, including the holding of various forums. However, its efforts face clear limitations owing to the lack of any way of punishing companies.

An official with the Ministry of Health and Welfare said, “At the moment, there are no clear policy measures for pressuring companies into supporting working women during their pregnancy and childbirth, so we have no choice but to hope for understanding from their colleagues and improvements in corporate culture.”

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http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/474881.html