The Birth of a Welfare State in Korea: The Unfinished Symphony of Democratization and Globalization

Abstract

Globalization pressured a rebirth of the state in Korea, but in an unexpected direction. Whereas the welfare state retrenched in Western Europe under pressures of the borderless global economy, the Korean state reinvented itself into the guardian of public welfare. That regime shift occurred when the “Asian crisis” struck in 1997 to end the developmental state's way of growth. Previously, the state channeled subsidized bank loans to the chaebol firms (monopolistic conglomerates in strategic industries) and the chaebol company welfare to its workforce in order to secure industrial peace in strategic growth sectors. This de facto class bargain, partly forced by the developmental state and chaebol firms and partly prodded by organized labor, crumbled with the Asian crisis. No longer too big to fail, the chaebol firms plunged into downsizing and restructuring in order to raise profitability, thus precipitating a profound social crisis. The rules and norms of lifetime employment and promotion by seniority gestated during Park Chung Hee's authoritarian rule (1961–1979), and labor's acquiescence—if not consent—to the chaebol-led hypergrowth strategy collapsed as the crisis damaged a third of Korea's top thirty business conglomerates in 1997 and 1998.