The Diverging Political Pathways of Labor Market Reform in Japan and Korea

Abstract

In this article, I analyze diverging political pathways of labor market reform with an empirical focus on the cases of Japan and Korea. Despite similar trends of regulatory reform toward the increase of labor market flexibility, the patterns of labor market reform differed in the two countries. Japan adopted labor market liberalization for nonregular workers with the persistence of employment protection for regular workers. In contrast, Korea opted for regulatory reform for all workers while simultaneously strengthening workers' basic rights and improving protections for nonregular workers. I argue that the institutional features of the employment protection system determine the diverging patterns of labor market reform in Japan and Korea.

A Cultural History of Youth in the Modern Age

“…The loans came with structural adjustment conditions that resulted, among other things, in an immediate tripling of the unemployment rate from 2.5 percent to 8 percent between 1998 and 1999. In Japan, what became known as their "Lost Decades" also saw spikes in part-time employment and underemployment, concentrated among younger workers, as the proportion of full-time workers in the Japanese labor market dropped from 80 percent at the start of the crisis to just under 68 percent as the recession's effects dragged on through the 2000s (Song 2012). New sociological categories like freeters or prekariato, referring to freelancers or a precarious labor class, entered the Japanese labor vocabulary, attesting to how widespread a disturbance the recession had wrought on the Japanese economy (Oberer 2016).…”

“…New sociological categories like freeters or prekariato, referring to freelancers or a precarious labor class, entered the Japanese labor vocabulary, attesting to how widespread a disturbance the recession had wrought on the Japanese economy (Oberer 2016). In both Japan and South Korea, the tradition of lifetime corporate employment was dismantled and replaced with dualist systems in which employment protections were extended to workers with more seniority while short term, part-time, freelance employment became normative for younger workers (Song 2012). China, by contrast, had pursued an economic growth formula that relied on the cheap production of cheap products by cheap labor for a global mass market that was itself in financial decline.…”

The Setback in Political Entrepreneurship and Employment Dualization in Japan, 1998–2012

“…Some scholars have drawn upon the insider–outsider approach to analyse Japan's case (Song ; Yashiro ). They asserted that the institutionalization of employment dualism in Japan has resulted from negotiations of labour market insiders.…”

Convergent or Divergent? The Hidden Dynamics of Institutional Changes in the Labor Markets and Social Welfare Systems in South Korea and Japan

“…Dualization has become a topical keyword that describes institutional fragmentation between insiders and outsiders not only in the labor market but also in other institutional realms like industrial relations, labor markets, and social welfare systems (Häusermann and Schwander ; Palier and Thelen ). It has been used to highlight similar trends in Japan and South Korea, that is, the declining power of organized labor based on fragmented enterprise unions, increasing labor market segmentation between standard employees and nonstandard employees, and, accordingly, the expansion of social protection over those nonstandard workers (Peng ; Song ).…”