Since the late 1980s, South Korea has been subjected to intense international scholarly attention. This is not unusual for a country located in one of the world's most critical regions in the political, economic and cultural aspects. China and Japan have similarly—in fact, more keenly—attracted such international attention. What is particularly special about the scholarly spotlight on South Korea is the fact that its economic, political, social, and cultural transformations have served as a critical path-breaking basis for theoretical, conceptual, as well as practical innovations that have been broadly applied to many other, mostly developing, societies. That is, the country has helped to fill various lacunae in modern social sciences whose West-driven background has inevitably spawned substantive and theoretical limits in addressing the world's majority group of societies and populations. South Korea's economic development, democratization, labor movement and even pop culture have stimulated and inspired so many senior and junior scholars from across the world, so that remarkably abundant amounts of serious books and articles on such issues have been produced and read by ever increasing numbers of academics in both Korean studies and general social sciences.
However, social policy has remained one of the seemingly weak links in the South Korean developmental, institutional, and/or democratic progress. So has the international and South Korean scholarship on social policy. That such is not inevitable is clearly and comprehensively shown by Stein Ringen and his Korean colleagues (and former doctoral students) in this edited volume.
This relatively short but densely written book is, as a whole, an introduction to (or summary of) several major books and serious dissertations written individually by the same authors to deal with various dimensions of South Korean politics of social policy—that is, the state and social policy in political development, state-business relations (in labor and welfare issues), state-voluntary sector relations in welfare provision, and state structure and social activism in welfare politics. In order to fully appreciate or legitimately criticize the value of their current book, it is somewhat indispensable to read the above-mentioned other works by the authors. Having read only some of these other works, I myself remain a limitedly qualified reviewer.
However, I am confident in saying that the authors provide very useful multi faceted accounts of South Korea's politics of social policy in the broad context of national economic development and institutional modernization. Their particularly valuable observations and conclusions include the following: (1) Social policy was not simply neglected but seriously utilized and, where necessary, manipulated in conjunction with national(ist) economic development and political rule. (2) The state usually remained pro-business, but such entrepreneurial alliance necessitated various social policy functions of business on the state's behalf. (3) The authoritarian state did not try to unilaterally stifle civil voluntarism but instead utilized and even nourished the active participation of voluntary sectors and groups in certain areas (e.g., welfare provision, local infrastructural improvement, etc.) where such participation was, to the state, more instrumental than disturbing. (4) Democratization has not automatically helped to strengthen welfare provision but has led to much more complicated institutional settings and sociopolitical relations through which social welfare is realized not just as material justice or consideration but also as sociopolitical evolution.
The main criticisms I would like to offer are not about any obvious factual or judgmental errors of the authors but derive from the logistic nature and substantive scope of the book itself. First, as each chapter (except the introduction and conclusion) purports to broadly summarize the corresponding author's earlier bulky research, the text is packed with summary sentences and, more problematically, evaluative statements. To readers not familiar with their the authors' other works or the South Korean situation in general, this could cause some confusion and frustration.
Second, perhaps many readers would expect that in the near future the authors should independently, systematically, and comprehensively address the importance of South Korea's primary welfare institution, that is, the family, and its relationship with the state and other social institutions. This appears indispensable in completing the overall picture of the South Korean politics of social policy in which the principle of “family protection first, social welfare later” still prevails.
Third, perhaps because of the developmental era-focus of the authors' investigation, the South Korean contexts and factors for social policy neoliberalization are not satisfactorily delineated. In fact, many elements of the neoliberally framed (and IMF-recommended) social safety net are here considered progressive changes. Neoliberalism, especially in its revised Washington Consensus version, is not frontally against social welfare as far as its costs are locally borne.
Fourth, the authors' attention to South Korea's internal political structures and developmental dynamics seems to have somewhat constrained space for fully discussing the effects of the country's ideological and epistemological dependence on the United States and, to a lesser extent, Europe in its institutional modernization and socioeconomic restructuring supposedly toward a welfare state. On the part of the state elite and their intellectual advisors, the country's evolution as a social policy entity is an outcome of a complex interplay between the two main postcolonial national goals of institutional modernization and economic development. Both goals can be understood in terms of nationalistically fortified Beckian reflexive, if not postcolonial, modernization. If the country had been dominated by a less laissez-faire or more social democratic state than the United States, what kinds of differences might have arisen in the social policy configuration of the South Korean state and society?
Finally, as a group, the authors apparently try to propose that the South Korean experiences amount to a certain distinct line of welfare state in critical conjunction with the developmental state. While it is not clear whether every author of this book subscribes to the notion of “the developmental welfare state,” they nonetheless describe the South Korean affairs in terms of welfare state issues. However, in my judgment, as most of developmental political economists are usually very cautious in designating the developmental state(s) among various countries under their investigation, the welfare state(s) should remain a rigorously qualified institutional and political economic entity clearly distinguishing a certain group of model-case countries (in spite of the wide popularity of welfare state typologies). I think the author could (should?) have used “welfare regime” or other less imposing words instead of “welfare state” in numerous parts of the text. Having a policy or aspiration for economic development (or social welfare) does not automatically constitute a developmental state (or welfare state).
