Korean Unemployment
L. Jones
Unemployment in Korea
Unemployment is a difficult subject, both for the individual within a given country or region, as well as for the prosperity of the country or region as a whole. The impact of the Korean unemployment problem has been especially difficult. However, with help from the World Bank, the country has made some significant steps toward improvement.
While it is true that Korean economic growth has been positive, especially in the last four decades (WBG, 2004), there can be little doubt that its relative prosperity has set a dramatic background against which present-day Korean women in specific can count their economic woes.
Although according to a study conducted by Pacific Bridge in 2002 concluded that "the unemployment rate is under 3%, the figure is thought to be the natural rate of unemployment in Korea (Gross, Tran, 2002)," and that "the low unemployment rate suggests that a high level of economic dynamism is currently occurring in the country," there remain significant challenges for unemployed women in the country.
According to a 1998 article in the Korea Herald, the main reason for this problem of growing female unemployment, as well as its official "underreporting," is "the nation's strong patriarchal tradition (Moon, 1998)." This means, according to the article, that Korean companies faced with reducing certain...
Additionally, usually this also means first cutting the lower paying, temp., part-time positions entirely, while maintaining the more "top heavy" higher level (predominantly male) positions.
The reason that this trend is interesting is it illustrates the portion of Korean society that is at most danger whenever unemployment levels within the country rise. Further, because the lower-paying jobs are eliminated, there still remains a significant worker vacuum left after the women's departure. This means an increased demand for foreign workers to take their place.
Even those women who are lucky enough to find employment, Moon's article states, are caught in a precarious position. This is because, as Lee In-sook, a spokesperson for the Women's Employment Equity Association, states, "...women who enter a company on the same level as men do not receive the chances for promotion that men receive and remain in entry level jobs (Moon)."
This is simply due to the fact that Korean society generally views men as the "bread earners" of the society. However, because the women's pay does increase with the length of their employment (although, not on par with their male counterparts), they are often the first to go when the economy takes a downturn.
A further problem with unemployment in Korea is in the very…
Trade The audience for this presentation is a group of managers from American companies. The objective is to sell more Korean televisions in the United States, because South Korea believes that it has a competitive advantage in television. The presentation will deliver some background information about South Korea and its trade with the U.S., assuming that the audience has a few functioning brain cells. Political Background The Korean peninsula was split in the
After the crisis, South Korea increased its efforts to regain their economic status and years of growth followed. The state officials have however been accused that their efforts went as far as getting them involved in illegal operations and this then led to increased levels of corruption within the state. In the last couple of years, the rate of economic growth has been at a steady 4% per annum. The
A key factor that has prompted South Korea's growth has been its strong export emphasis where growth of exports climbed 21% each year (3). The policy makers of South Korea have emphasized on skilled and high quality industries such as the motor vehicle industry and electronics manufactures. This has made South Korea currently to have the sixth largest motor vehicle industry in the world. The country is also now the
(Siminski, 2012) In the 1990s the veterans' Disability Pension scheme has had some effects. These results stated by the researcher Siminski (2012) are in disproportion to the situation in USA, of the same periods and it was thus concluded that there was employment disincentives inherent in Australia's veterans' compensation system. Though the nations are supposedly blaming the points system for their failure to accommodate ex-servicemen, the system does not show
Throughout the 1990s decade however, the South Korean labor force changed to raise new challenges, such as the aging of the population, the declining rates of the young population, and the resulting shortage of skilled labor force. In such a setting then, the vocational training system was extended to promote lifelong training for the employees, and this took the form of the Vocational Competency Development Program. Despite the advances made, much
Economic Environment The economic environment of Greece is that of a capitalist economy, but with significant public sector contribution – about 40% of total GDP is from government activity. This speaks more to the relatively small size of the Greek private sector than to excessive government ownership of industry. Tourism is one of the major drivers of the Greek economy, accounting for 18% of GDP (CIA World Factbook, 2017). Thus Greece