Explaining Korean Welfare State Development with New Empirical Data and Methods

Abstract

Selecting Korea as one of the conceptually classified East Asian welfare states, this paper aims toempirically investigate the determinants of Korean welfare state development. Linking the researchquestion with the lively discussion on welfare state in Korea that is taking place domestically, thispaper also aims to examine whether the development of the Korean welfare state has been influencedby politics of the left or by industrialization with functionalistic perspectives. We conduct ananalysis first by regression analysis and then fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) toexamine the conditions of such development. A Korean Welfare State Dataset (KWSD) has beennewly included in the Comparative Welfare State Dataset (CWSD) and we used this new datasetfor our empirical analysis. Our empirical findings suggest that, at least up to the current point, factorsother than economic development or industrialization are not robust enough to make a claimof a take-off of the Korean welfare state from its developmental stage. However, we also notice theinfluence of the left government and suggest that it is legitimate to expect an innovative change inthe path of the Korean welfare state once the power resource theory is applicable.