Public Work Program and Self-sufficiency Work Program

Immediately after the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, which has been called the worst

national ordeal since the Korean War (1950 – 1953), serial bankruptcies of companies generated

22 _{According to the Ministry of Employment and Labor (2012c), the past organizational forms of the present social}

enterprises in 2012 are as follows: 36.3 percent as NGO, 17.9 percent as the participant organizations in Social Employment Program, 16.1 percent as self-sufficiency communities, 15.1 percent as commercial enterprises, and 10.7 percent as rehabilitation facilities and other forms of organizations (16). As the research shows, the majority of the social enterprises in South Korea were started from civic organizations, participant organizations in Social Employment Programs, and self-sufficient communities. Of course, all these organizations are not progressive ones. Considering the condition in which the development of the South Korean civil society has been led by progressive forces, the research results imply that the progressive civil movement forces play a leading role in the production of social enterprises. Yang (2012) also points out that social enterprises have been led by the

relatively progressive civic organizations in general, while the Village Corporations have been led by the relatively conservative vocational organizations (226-227).

23 _{The report searches for the main reason why the social economy is relatively vitalized in certain places in}

Gangwon-do Province in the historic backgrounds of the places where various social movements and the democratization movements took place.

a large-scale unemployment; the bold restructuring of the labor market also caused a massive increase in temporary workers and seriously undermined the stability of employment. The

average rate of public welfare expenditure for GDP of OECD countries was 19.2 percent in 1997, whereas that of South Korea was only 3.7 percent (OECD National Accounts Statistics

Database). As it suggests, the sudden serious financial crisis took place under circumstances where the welfare system was not prepared enough due to the long-term stance of growth-first policy in South Korea. Therefore, thousands of unemployed and disadvantaged people were forced to be in danger of social exclusion. As an emergency action, the South Korean

government urgently implemented Public Works Programs in order to compensate them for their loss of income by creating short-term jobs in the public sector. Aside from governmental action, civil movement organizations and faith communities also engaged in practices oriented around addressing the suddenly occurring massive unemployment and poverty immediately after the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis; many different forms of unemployment-related civic organizations were established in this process. These two dynamics—the state’s policies and civil society sectors’ practices—were embodied in the National Movement Committee for Overcoming Unemployment, the organization for a pan-national unemployment movement, in a partnership between the government and the civil society. The South Korean government particularly employed civil movement organizations as agents of the Public Work Program. However, this Public Work Program did not have a vision of stable job creation because, as a provisional emergency policy, it concentrated on the creation of temporary jobs. For that reason, this Public Work Program could not be a fundamental and sustainable measure for solving the problem of unemployment.

Thus, a series of efforts to create more stable jobs by systematically associating welfare with work were made. This was called “productive welfare” in South Korea. These workfare programs were actively invented and implemented after the enforcement of National Basic Living Security Act in 2000. The National Basic Living Security Act aims to financially support low-income families on the condition that they work in order to support themselves. On the basis of this Act, the South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare has implemented Self-sufficiency Works Programs since 2000. The Self-sufficiency Work Program aimed at facilitating the

disadvantaged people’s participation in the labor force and providing them with opportunities for job training and self-sufficiency, by creating jobs in five business areas for the disadvantaged people: cleaning, patients care, recycling of food waste, recycling of resources, and repair of houses. These programs also helped to support the disadvantaged to run businesses for

themselves in the forms of self-sufficient communities. The self-sufficiency communities that were promoted by the Self-sufficiency Work Program can be understood as an early form of social enterprises in that they combined the social mission of the provision of employments for the disadvantaged with the application of business strategies (Kim, Seong-Ki 2011: 37). The focus was put on encouraging welfare recipients to work rather than the creation of stable jobs. Thus, the Self-sufficiency Work Program has a limitation as a measure for the creation of stable jobs. Furthermore, it had no incentive for the disadvantaged to work. In a substantive sense, it was difficult for the low-skilled and low-educated disadvantaged people to establish self- sufficient business communities on the basis of their own efforts, and to support themselves. Additionally, the Self-sufficiency Work Program came under criticism for introducing excessive competition in low-profit business areas such as patients care and the recycling of food waste,

where poor small self-employed stores were competing against each other for small profits (Uhm 2008: 231).