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This paper examines the development of publicly-funded social care programs in Japan and Korea, known as the "familistic'' welfare state, over the past two decades. Despite the rapid expansion of social care programs funded by taxes and social insurance premiums, the delivery of social care services in the two countries has been mostly delegated to the private sector (including both non-profit and forprofit organizations), as opposed to the public sector. This paper argues that Japan and Korea have utilized the mixture of publiclyfunded social care and privately-dominated care service delivery as a social investment strategy in order to alleviate the burden of care responsibilities on female family members and create more employment opportunities in the care service sector. By making the policy linkage between social care programs and labor market policies, the two countries have attempted to solve multiple policy problems, while facing the pressure of socio-demographic challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has three objectives: i) to empirically examine labor market transitions in deindustrializing Asian economies; ii) to study the character of labor market risks and how these risks are shifting by gender, by education level, and by age in the transitional period; and iii) to rethink the commonly accepted assumptions that deindustrialization and globalization are the main causes of new labor market risks and, thus propose the possibility of institutional legacy as an important factor for such risk shifts. This study focuses on the labor market risks in the Republic of Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Three steps are taken in this inquiry. First, this study commences by empirically examining the three labor market changes mentioned above. Second, it challenges the idea of the emergence of 'new risks,' arguing instead for the concept of 'risk shift': the feature of risk shifting to different demographic groups. Lastly, with the empirical evidence already used, this paper discusses whether deindustrialization or globalization is a sufficient cause for risk shifts in deindustrializing Asian economies, proposing that institutional legacy may be an important factor in risk shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé. Dès la fin des années 1990, le Japon et la Corée ont entrepris des réformes du marché du travail souvent présentées comme un simple processus d'assouplissement. Partant, toutefois, de la perspective du «double mouvement» de Polanyi, l'auteur étudie la façon dont ces pays ont intensifié leur recours au marché tout en recherchant la stabilité sociale. Passant en revue les mesures législatives liées à la libéralisation de l'emploi et à la garantie de revenus, il analyse les différentes méthodes adoptées par ces deux pays pour réformer leur marché du travail. En conclusion, il avance que leurs voies de réformes divergentes tiennent à la spécificité des mécanismes utilisés pour élaborer leurs politiques ainsi qu'au contexte propre à chacun d'entre eux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing labor market inequality in Korea and Japan is often blamed on increased trade competition with China, the information technology revolution, and aging populations. This study shows that labor market inequality is not simply driven by such structural changes but by the nature of the ways in which new labor market regulations were created and the resulting regulatory contradictions. Although its state-centric strategies designed new labor market regulation favoring marginal workers, the Korean government failed to resolve labor market inequality. This is because the government's new regulatory goal was not backed by sufficient policy resources or adequately coordinated with other policy areas. Conversely, Japanese authorities prioritized the employment stability of regular workers on the basis of consensus among labor and business groups and the government. However, this narrow goal continues to inhibit progress in closing the gap of labor market inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]