Paid Sick Leave, Its Absence in Korea, and What to Do to Implement It

Abstract

As covid-19 spreads across the globe, governments the world over, facing devastating socioeconomic crises, have unveiled various policy packages. In the US alone as of May, an estimated 19.6 million jobs were reported to have been vanished since the covid-19 pandemic broke out in February. The unemployment rate was 13.3 percent. It’s quite a different picture in Europe. Some European welfare states have rolled out policies to keep mass unemployment at bay. Germany, for example, induced reduced work hours and compensated, through a state salary scheme, cuts in working hours, thereby keeping the unemployment rates low at under 5 percent.