The Role of National Research Institutes in the Development of Health and Social Policies in Korea: Focused on the Case of the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs

Abstract

Korean social welfare services have followed a different path from the general development of social welfare services in Western welfare states. The most striking feature in Korea is that social welfare services were provided voluntarily at the private level long before various social policies that could provide social welfare services were developed in earnest. This study tried to examine how the role-sharing relationship between the state and the private sector has changed in Korea’s representative social welfare service areas, such as child welfare and community welfare, over the past century, focusing on representative cases. After the Korean War, social welfare services in Korea, which had been expanded centered on children’s residential facilities, began to shift from the 1970s onward to focus on community welfare in response to changes in demand for child welfare such as a decrease in war orphans. Social pressure sometimes brought functional changes to traditional residential facilities, and at other times led to an expansion of the breadth of their services. An example this study takes as a case in point is Jinwoonwon, which had attempted to double as a social welfare center as far back as in the 1970s. With its such attempt not having gone through, Jinwoonwon tried to expand its functions by realizing the construction of a comprehensive children's welfare center. In the end, however, it was not evaluated as being successful for both the juridical person and the local community. Since the mid-1980s, facilities such as community centers, welfare centers for the disabled, senior welfare centers, youth counseling centers, and domiciliary care centers have been expanded. In the era of service consumption, the pressure for deinstitutionalization has increased. Nevertheless, child welfare facilities are still needed, and changes must be made to services that are provided to respond to new child issues, such as child abuse, which have recently attracted social attention. What is confirmed in the several examined cases is that since the 1980s, as the roles of the two actors, the private sector and the state, have strengthened, a dangerous period in which the conflict between the state and the private sector can be internalized continues. When looking at the institutions analyzed in this study, the fact that the absolute amount of national subsidies in the composition of financial resources can undermine the independence of the private sector. After all, now is the time when the state and the private sector need close cooperation with each other. Close cooperation should be achieved at a level that secures individuality while maintaining an appropriate distance, not too close and not too far. Welfare society is not achieved solely by the power of the government, but mutual aid activities and volunteer activities must be activated so that the power of the private sector must be combined. It is necessary to ensure that a welfare community is built on the basis of “family and neighborhood, and region and country” and that the vulnerable and the poor, such as children, the elderly, and the disabled, are protected, and active support from the public sector is required. It is necessary to promote private donations and volunteer work, induce voluntary participation of religious and non-profit organizations, strengthen the organic cooperation system with the private sector, and achieve more effective welfare effects.