Opinions of National Human Rights Commission of Korea(hereafter'NHRCK") have been different from other governmental body in terms of policy framework. Hence NHRCK's opinions have been directly or indirectly influential on government's policies. Never...
Opinions of National Human Rights Commission of Korea(hereafter'NHRCK") have been different from other governmental body in terms of policy framework. Hence NHRCK's opinions have been directly or indirectly influential on government's policies. Nevertheless the attempt to analyse the character of Discourse of NHRCK never have been made. In this context, the purpose of this study is to analyse and explore the nature of discourse of NHRCK. The cases selected to achieve this purpose are Reform Initiative of Medical Assistance scheme and Protection Initiative for workers in special employment relations.
As an analysis framework of Discourses, who is responsible for welfare, who bears financial budget for welfare, condition for welfare entitlement, regulation for whom, and extension of social citizenship are suggested. These analytical framework are taken from the idea of social citizenship suggested by Marshall ,which is translated with special reference to the welfare-regime of Esping-Anderson, i.e, Liberalism, Conservatism and social democracy
Regarding Reform Initiative of Medical Assistance, government has undertaken to reform the medical assistance scheme because of concern for its financial soundness. Hence the reform measure is aimed at targeting those responsible for the current financial situation.
On the contrary, NHRCK claimed that cause of unreliable financial situation of medical assistance scheme arouse not from moral hazard of recipients nor from an absence of recognition of expenses on the part of it's recipients. Indeed, it stems from an increasement in the number of recipients and expansion in the duration of take-up of benefit by said recipients. Moreover it also emphasized government failure to address the blind spot of the scheme. Hence it insisted that recipients contribution to the medical care and the running of Patient-Centered Hospital Designation Program, which were introduced by the government to solve the financial insustainability of medical assistance scheme, violate the State's core obligation. Moreover, it states that recipients contribution to the medical care and the running of Patient-Centered Hospital Designation Program to regulate medical assistance recipients' behaviour including non-benefit of medicated patch and transformation of paper medical assistance card into electronic plastic card violate recipients' human rights and discriminate against those recipients.
To sum up, NHRCK's discourse on medical assistance reform initiative should be aimed at strengthening the State's role as main provider of welfare and ensuring that it take on the responsibility of the financial burden. But the State role suggested by the NHRCK is similar to Beveridge-style state model which guarantees minimum national responsibility. In this context, the ideological character of NHRCK's discourse on medical assistance reform initiative is neither typical Liberalism nor typical social democracy. On the contrary, government's discourse character shows typical Liberalism.
Regarding the protection initiative for workers in special employment, the antipodal points of both the government and the NHRCK to the status of the workers are different. Currently, the government feels that the attribute of an employee should be limited to personal subordination. In contrast, the NHRCK believes that it should be expanded to economic dependency under the post-industrial society.
The NHRCK's stance is that it should cover economic dependency because of various employment levels such as atypical work arising from post-industrial society within employees' status or attributes of employees. Therefore, the status of social citizenship should be expanded and open to various employment levels together with regular employment showing personal subordination.
So in oder for the various levels of workers under special employment regulation to be covered social protection such as social insurance and labour law, NHRCK claimed that status of employee should be constructed to include economic dependency. To this end, NHRCK insisted that state should make a strong commitment to build a social protection system for various levels of workers. But NHRCK's stance was that the financial burden of such social protection should be born mostly by the employers and employees.
NHRCK's stance is close to Social Democratic in terms of expansion of social citizenship and state's role as welfare provider. But it shows also Conservative in that the financial burden should be born by the community.
To sum up NHRCK's discourse character on protection for workers under special employment relation is neither typical Social Democracy nor typical Conservatism. The ambiguous nature of NHRCK's results from an ideal-type of welfare-regime suggested by Esping-Anderson. The advantage of such a type is that one can view the issues as a whole as opposed to it's individual pieces. However, ambiguities can arise where in trying to implement such a regime some of the before-mentioned individual pieces can be overlooked. The method to reduce such ambiguous cases is to search out a way to supplement shortages of implementing such an ideal-type.
In this context, this paper suggests the discourse character of the NHRCK as being similar to Social Liberalism. The reason is as follows;
First, NHRCK emphasized that the enjoyment of positive freedom of every citizen resulted from the state taking an active role. Such a role necessitates the state's minimum core obligation to be responsible for welfare and its financial burden and to be responsible for all new legislation in relation to welfare. Such NHRCK's stance lies with the Social Liberalism. Second, state responsibility corresponds to every citizens' rights to welfare. To violate such rights is to violate positive freedom. This is similar to Social Liberalism. Lastly, regarding regulation, NHRCK claimed that regulation is aimed at welfare service providers rather than recipients because such an aim is needed to ensure equal access to welfare services for all employees. The NHRCK's stance can be seen as being Socially Liberal in that Social Liberalism targets the welfare service provider as being responsible for regulation because such regulation is the basis of substantive equal opportunity to much better welfare service.
Finally, regarding the reform initiative of medical assistance scheme and protection initiative for workers in special employment, NHRCK's social discourse can be called Social Liberalism friendly, however, it is neither typically Social Democratic, nor typically Liberalism or typical Conservatism.