No matter how far human history goes, it is deemed that the highest good in human society lies in the continuation of good morals drawn from parent-child relationship and fine custom between one’s own self and neighbors. This is the society that Yak...
No matter how far human history goes, it is deemed that the highest good in human society lies in the continuation of good morals drawn from parent-child relationship and fine custom between one’s own self and neighbors. This is the society that Yakyong-Jung's emphasized and it is not that different from the modern concept of welfare society.
Social problems in modern societies are emerging such as abuses between parents and children, the lack of communication between neighbors, isolation of the elderly, crimes, the lack of a sense of community, and the population problem. Social welfare is the mechanism to alleviate and solve them. This research views that the cause of social problems in various forms lies in the paucity of Korean ideology. Also, it is because welfare policies have not reflected the actualities of Korean welfare since the adopted policies are based on the western welfare system. Traditionally, Confucian ideology is deeply rooted in Korean people, so a sense of social order between ranks of people, familism, authoritarianism form social consciousness. If this is the case, in order to provide social welfare in Korea with the particularity, the ideology and ground of it should be drawn from our tradition. Besides, the welfare ideology must be democratic and respectful of humanity.
The ideology and policy shown in Yakyong-Jung's Mokminsimseo well serves this notion. Mokminsimseo was written with the aim to reform society amid social disorder in the late Chosun dynasty, and suggested necessary policies for the society, based on primitive Confucianism. Moreover, it contains modern values such as popular sovereignty, equality, morality and ethics centered around filial piety, brotherly/sisterly affection and benevolence that meant the obligation of social inferiors to follow their superiors, cares between peers, and the duty of social superiors to take care of their inferiors when expanded socially. This shares common grounds with the comments of Richard Titmuss, the founder of modern public administration, on altruism, morals, and ethics as the ideology of welfare state. In addition, Mokminsimseo put forward the policies for specific groups of people such as children, the elderly, the sick, the afflicted people and etc., as well as the policies for the entire nation, for example, education, tax abatement, and agricultural promotion. There is a thread of connection between these policies and Titmuss’ categorization of welfare as social welfare, fiscal welfare and occupational welfare.
Therefore this research is aimed at deducing Korean-type social welfare ideology, and valuing Mokminsimseo as policy guidance by analyzing it, which is not only based on Korea’s traditional ideology, but also modern in its features. Thus, research objectives are to figure out the similarity with Titmuss’ categorization of welfare; Mokmin ideology and the content of Mokmin policy; prioritized policies; its implications for our current society.
In order to grasp the ideology and policy of Mokmin, by analyzing Mokminsimseo, I looked at the theoretical backgrounds of Mokmin ideology, western social welfare ideology, and Titmuss, and then I made clear the difference between existing researches and this research by analyzing preceding researches.
I used content analysis as a research method, with Richard Titmuss’ classification of welfare being the frame of the analysis, which is social welfare, fiscal welfare and occupational welfare. As subcategories, there are society, family, and individual under the social welfare; tax abatement, interest reduction or exemption and other reductions and exemptions under the fiscal welfare; vocational education, improvement of work environment, progress in employment status and clothing support, under the occupational welfare. The analysis gained the credibility of 0.94 through Holsti’s formula.
As a result of the analysis, it turned out that 475 words appeared at the frequency of 4432 times, which was 69.63%; for fiscal welfare 701 times, 15.82%; for occupational welfare 645 times, 14.55%. Top six priorities identified in Mokminsimseo were prevention and management of natural disasters, respect for human right, construction and improvement of water utilities, eradication of corruption among government officials, and promotion of fine custom.
Through the analysis, I found out that the significance of Mokminsimseo, in terms of social welfare, is that Mokmin ideology was the root of today’s social welfare, which demands efforts to improve the people’s quality of life. A set of tasks to serve as stepping stones for the social welfare policies that is based on Korean social welfare ideology drawn from the content of Mokminsimseo are to secure the safety of the people in the face of natural disasters; to respect the human rights of the people; to improve water control; to check the corruption of government officials; to promote fine custom, which should be reinterpreted in modern sense and advanced as social welfare policies. Also, it is equally essential to restore virtues such as filial piety, brotherly/sisterly affection and benevolence by putting emphasis on the importance of morals, ethics and courtesy in social policy.