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Korea’s work-family reconciliation
policy: achievements and challenges
Hong Seung-ah, Director, Family Policy Center, Korean Women’s Development Institute
E
nsuring
W
ork
-F
amily
B
alance
•Introduction of maternity leave (1953)
•Introduction of unpaid parental leave
(<1 year) (1987)
•Eligibility for men to use paternal
leave (1995)
•Paid maternity/parental leave (2001)
1953-1987
1988-2006
2007-
•Paternity leave (2007)
•1 year of parental leave to each
parent (2008)
•Parental leave (<6 years) (2008)
(<8 years) (2014)
•Flexibility in usage (2008)
•Parental leave (<3 years) (2008)
•Flat rate payment
Pro rata
pay (2010)
Development of the Korean parental leave system
Source: Hong Seung-ah
K
orean society has been going through radical changes
in many aspects. It has witnessed changes in family
structure, from large families to nuclear families.
Moreover, nuclear families are again divided into smaller
family structures. In addition to the traditional form of
nuclear family, consisting of parents and their unmarried
children, new types of nuclear families such as elderly couple
households or one-person households have emerged. Overall,
the percentage of nuclear families has decreased to 37.4 per
cent in 2010 from 52.7 per cent in 1990, while the percentage
of couples with no children rose significantly to 15.6 per cent
in 2010 from 8.4 per cent in 1990. Meanwhile, the percentage
of one-person households increased to 24.2 per cent in 2010
from 9.1 per cent in 1990.
1
Since competition in the international labour market has
become increasingly intensified, more people prefer a dual-
earner family structure in order to maintain a certain level of
income for their households. In fact, the proportion of dual-
earner families was 43.6 per cent in 2011.
2
Thus, there have
been growing demands for balancing work and family life,
because the traditional work-oriented lifestyle cannot meet
the various needs of individuals and families such as marital
commitment, childcare, leisure and family time. However,
these demands and changes have resulted in social problems
such as a low birth rate and a tendency to postpone marriage.
Hence, the work-oriented lifestyle needs to be restructured
while policy support is prepared to solve such problems.
With this background, the Korean Government has been
making active efforts to enact and implement policies on the
reconciliation of work and family life in a broad endeavour
to support women’s economic activities and strike a balance
between work and family. Those policies include measures
such as childcare services, maternity, parental and paternity
leave, and flexible working arrangements.
Policy development
Although Korea has a short history of policy enactment on the
reconciliation of work and family, its policies have improved
significantly in a short period of time. For example, in 1991 the
Korean Government explicitly enacted its first childcare policy.
That means policies on work-life balance have evolved within
a relatively short period of 20 years.
In 2001, amendments were made to the laws relating
to maternity protection, including the Labour Standards
Act, the Framework Act on Women’s Development and the
Employment Insurance Act. The amendments resulted in a new
system of maternity leave and parental leave. Later in 2007,
support for work-family reconciliation was officially legalized
with the amendment of the Act on Equal Employment and
Support for Work-Family Balance, and plans to provide policy
support were established with the enactment of the Act on the
Promotion of Creation of Family-Friendly Social Environment.
The Korean Government first enacted childcare policies with
the Childcare Act of 1991, and increased childcare service centres
in the 1990s. Since 2002, the Government has expanded the eligi-