Care, Welfare State and Multidimensional Social Citizenship: The Case of South Korea from a Comparative Perspective

This study aims to investigate the peculiarities and changes of the childcare in South Korea by applying a theoretical framework of multidimensional social citizenship. To embrace the affluent theoretical arguments on gender, family and welfare states, this study suggests the concept of ‘multidimensional social citizenship’ consisting of decommodification (state intervention), defamilialization (family role), and degenderization (gender equality) in analyzing care. Using OECD data and Time-Use data, the childcare of South Korea in 2000s were analyzed according to the three-dimensional social citizenship. The main findings are as follows. First, the social citizenship has developed dramatically in the dimensions of decommodification and defamilialization, but not much in that of degenderization in childcare of South Korea. Second, in terms of outcome, the development of childcare policy has hardly contributed to improve women’s labor market participation in South Korea. Finally, the classification of childcare across the welfare states according to three dimensions suggests the existence of East Asian care regime.