Abstract
The existing literature has claimed that the state-backed social enterprises in South Korea could be degenerated since the South Korean civil society is not advanced enough to safeguard them against the isomorphic pressure wielded simultaneously by the state and the market. Taking this claim seriously, this paper examines the recent development of social economy in South Korea. Based on the considerable changes in the long-standing statist model of non-profit sector since the late 1990s, the enormous impact of 2011 FAC on the civil society and social economy, and more frequent collaborative effort between the local governments and civil society organizations since 2012, this paper claims that the development of social economy in South Korea has recently shifted from dominance of state power to a mixture of top-down and bottom-up approaches.
Résumé
La documentation existante a affirmé que les entreprises sociales de Corée du Sud qui sont adossées par l’État pourraient être abâtardies, puisque la société civile coréenne n’est pas suffisamment moderne pour les protéger contre la pression isomorphe simultanément exercée par l’État et le marché. En prenant cette affirmation au sérieux, le présent article étudie l’évolution récente de l’économie sociale en Corée du Sud. En fonction des changements considérables qu’a subit le modèle de longue date statique du secteur sans but lucratif depuis la fin des années quatre-vingt-dix, l’énorme impact de la FAC 2011 sur la société civile et l’économie sociale, et les efforts de collaboration plus récents entre les gouvernements locaux et les organisations civiles depuis 2012, le présent article avance que l’évolution de l’économie sociale en Corée du Sud est récemment passée d’un pouvoir d’État dominant à un amalgame d’approches verticales.
Zusammenfassung
In der vorhandenen Literatur wird behauptet, dass die staatlich unterstützten Sozialunternehmen in Südkorea degenerieren könnten, da die südkoreanische Bürgergesellschaft nicht ausreichend entwickelt ist, um sie gegen den isomorphen Druck, der simultan vom Staat und vom Markt ausgeht, zu schützen. Der vorliegende Beitrag nimmt diese Behauptung ernst und untersucht die kürzliche Entwicklung der Sozialwirtschaft in Südkorea. Beruhend auf den beträchtlichen Änderungen im langjährigen staatszentrierten Modell des gemeinnützigen Sektors seit den späten neunziger Jahren, den enormen Auswirkungen des Genossenschaftsrahmengesetzes von 2011 (Framework Act on Cooperatives, FAC) auf die Bürgergesellschaft und Sozialwirtschaft und den seit 2012 häufigeren kollaborativen Bemühungen der Lokalregierungen und Bürgergesellschaftsorganisationen behauptet man, dass sich die Entwicklung der Sozialwirtschaft in Südkorea kürzlich von der Dominanz der Staatsmacht zu einer Mischung aus Top-down- und Bottom-up-Ansätzen hin bewegt hat.
Resumen
El material publicado existente ha sostenido que las empresas sociales respaldadas por el estado en Corea del Sur podrían degenerar dado que la sociedad civil de Corea del Sur no es lo suficientemente avanzada para salvaguardarlas frente a la presión isomórfica ejercida simultáneamente por el Estado y el mercado. Tomando esta manifestación en serio, el presente documento examina el desarrollo reciente de la economía social en Corea del Sur. Basándose en los cambios considerables en el modelo estatista de larga tradición del sector sin ánimo de lucro desde finales de los años 1990, el enorme impacto de FAC 2011 sobre la sociedad civil y la economía social, y el esfuerzo más frecuente de colaboración entre los gobiernos locales y las organizaciones de la sociedad civil desde 2012, el presente documento sostiene que el desarrollo de la economía social en Corea del Sur ha pasado recientemente de la dominación del poder estatal a una mezcla de enfoques de arriba-abajo y de abajo-arriba.
摘要
现有文献声称,韩国的国有社会企业可能存在危险,因为韩国公民社会还不足够发达,无法防止国家和市场所同时带来的同构压力。为谨慎对待这一说法,本文检查了韩国的最新社会经济发展。基于非盈利领域在二十世纪90年代起出现的极大长期统计模式变动,2011年FAC对公民社会和社会经济带来了极大的影响,以及当地政府和公民社会组织自2012年起开始的更加频繁的协作,本文认为韩国社会经济的发展最近从以国有企业主导转为自上而下和自下而上方法的组合。
ملخص
الأدب الموجود يدعي أن المؤسسات الإجتماعية المدعومة من الدولة في كوريا الجنوبية يمكن أن تدهور حيث أن المجتمع المدني الكوري الجنوبي ليس متطور بما فيه الكفاية لوقايتهم من الضغط المتماثل الذي تم ممارسته في وقت واحد عن طريق الدولة والسوق. بأخذ هذا الإدعاء بشكل جاد، يفحص هذا البحث التطورات الأخيرة في الإقتصاد الإجتماعي في كوريا الجنوبية. إستنادا” إلى تغييرات كبيرة في نموذج نظام سياسي طال أمده من القطاع الغير ربحي منذ أواخر 1990، تأثير هائل من قانون إطاري بشأن التعاونيات (FAC)2011 على المجتمع المدني والإقتصاد الإجتماعي، وجهد تعاوني أكثر تواترا” بين الحكومات المحلية ومنظمات المجتمع المدني منذ عام 2012، يزعم هذا البحث أن تطوير الإقتصاد الإجتماعي في كوريا الجنوبية قد تحول مؤخرا” من هيمنة سلطة الدولة إلى خليط من أعلى إلى أسفل ونهج من أسفل إلى أعلى.
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Notes
The concept of social economy has been developed in European countries in recent decades. It consists of economic activities of cooperatives, mutual societies, and non-profit organizations, all of which share a set of principles that sets them apart from for-profit firms (Defourny and Develtere 1999; CIRIEC 2012). See also Salamon and Sokolowski (2016) and Defourny et al. (2016) for the very recent discussion on relationship between the approaches of social economy and nonprofits to explain the third sector.
The data are not comprehensive since NPIHs do not cover all nonprofit organizations in South Korea (Park 2006). However, the trend can be identified with the data.
Park (2006) also identified higher growth rates of the nonprofit sector during the period 1997–2003, which were estimated by the method identical to the work of Johns Hopkins University' Global Civil Society Index Estimation 1995–2000.
For example, the number of members of consumer cooperatives for transacting organic food business increased from 30,000 to 700,000 during the period 1998–2012 (Jang 2014b).
Chaebol, which literally means a clan of wealth or property, is a South Korean form of business conglomerate. They typically own various international or domestic enterprises, controlled by a chairman with power over all the operations.
This is a threefold growth. On the OECD average, the social welfare expenditure' share of GDP grew 17–22% during the same period. Although the gap between South Korea and the OECD average in regard to the social welfare expenditure is still big, it has been reduced significantly since the 2000s.
However, the legal establishment and operation of associations or foundations were mostly controlled by the government with the right to give permission and require operation-related reports, while the public-interest corporations, which took various types of legal entity, including association, foundation, or special legal entity, were strictly controlled by the government on the basis of the special laws on the private school institutions, private medical institutions, etc.
The law defines nonprofit civil organization as follows: i) direct beneficiaries of its business shall be many and unspecified persons; ii) no profit shall be distributed among its members; iii) it has not been actually established or operated primarily to back or support any specific political party or candidate in election or to spread a creed of any specific religion; iv) the number of its regular members shall be at least 100; v) It has actual results from public-interest activities for the preceding one year or more; and vi) where it is not a juristic person but an organization, it shall have a representative or manager.
Later, the idea of the social innovation school (Dees and Anderson 2006) from the US was also transmitted to South Korea.
These are confirmed by the results of a population survey on the certified social enterprises conducted in 2012 (Cheon et al. 2012), which indicates that although the social enterprises have contributed to providing jobs for disadvantaged people, a non-trivial portion of them would have financial difficulties if the government subsidies do not continue. In addition, the research states that only a few social enterprises have succeeded in obtaining sufficient amount of support from the civil society and innovatively meeting the social needs.
See Jang (2013) for more details of the history of Korean cooperatives.
Seven special cooperative laws have regulated cooperatives, including agricultural cooperatives (1907, 1957), forestry cooperatives (1911), fisheries cooperatives (1911, 1961), small and medium enterprises cooperatives (1963), credit unions (1972), community credit cooperatives (1982), and consumer cooperatives (1999).
The members participated in the project had increased to 29 organizations in August 2001, including the Federations of Consumer Cooperatives, the National Association of Social Enterprises, the Federation of Alternative Enterprises, the Association of Daycare Service Cooperatives, and the National Union of Unemployed.
The enactment of the act was initiated by the Assembly members while the vast majority of legislation were initiated by the administration in South Korea.
In some special laws, a larger number of members are required. For example, 1000 members are required for an agricultural cooperative to be established on a territorial basis while 100 members are required for a credit union or community credit union to be established. The Consumer Cooperative Act stipulates that the minimum size of membership for founding a consumer cooperative is 300 (Jang 2013).
Therefore, Korea has transitioned from a country having a special law system on cooperatives, like Japan, into a country having a mixed system of general laws and special laws for cooperatives, like France.
It is equivalent to approximately 118 million dollars.
This estimation is based on information collected from the prospects made by practitioners in cooperatives and officials in local and central governments. The accumulative number of cooperatives newly established was 9642 as of the end of June 2016.
The agricultural cooperatives and two financial cooperatives employed over 100,000 workers as of the end of 2010 (Jang 2012).
For example, a number of consumer medical cooperatives have converted their legal type from the old consumer cooperatives into social cooperatives based on the FAC.
Mendell et al.(2010) pointed out that the SEPA had the lack of asset lock or constraints on profit distribution to reduce the possibility of "free riders" among private companies that can receive subsidies.
At the 2010 local elections, the number of heads of primary local governments taken by the ruling conservative Saenuri Party decreased from 155 to 82 while the number of heads taken by the oppositional Democratic Party increased from 39 to 92. At the elections for the heads of provincial governments, for the Saenuri Party the number reduced from 12 to 6 while for the Democratic Party the number grew from 3 to 7.
As one of anonymous referees thankfully pointed out, the 2010 local elections were influenced by the civic organizations' activities on welfare issues such as the Citizens' Solidarity for Eco-friendly and Free School Lunch Program, which significantly affected the change in the heads of local governments from the ruling conservative Saenuri Party to the oppositional Democratic Party in many municipalities.
Visit www.gsef-net.org for more details. Global Social Economy Forum (GSEF) has been launched in 2013 by the initiative of Seoul and Québec.
Visit http://ksenet.org for more details. KSENET is an abbreviation of Korean Social Economy Network.
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Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2013 EMES International Research Conference on Social Enterprise in University of Liege on July 2013, Ewha Womans University on November 2013, 2014 Global Social Economy Forum in Seoul on November 2014, Glasgow Caledonian University on February 2015, and Hanyang University on October 2015. I would like to thank all of the participants for their valuable comments. This work was supported by the Hanshin University Research Grant.
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The author, Jongick Jang, has received Research Grants from the Hanshin University.
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Jang, J. The Development of Social Economy in South Korea: Focusing on the Role of the State and Civil Society. Voluntas 28, 2592–2613 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-016-9820-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-016-9820-2