Labor-Management-Government Relationships in South Korea: The Issue of “Social Concertation”

Jung-Wook Seo, Yu-ki Min and Seon-Hee Hwang
Yonsei University, Korea

Existing studies have argued that the Korean economic crisis was a core factor for explaining the emergence and evolution of the social concertation system when the Korea Tripartite Commission was established in 1998. The Korean economic crisis partially contributes to the advent of social concertation; however, it is inappropriate for explaining the evolution of social concertation in Korea. This study suggests that international organizations, including the ILO and the OECD, have played an important role in evolving Korean social concertation. Furthermore, we propose that the Korean government positively accept universal norms about relationships among labor, management, and government by international organizations for another leap in a stagnant Korean social concertation system.