Japans Official Development Assistance in Southeast and South Asia: Strategy for Economic Revitalization and Regional Security Cooperation

This paper examines Japans development cooperation policy, with a regional focus on Southeast and South Asia. In the 1990s, Japan embraced global norms and values in implementing development cooperation through the adoption of the Official Development Assistance Charter in 1992, in response to the criticisms of the international community against its economic interests-centered approaches. However, under the pressures of Japans protracted recession and the rise of China, Japan has reformulated its development cooperation policy so as to serve the countrys strategic interests, especially in the regions of Southeast and South Asia, since the early 2000s. This paper argues that Japan has endeavored to utilize its development cooperation as a policy tool to bring forth the countrys economic revitalization and build the regional security cooperation mechanism

The Youth Struggle for Jobs in South Korea: Dualism, Inequality, and Youth Labor Market

This article examines the political economy of South Koreas youth labor market over the past two decades. It argues that the institutional characteristics of the dualistic labor market along the lines of firm size and employment status have exacerbated youth labor market problems in South Korea. The segmentation of the labor market has incentivized the young people to desperately look for good first jobs because of the difficulty in making a transition from the external labor market to the internal labor market at the later stage of employment. It claims that not only the number of jobs, but also the quality of jobs matters to South Koreas youth labor market problem

Economic Empowerment of Women as the Third Arrow of Abenomics

With the strong policy goal of resuscitating Japans sluggish economy, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has advocated an increase in female employment as a core part of his ambitious economic revitalization strategy, a plan called Abenomics. This paper examines a series of Abe governments policy initiatives for increasing female employment, ranging from the work and life balance programs and the government policy recommendations to the public and private sectors to the regulatory measures on diversity in the workplace. By doing so, it aims to analyze the ways in which the Abe government has endeavored to achieve the economic empowerment of women in Japan and the business community has responded to the pressure of the government policy initiative for female employment over the past few years

Inequality in the Workplace : Labor Market Reform in Japan and Korea /

The past several decades have seen widespread reform of labor markets across advanced industrial countries, but most of the existing research on job security, wage bargaining, and social protection is based on the experience of the United States and Western Europe. In Inequality in the Workplace, Jiyeoun Song focuses on South Korea and Japan, which have advanced labor market reform and confronted the rapid rise of a split in labor markets between protected regular workers and underprotected and underpaid nonregular workers. The two countries have implemented very different strategies in response to the pressure to increase labor market flexibility during economic downturns. Japanese policy makers, Song finds, have relaxed the rules and regulations governing employment and working conditions for part-time, temporary, and fixed-term contract employees while retaining extensive protections for full-time permanent workers. In Korea, by contrast, politicians have weakened employment protections for all categories of workers.In her comprehensive survey of the politics of labor market reform in East Asia, Song argues that institutional features of the labor market shape the national trajectory of reform. More specifically, she shows how the institutional characteristics of the employment protection system and industrial relations, including the size and strength of labor unions, determine the choice between liberalization for the nonregular workforce and liberalization for all as well as the degree of labor market inequality in the process of reform.The past several decades have seen widespread reform of labor markets across advanced industrial countries, but most of the existing research on job security, wage bargaining, and social protection is based on the experience of the United States and Western Europe. In Inequality in the Workplace, Jiyeoun Song focuses on South Korea and Japan, which have advanced labor market reform and confronted the rapid rise of a split in labor markets between protected regular workers and underprotected and underpaid nonregular workers. The two countries have implemented very different strategies in response to the pressure to increase labor market flexibility during economic downturns. Japanese policy makers, Song finds, have relaxed the rules and regulations governing employment and working conditions for part-time, temporary, and fixed-term contract employees while retaining extensive protections for full-time permanent workers. In Korea, by contrast, politicians have weakened employment protections for all categories of workers.In her comprehensive survey of the politics of labor market reform in East Asia, Song argues that institutional features of the labor market shape the national trajectory of reform. More specifically, she shows how the institutional characteristics of the employment protection system and industrial relations, including the size and strength of labor unions, determine the choice between liberalization for the nonregular workforce and liberalization for all as well as the degree of labor market inequality in the process of reform.Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed Feb. 24, 2017