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LEE Seungyoon

Professor, Department of Social Welfare, Chung-Ang University

LEE Seungyoon
Title The Global Transformation: Common Justice and Basic Security
Times of the Remarks 2023. 11. 02. 13:10-14:00

LEE Seungyoon (Sophia) received her PhD in social policy at the University of Oxford, where her research focused on Northeast Asian welfare states and non-standard employment. Her main areas of research include the welfare state and labor markets, precarious work, and income security policies, on which she has published over 60 papers and books. Major publications include Precarious Workers in South Korea (written in Korean), The Coming of Basic Income (written in Korean), Introduction to Fuzzy-set QCA (written in Korean), Teacher, How Can I Make My Work Enjoyable? (translated title, written in Korean), and Varieties of Precarity: Melting Labour and the Failure to Protect Workers in the Korean Welfare State. She was awarded the Commendation of the Minister of Education for Excellence in Research in 2014 and 2018, and has sought to make active contributions to society through such roles as citizen editor for The Hankyoreh, an advisor to the youth committee of the Economic, Social & Labor Council, and vice chair of the Office for Government Policy Coordination’s Youth Policy Coordination Committee. She is currently a professor in the Department of Social Welfare, College of Social Sciences at Chung-Ang University, where she runs the “Precarious Work and Social Policy” Lab with her students.


[Session Title and Description]

Melting Labor and Korea’s Precariat in the Age of Digital Transformation

Contrary to what South Korea’s accelerated economic growth story and advanced welfare system might suggest, precarity pervades the life of the country’s workers. This session explains the changes being witnessed in the traditional views towards work and companies, the workplace, and even what work likes using the concept of “melting labor” and explores how the boundaries that surround the workplace and labor are becoming increasingly ambiguous. It also looks at why the South Korean welfare state and legal system is failing to provide the institutional protections that workers need amid the remaking of the idea of work. Specifically, it examines the various uncertainties experienced by outsourced workers, irregular employment, freelancers, and platform workers in the country. Different archetypes of the precarious worker in the age of digital transformation are considered through the framework of melting labor, and the tasks facing our systems and our society as a whole are addressed.