Rethinking the Welfare State: South Korea’s Demographic Shift and Nordic Lessons
South Korea’s care landscape has undergone an unprecedented structural transformation, shifting rapidly from a family-reliant system to a public welfare framework. Yet the speed of this transition has left structural gaps, compounded by an unsustainable pension scheme and a 43-year trajectory of ultra-low fertility. The 2025 National Pension reform and the 2026-2030 Basic Plan for Social Security are important steps toward fiscal solvency and broader social protection, but questions remain about how the welfare state can meet rapidly changing social needs and stay sustainable in the long term.
As the Lee Jae-myung administration works to redesign South Korea’s social systems to reflect its changing population, the Nordic countries offer a valuable comparative perspective. Their welfare systems developed over more than a century and differ in their historical and institutional foundations, but they show how comprehensive social protection can be built, financed and adapted over time. The Nordic countries also face demographic challenges similar to South Korea’s, particularly low fertility, which opens opportunities for knowledge-sharing between the two regions.
This webinar brings together Korean and Nordic perspectives to examine the evolution of South Korea’s welfare state, the policy challenges it faces and potential avenues for future reform. The discussion will explore how welfare systems can adapt to demographic change while balancing financial sustainability with adequate and accessible social protection.
Speakers:
Jae-jin Yang is a Professor of Public Policy and Management at Yonsei University. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Rutgers University in 2000. He has held several key administrative and academic leadership positions, serving as Chair of the Department of Public Policy and Management, Director of Kim Dae-jung Presidential Library and Museum, President of the Korea Social Security Association, and Editor-in-Chief of the Korean Public Administration Review. He currently serves as Vice President of the Korean Association for Public Administration. His research centers on social policy, the welfare state, and comparative government. He is the author of The Political Economy of the Small Welfare State in South Korea (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and his work appears in many leading international journals such as Comparative Politics, Governance, and Journal of European Social Policy. He was awarded the 68th National Academy of Sciences Award in 2023, along with the Injae Best Book Award (2017) and the Best Article of the Year (2013) from the Korean Political Science Association, as well as the Akira Nakamura Best Paper Award (2019) from the Asian Association for Public Administration.
Livia Sz. Oláh is Associate Professor of Demography (Ph.D. 2001, Stockholm University) at the Dept. of Sociology, Stockholm University with expertise also in law and political science, comparative welfare state research and gender studies. Her main research interests are: family demography, vulnerability and wellbeing, policy impacts on fertility and partnership dynamics, and the interplay of family patterns and societal and familial gender relations in European societies. She has been the Project coordinator of FamiliesAndSocieties, a large-scale collaborative project in the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (2013 –2017). Oláh has published in highly-ranked international journals such as Social Forces, Population and Development Review, Population Studies, Demographic Research, Journal of Gender Studies; (co)edited a volume on childbearing, women’s employment and work-life balance policies (Palgrave 2013), (co-)authored book chapters for well-known publishers (Springer, Routledge, Edward Elgar), served as a member of the editorial board for international social science journals and of reference groups on family issues internationally and in Sweden.
Moderator:
Josephine Ørgaard Rasmussen, Project Manager at the Stockholm Korea Center
The Korea Center at ISDP cordially invites you to join the discussion. The webinar is made possible by the generous sponsorship of the Korea Foundation. A recording will be available on ISDP’s YouTube channel, and a brief report on the key takeaways will be published on ISDP’s website.