Earticle

The purpose of this study can be summarized as follows. First, providing child support guideline suited in Korea’s situation. Second, promoting active use of the guideline by participation of family law professionals in this study. It is obvious that establishment of child support scheme is required to ensure welfare and development of children of divorced families in Korea. The study provides basic principles for adoption of child support scheme, dividing by two sub principles: principles for child support calculation and enforcement system. Above all, (a tentative title) “National survey on child support expenditure” might be enacted. Also, this study offers ‘Estimated Household Income’(both parents’ income plus conversion of property into income) method as a basic model for adoption of child support calculation in Korea. The core issue of child support enforcement is “How each party transfers child support to each other?” This study suggests to adopt “Pre charge-Post providing model”. This is because “Pre providing-Post charge model” might cause excessive national expenditure, a trend of irresponsible parenthood, and moral hazard. Under this model, the study proposes to adopt ‘The courts-agency separation model’ in short-term but also suggests adoption of “agency leading model” in long-term. This is because, immediate adoption of “Agency leading model” might cause excessive human and material resource costs for expansion of the agency.

With the launch of the new administration, a comprehensive review is needed for the multi-leveled Old-age income security system that includes both public and private pension plans. This overall examination of the system requires reconsideration of the current reverse mortgage system as an Old-age income security system for the elderly. Reverse mortgage system provides life-long pension and housing to its beneficiary by putting down the beneficiary’s house as a collateral. The Korea Housing Finance Corporation guarantees the payment pension plans for the reverse mortgage system and limits the liability up to the value of the housing. The reverse mortgage system offers various way to pay the pension, nonetheless, the payment must be made periodically during life, and the right of payment cannot be transferred, seized, or provided to someone else as collateral. This reverse mortgage system receives positive evaluation for a successful Old-age income security since its first implementation in 2007, yet it still needs to be continuously improved to become a more stable and effective scheme. As such, this report analyzes current law on the reverse mortgage system while focusing on its Old-age income security part, points out its present drawbacks of the system, and then proposes tasks for further improvements.

Japanese government has encouraged and expanded the private participation on providing employment services in the labor market. It could be possible by means of the deregulation of the laws that regulate the job placement, the labor procurement, the dispatch of worker and so forth. In addition, as they seek for solutions to overcome their economic crisis and to ensure their competitiveness, they have realized that they need to prioritize the flexibility and effectiveness of the labor operation. To this end, they have improved the laws with which it was possible to exploit the indirect employment in full strength. However, it has caused such a severe labor market polarization that there appears a move to restrict the laws. The thing is, the types of indirect employment, such as the labor procurement service, the dispatch of worker and the infrasubcontract worker, are too complicated to define its legal relations uniformly. Many a Japanese company which is in the pursuit of profit actively exploits such indirect employment as the dispatch of worker or the infrasubcontract because it costs less money on them. Contracts for indirect employment is of a civil contract (Japanese Civil Code Section 632, 656), whereas the disguised outsourcing is categorized into ① the dispatching relationship (the regulation target of the worker dispatch act), ② the subcontracting relationship (the regulation target of the Employment Security Law, or the worker dispatch act), ③ the labor procurement service relationship (the regulation target of the Employment Security Law) depending on the cases. The restriction and the obligation of direct employment is judged according to the respective law's purpose of pursuit and its intent overall. What is learned from the examination of Japanese law system is the fact that the deregulation of the worker dispatch act has exacerbated the problems of indirect employment, and it is a sign of introspection and regrets of Japanese government that their ensuing law revisions have indicated. In other words, it shows that expanding indirect employment can never be a solution for the labor market to reduce labor costs and improve efficiency in this fluctuating economy situation. Such a point in Japan let us know that we are bound to refer to their case, since we have the very similar labor laws and the labor market system.

Dieser Aufsatz beschäftigte sich mit den Problemen hinsichtlich der öffentlichen Interessen beim kollektiv- und individualarbeitsrecht und in Deutschland. In Deutschland dürfte die Beschränkung des Streikrechts der Arbeitnehmer von der Daseinsvorsorge für die Öffentlichkeit ausgehen. Es ist zu beachten, dass das Streikrecht nur für öffentliche Interessen nicht beschränkt werden darf. Nach der Rechtsprechung handelt es sich darum, wie der Interessenausgleich zwischen mehren Personen wie der Arbeitnehmer, Arbeitgeber, Dritte und der Öffentlichkeit angemessen eingehalten wird. Bei der Individualarbeitsverhältnissen geht es darum, dass einerseits der Schutz der öffentlichen Interessen, andererseits die Pflichten des Arbeitsvertrags eingehalten werden muss. Es gibt zwar noch kein Gesetz zum Schutz des Verpfeifens in Deutschland, werden die Rechtstheorie doch, dass die Arbeitnehmer als Whistleblower für die öffentlichen Interessen vor der Drohung der Kündigung geschutzt werden, diskutiert. Diesbezüglich können die öffentlichen Interessen und das Gemeinwohl bei Individualarbeitsverhältnissen positiv berücksichtigt werden und eine Rolle spielen.

Korea is in the rapid aging process and has increasing number of households of elderly singles and couples due to increase in number of nuclear family. Since the social environment of women has changed, economically active female population has increased, and caregiver for the elderly population has decreased. Accordingly, thoughts that protection of traditional family and the caregiver has reached its limits arose, and in July 2008, “Long Term Care Insurance for The Elderly” was enacted to emphasize social responsibility for the elderly problems as a new system. Enactment of this Act was expected to improve the quality of life of the people by stabilizing the elderly life and reducing the burden of their families. However, the current long term care insurance for the elderly has not retrieved much success, after five years of its enactment. In this paper, the following improvements were suggested. First, the limited range of subjects aged 65 or over or under 65 with elderly specific disease such as dementia or cerebrovascular disease was considered to be expanded step-by-step, and whether to concentrate on serious cases or to provide service to large number of patients with mild symptoms must be considered as well. Second, expansion of the current long-term care benefits and payments that are limited to home salary, facility reimbursement, and special cash benefits method is suggested. Instead of having set reimbursement for each grade, having set payment considering degree of disability within each grade and a method such as the preventive benefit plans Furthermore, improvements of inequity between users of long term care facilities that are regulated by the Long Term Care Hospital care fee regulations and those who do not due to problems in inequity by paying fees equally or similarly. Also, care provider in family relationships were not being treated fair financially, so the need of improvement was called. Third, the need of mitigation of validate period for the operation and the use of long term care insurance for the elderly, which is too short for those who has the care grade of 1, strengthen the authority of National Health Insurance Corporation to resolve problems caused by absence of power to designate, cancel, question, and inspect, and the need of permissions to create the long term care institutions to prevent installation of institutions that cannot guarantee the quality, which has been a problem since many facilities were built carelessly to initiate the enactment, have been suggested. Additionally, providing more specific information about long term care institution since the care receivers do not have enough information for institution selection, and securing expertise on visiting investigators from grade decision committee to ensure reliability and objectivity of them since their lack of expertise have brought their reliability into question have been pointed out. And provision which requires either one of physician or doctor to rule the grade may needs to be stricter as needed. Also, certain legal basis are needed to be set for the care service in order to improve treatment of care workers, secure expertise of care workers, and regulate the quality of service of care facilities. On the other hand, reviewing introduction of independent evaluation task force might be necessary since the evaluation of long term care facilities is exclusively entrusted on National Health Insurance Corporation, calling problems due to excessive control. Increasing quality of care workers instead of quantity should be in priority, along with strict and specific standards on their curriculum. Forth, most of elders who does not have financial support will hesitate to use the long term care insurance if the burden is high. Thus, individual deductibles. Long Term Care Insurance for the Elderly has performed its role for four years in the Republic of Korea, and might not be right time to evaluate and judge the system yet. However, continual improvement and fixation to problems occurred thus far will certainly accelerate settlement of the long term care insurance for the elderly.