Table of Contents

Ⅰ. Introduction

II. The Development Process of Past Economic Crises and Employment Situations  

Ⅲ. Restructuring and Labor-Management Conflicts Due to Economic Crises

Ⅳ. Efforts to Overcome Economic Crises through Grand Tripartite Agreements

Ⅴ. The Government’s Financial Support for Overcoming Employment Crisis

Ⅵ. Restructuring Principles and Management of Labor-Management Conflicts to Minimize the Impact of Economic Crisis

Summary

Recently with the wide spread of COVID-19, dark clouds of an impending economic crisis seem to be fast approaching. The Korean economy has previously suffered from two major economic crises, the 1998 Asian Financial Crisis and the 2009 Global Financial Crisis. However the government has successfully mitigated the economic crisis and created a new momentum for economic growth through active employment policies and the grand tripartite social agreements designed to share the burden of economic downturns (involving job retention in return for pay freezes) and strengthen the social safety net. Based on Korea’s experience in overcoming the past economic crisis, the key policy tasks in order to overcome the current COVID-19 economic crisis are the following: ①employment stabilization, ②reinforcement of the social security safety net and ③enhancing economic vitality.

The primary task should be to prevent the spread of the employment crisis under the current economic crisis. The government should expand employment retention subsidies, while labor and management should engage in shared efforts to carry out employment retention measures such as wage adjustment and job sharing in order to prevent fears from employment crisis. In order to overcome the current economic crisis, management needs to retain employment, the labor circle should establish principles for wage stabilization and the government should establish principles for tripartite shared efforts and cooperation methods to reinforce social safety nets. At the same time, it is necessary to establish restructuring principles that prioritize employment protection for firms facing structural crisis through fair credit assessment of major industries and conglomerates. Another important challenge would be to instigate Digital∙Biotech∙Green New Deals with the aim of enhancing economic vitality.​