To relieve the struggles of the middle class, workers, who make up the majority of the middle class, need to be treated better. Currently, “South Koreans work the second-longest hours among OECD countries” (The Korea Herald, “Koreans’ average work hours still second-longest in OECD”). In fact, according to a survey, “43.65 percent of employees in Korea worked overtime each day for at least one hour…25.8 percent of the respondents said that they worked overtime because it was considered natural…approximately 30 percent of the employees failed to use half of their leave…about 70 percent of the workers experienced burn-out” (Business Korea, “Korean Workers Show Lowest Productivity in OECD, despite Long Overtime”). In response to this problem, the Korean government has implemented laws to limit working hours, but it appears to have had little effect. Creating a law is one thing, effectively enforcing it is another matter altogether. Therefore, the government should monitor workplaces and support labor unions; essentially, it should favor workers more than businesses. What is needed in contemporary Korean society today is a Korean version of Theodore Roosevelt’s Square Deal.

 

          A 2014 survey from Statistics Korea, a Korean government agency in charge of the country’s statistical reports, showed the tax burden on the middle class increased by 18.8 percent, while the tax burden on the upper class increased by only three percent during the same time frame. (Korea Times, “Middle class tax load gets bigger”). What the government needs to do is simply collect more tax from the rich. After all, the richest one percent of the Korean population earns 12.9 percent of the nation’s total income, but their income tax accounts for only 6.7 percent of the government’s total tax income (KBS, “한국부자는정말세금을많이낼까?”). To put this into perspective, the richest one percent in the U.S. pays 45.7 percent of the nation’s total federal income taxes (CNBC, “Top 1% pay nearly half of federal income taxes”). In carrying out such a plan, the Korean government should significantly increase the property tax on those who possess multiple homes. That way, not only would the government collect more revenue, but the rich would have less of an incentive to own several homes and sell or rent them at staggering prices to the middle class. Therefore, this would solve the problem of the skyrocketing house prices and jeonse prices discussed in Part 2.

 

           Ideally, it would be great if South Korea could adopt, or at least study, the policies of countries such as Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland,which have achieved remarkable economic growth and social equality simultaneously. A key factor of this success is that “they're [Scandinavian countries] much smaller...more racially homogenous. Those facts are crucial in public policy – a cozy, tight-knit community” (Policy.Mic, “Bernie Sanders Says the U.S. Could Learn a Lot From Scandinavia. Here’s Why He’s Right”). And South Korea has plenty of potential to form a so-called “cozy, tight-knit community.” First of all, South Korea is a small, homogenous country with citizens who, if freed from the intense competition in society today, could build a “tight-knit community” based on their strong sense of understanding each other and togetherness as people (jeong, 정). Also, Korean proved their capacity to cooperate during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, when citizens donated their gold to help pay down the nation’s IMF debt. The government should kick-start some of the social and economic changes I have mentioned here, and then the citizens will surely follow suit, creating an even better Korea.
 

Byoung Joon Bae
Rising Grade 12
Asia Pacific International School