hankyoreh

By Hong Seock-jae　
　
The ranks of the working poor are swelling. Members of this group, who are unable to escape from poverty no matter how hard they work, walk a tightrope getting by from day to day amid straitened circumstances, with the strong possibility of falling directly into the poverty class if they experience a sudden illness or unemployment.
Last year, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) announced that South Korea had the highest rate of low-wage employment among all its member nations, with its 25.6 percent rate putting it ahead of the United States (24.5 percent) and Japan (15.4 percent). In terms of the poverty rate among households with employed members, South Korea was far above the average for OECD member nations.
According to 2010 figures from Statistics Korea, a full 2.11 million workers in the country had earnings falling below the legal minimum wage of just 858,990 Won ($767) per month, or 4,110 Won ($3.67) per hour. Five years have passed since the 2006 creation of the Irregular Workers Protection Act, yet around 12.7 percent of workers are living below even the minimum wage.
A Korea Labor Institute report titled “Working Poverty-The Effects of Labor Market Uncertainty on Poverty” also indicated a trend of yearly increase in the poverty rate for households headed by someone of employable age (15 to 64 years), with a rise from 8.5 percent in 1997 to 10.9 percent in 2008.
Working poverty refers to a situation in which a household is classified as poor even though the head of household is at working age (18 to 65 years) and there is at least one person employed within the household. The increase has been in the percentage of families falling into this category. The leading example is the “880 thousand Won household,” earning its title because it receives the monthly pay of 880 thousand Won as calculated in 2007 by multiplying the 1.19 million Won average pay of irregular workers by 73 percent, representing the average relative pay rate for individuals in their twenties. In many cases, people are unable to escape from poverty despite engaging in high-intensity work, including small business operators, migrant workers, and artists, including film workers such as 32-year-old screenwriter/director Choe Go-eun, who died alone from poverty-related causes in a small rented room last month.
Experts said that the phenomenon could spread as even efforts to keep step with growth and distribution break down.
“Working poverty is a multidimensional and dynamic phenomena that is hard to capture through simplistic past concepts of poverty,” said KLI researcher Eun Soo-mi. “It assumes a structural form that reproduces a ‘triangular vicious cycle,’ where irregular employment leads to things like unemployment, thrusting workers into the poverty trap.”
The increase in irregular employment has also contributed to acceleration of the working poverty phenomenon, in which people have to struggle with poverty even while working. A 2009 supplementary census on economic activity showed that nearly half of irregular workers, or 41.1 percent, were struggling with low wages.
Experts said a linkage needs to be established between livelihood support for the working poor and job creation policy. They also stressed the need for a “secondary social safety net” for those without any access to social insurance and the basic livelihood security system.
　　
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