North Korean defectors have faced significant challenges in finding and keeping jobs in the South Korean labour market due to their many differences from South Korean workers. As the number of defectors has increased, South Korea has experienced an increased need for employment support to assist defectors in overcoming challenges in their employment and leading them to stable economic status. This study aims to develop a needs-centred educational support model for defectors' career transitions, compare the content of suggested support programmes with the content of currently provided support programmes, and suggest relevant policy implications. Based on this study's findings, the authors argue that defectors' employment needs differ from those of other groups of job seekers in Korea; thus, this population should be served differently with consistent educational support. Each stage of the developed model provides appropriate support programmes that reflect the unique employment needs of defectors.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore ways to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of national human resource development (NHRD) policies led by South Korean central government agencies, identifying what policy decisions have been made and how they were implemented.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors collected data from the 2016 NHRD policy budget plans of the ministries and used content analysis. The unit of analysis was the fourth level, a sub-task, in each ministry’s policy budget plan. All coded policy contents were analyzed in terms of the centralized NHRD model, as well as through the perspective of developmental task theory.
Findings
The study yielded the following policy and implementation problems. First, the current system of NHRD policies established and implemented by individual ministries risks hampering the validity and effectiveness of the policies. Second, the structure of NHRD policy execution may cause similarity and redundancy across policies, thereby hindering the efficiency of the policies. Third, it is problematic when NHRD policies focus on solving short-term problems to the exclusion of long-term ones.
Originality/value
This study provides public recommendations to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of NHRD policies created by South Korea’s Central Government. If such an analysis has been made internally by the government, it has not been made publicly available. It also offers practical insights that might help to improve state-led human resource development policies for other countries – especially developing countries – that are planning to introduce central government-led NHRD or to improve existing NHRD policies.
This study aims to determine how work the stress of female and male managers in Korean companies influences their capabilities and career development behavior and analyzes how it affects their turnover intention. According to the analysis results determined using the panel data from the Korean Women’s Development Institute, first, work stress experienced by managers increases their turnover intentions regardless of gender. Secondly, more work stress decreases the development behavior of male mangers but strengthens the career development behavior of female managers. Thirdly, greater work stress decreases manager capabilities but strengthens the capabilities of female managers. Fourthly, career development behavior and capabilities as a mediator variable act differently according to gender on the relationship between work stress and turnover intention. We discussed the results of this study while considering the peculiarities of Korea, which has strong male-centered corporate culture, and presented theoretical and practical implications of the results of this study.
This study aims to qualitatively explore the efforts of adult North Korean defectors to maintain their studies at atypical higher education institutions. Results showed, first, they face barriers that reflect both the characteristics of general adult learners and the characteristics of migrants at university. Second, they experience barriers similar to those of North Korean defectors who entered school age at university. Third, they perceive themselves as subjects of learning and use various strategies to resolve the barriers they experience in atypical higher education institutions on their own. Finally, although they have increased access to higher education by using the atypical higher education institution system, the transition to the world of work has not been smooth.
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