CWMOs

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East Asian Social Policy 1st Workshop 13th 15th
January, 2005
Civil society and local-level welfare movement in
Korea some preliminary observations
Young A Lee School for Policy Studies University
of Bristol ya.lee_at_bristol.ac.uk
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Background of debate
Methodolgy
An overview of the CWMOs interviewed
Their understanding of identity
Their understanding of the energy
Their understanding of the CWMOs function
Implication
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Background of debate
Democratic movements against military regime
1960s mid-1980s - The regime based on military
dictatorship subdued social movements - Social
movement focused on the over-throwing regime
rather than the development of social policy.
The growth of civil society mid-1980s early
1990s - Democratic struggle in 1987 - Civil
movement organisations start to consider social
issues.
The growth of local movement since the mid-1990s
- Enforcing local autonomy since 1995 -
Local-level action dealing with specific local
issues has been in the limelight.
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Background of debate
Community welfare is a series of actions
performed by relation or organisations based
on trust, solidarity or morality, in order to
improve the overall welfare environment at the
local level.
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Methodology
The number of the CWMOs - 167 in local autonomy
and urban poverty and 148 in general welfare part
by Statistical Yearbook of Civil Society
Organisations (2003) - 18 CWMOs by Y.H. Lee
(2004)
Research Method - Semi-structured interviews
with people involved in CWMOs. - This study
selected the first two established CWMOs from
Lees research. Staff in the two chosen CWMOs
suggested additional respondents whose
organisations were similar to theirs. - 33
respondents (12 staff, 15 members (residents), 6
board members) in 8 organisations were chosen.
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An overview of the CWMOs interviewed
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Their understanding of identity
The identity as civil society - They stress
their activity as community welfare movement or
life movement. - They distinguish themselves
from community centres partly supported by
government. - They expect welfare services by
the CWMOs can be methods to create collective
action. - Their ideas are influenced by S.
Alensky (1966) and S. Kahn (1990).
The relationship with local government - They
preferred independence from government than
partnership. - Even though they have carried out
projects funded by government, they try to
keep their independence. - Independence is
important to monitor local welfare policy and do
campaigning (issue-fighting).
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Their understanding of identity
The relation with an overall welfare policy -
They do not connect their action directly with
the change of national welfare policy. - Some
of them have experience of networking with other
organisations in order to suggest
national-level welfare policies, but they think
that national- level issues could prevent
CWMOs from settling down in local area. - They
emphasised that only local-level civil society
organisations can deal with specific everyday
life issues, which is more important than broad
welfare policy for them.
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Their understanding of the energy What kind of
people do they consider the energy of their work?
General population - They try to make general
residents changed into active citizens in a
community. - As a strategy, they organise
voluntary groups and hobby clubs, training
programme for volunteering and empowering.
Underclass in social housing - They perform
community welfare movement as a part of urban
poverty movement and work with residents who
had experience in the resistance.
Interest groups related to community welfare -
service user groups - professionals (social
workers, academics and students) on welfare

• Most of them try to engage the general
  population in their work
• but they tend to choose efficient and
  short-term strategies organising
• familiar group that have experiences of working
  together.

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Their understanding of the energy What kind of
organisations do they try and network with?
Type of Network or Solidarity 1. Extensive and
flexible network (e.g. community centres and
churches) in order to perform their work.
2. Network with voluntary resources (e.g. health
services) in order to help the needy
3. Network with other CWMOs in case they need to
participate in policy process and information
exchange 4. Solidarity with existing movement
organisations within the community
The direction of their energy can be divided
into - extrovert direction embracing a
variety of organisations as social resources -
introvert direction empowering related people
who have potential to lead groups
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Their understanding of the function of CWMOs
How do they think about the role of service
provision?
Their understanding of service provision by civil
society - All of them have been working to
provide community welfare services. - They think
that service provision cannot be the central role
of civil society. - Although social services
should be provided by government in principle,
they think they should help deprived people to
get services or information.
The reason why they provide community welfare
services - To organise target groups and
voluntary groups and to develop civil society,
which makes a great difference between the
CWMOs and other organisations providing
services - The existence of deprived people who
do not benefit from welfare policy officially
because of gaps in the social security net.
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Their understanding of the function of CWMOs
What are their fundamental aims?
Developing leadership - The aim of the CWMOs
work is to develop the leadership of residents,
called empowerment. Empowerment means that
the CWMOs can make deprived people have
greater control over their own lives. - They are
convinced that the process of such empowerment in
itself is the way civil society can be matured.
Participating in local politics - In practice,
many of them participate in local politics as
their main role with some projects, such as
monitoring welfare budgets of local government.
- They often emphasise direct participation in
local politics, though local elections.
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Characteristics of the CWMOs
Group A -Citizens including middle class -They develop a variety of programmes and training courses for improving general citizens awareness and developing leadership
Group B -Residents in social housing -They emphasise the empowerment of residents, but realise it is too far and difficult to achieve.
Group C -Citizens including middle class -In this case, they focus on the advance of local council and even a governor as local politics in terms of support of general citizens consenting to their aims.
Group D -Social workers and professionals -They mainly focus on monitoring and campaigning welfare policy on local level, especially welfare budget and sometimes irrationality of government and community centres supported by government.
Extrovert
KW
C
KJ
KU
Group A
Group C
Local politics
leadership
Group D
Group B
N
K
S
D
Introvert
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Implication
What should civil society do for the shifting
welfare paradigms in Korea?

• Civil society has to resist the colonisation in
  the everyday life by the systems.

through an effort so that the systems pursue
the value of civil society defined as a
sphere keeping trust, ethics and morality.

• Fundamentally, the norm or value of civil
  society has to sink into welfare policy as a part
  of the institutionalised systems. Regarding this
  respect, the CWMOs need to spread awareness of
  the value of civil society in order to change the
  direction of the systems.

• To pursue the extrovert value to genearal
  population should be emphasised.