Table Of ContentEXPLORING THE BASIC INCOME GUARANTEE
Basic Income
in Korea and Beyond
Social, Economic, and
Theological Perspectives
Edited by
Mee-Hyun Chung
Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee
Series Editor
Karl Widerquist, Georgetown University in Qatar, Doha, Qatar
Basic income is one of the most innovative, powerful, straightforward,
and controversial proposals for addressing poverty and growing inequali-
ties. A Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) is designed to be an unconditional,
government-insured guarantee that all citizens will have enough income
to meet their basic needs. The concept of basic, or guaranteed, income
is a form of social provision and this series examines the arguments for
and against it from an interdisciplinary perspective with special focus on
the economic and social factors. By systematically connecting abstract
philosophical debates over competing principles of BIG to the empir-
ical analysis of concrete policy proposals, this series contributes to the
fields of economics, politics, social policy, and philosophy and establishes a
theoretical framework for interdisciplinary research. It will bring together
international and national scholars and activists to provide a compara-
tive look at the main efforts to date to pass unconditional BIG legislation
across regions of the globe and will identify commonalities and differences
across countries drawing lessons for advancing social policies in general
and BIG policies in particular.
Mee-Hyun Chung
Editor
Basic Income in Korea
and Beyond
Social, Economic, and Theological Perspectives
Editor
Mee-Hyun Chung
United Graduate School of Theology
Yonsei University
Seoul, Republic of Korea
ISSN 2662-3803 ISSN 2662-3811 (electronic)
Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee
ISBN 978-3-031-09201-5 ISBN 978-3-031-09202-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09202-2
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Preface1
Technological advances followed by the Fourth Industrial Revolution in
the twenty-first century and various types of economic downturns that
persist all around the world are mass-producing numerous people who
are willing to work but cannot. And, in addition to the predicted crisis,
the pandemic situation makes us contemplate more thoroughly about
what alternative ways of life and labor are in this era of “Anthropocene.”
Through this book, we would like to share the issue of economic restruc-
turing, which is one of the pillars of the contemplation, and among them
specifically, the issue of basic income that theologians and social scientists
have wrestled with over the past year. For your information, this book
was funded by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and
the National Research Foundation of Korea.
In his book “Alienation and Acceleration,” which criticizes post-
modern temporality, German sociologist Hartmut Rosa points out that
today’s academic world has no true dialogue nor joint deliberation
between humanities and social sciences, and that there is only an
uncontrollable frenzy for more publication, academic achievements, and
research projects. I would like to clarify that this book is not least a
product of a mad race to visualize research results. The research team
bears in mind that the subject term “basic income” should not be misused
1 This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea
and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2020S1A5A2A03041788).
v
vi PREFACE
in Korean society for political populism or simply for the 2022 presidential
election campaign nor should it be considered as an ideological product
of the religious or theological realm. More importantly, this publication
is a result of scholarly enthusiastic and fervent discussions and interac-
tions by scholars who gathered to seriously think about the meaning and
implications of basic income in terms of theology.
Basic income is not simply a call for the distribution of goods, but
a challenge cast to modern people, living on a wheel in the process of
constant production and consumption, to reflect personally and socially
on our lives and everything we do daily. It indeed may seem somewhat
absurd to introduce alternative economic methods and change the direc-
tion of life to us who are familiar with the monetary economy. However,
the COVID-19 situation brought us a sense of urgency that makes it
imperative for us to face more fundamental questions. The sense of crisis
that if the way of life continues as it has been, mankind will inevitably
annihilate demanded penance for our past lives and urges us to live in the
present but prepare for the future. The basic income plan is not some-
thing that can be realized today or tomorrow, but it is a big picture to
think about the lives of descendants in the distant future of this land with
specific plans.
Basic income is also a challenge that prompts us to have fundamental
and multifaceted reflection on humans, labor, and technology, and can
also be considered as a means that demands reorganizing of human life by
introducing technology. Artificial intelligence technology that has already
been introduced is not a threat to humans but can lead to a collabo-
rative relationship between the two, thereby enriching human life. The
discourse on basic income also provides an opportunity to seriously reflect
on capitalism today as we witness the multifaceted problem of capitalism,
whose complete victory over socialism seems not to be accomplished
despite the latter’s seeming collapse in Eastern Europe in the 1990s.
Discussions on basic income have progressed in various forms especially
as the ideologically competitive camps between the progressive (left) and
the conservative (right). Even if they agree with the idea of basic income
itself, their expectations of the specific ideas about it greatly diverge as
to whether it should be a supplement to the social welfare system, an
alternative, a simplification, a universal welfare, or a selective welfare.
This book does not look at the discussion of basic income in an ideo-
logical confrontation in a situation of ideoscape where ideological words
PREFACE vii
wander randomly, but rather it aims to help to reflect on and find real-
istic alternatives from the perspective of the Bible and Christian traditions.
In addition, it is our desperate hope that the contents of this book will
shed a light on re-recognition, reorganization, relocation, and re-valuing
of numerous care work that in fact sustains the overall society.
Article 32 of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea states that, “All
citizens shall have the duty to work. The State shall prescribe by Act the
extent and conditions of the duty to work in conformity with democratic
principles.”
This constitutional provision declares that the state can impose a duty
of work on the people based on laws and regulations at its necessity. The
creation of this legal provision had its own background in the tough
modern history of Korea. However, this kind of written law makes it
possible to legalize accusations against those who do not work in terms of
ethical obligations. Under such written law, securing food for those who
do not labor may seem absurd and unfair even if they are not able to earn
a living despite hard labor. Due to the cultural and doctrinal learnings that
have long existed in the Korean society so far, most people, especially the
Christians, would not easily sympathize with such favorable treatment.
The Christian teachings in support of the discourse on basic income
that we introduce through this book urge us to have different views
on labor, rest, work, and its rewards. What Christians ultimately await
is achievement of reign of God on earth as it is in heaven and becomes a
part of it. As we macroscopically wait for the reign of God, we desperately
hope that the society will be reorganized in the manner of choosing life
from economic activities in terms of theology, economics, and sociology.
With the recognition on the risks of capitalism and ecologically destruc-
tive phenomena following the modern industrial revolution, we hope that
the biblical words will be newly recognized and reflected in various ways,
and that this discourse on basic income will be more actively discussed
and gradually realized in our society.
First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Yong-Han
Chung, Dr. Jun Kang-Soo, Dr. Won-Don Kang, Dr. You-Joon Kim,
Dr. Ho-Chul Kwak, and the late Dr. Lee Young-Jae. They have joined
this study out of the desire to be in pursuit of “fairness” and “justice”
beyond paternalism and mercy. Also, many thanks to Dr. Hae-Kwon Kim
for successfully filling a vacuum following the decease of Lee Young-Jae
at the last moment. Lastly, special thanks to Dr. Yannick Vanderborght
for joining this research and helping this study go beyond the domestic
viii PREFACE
academic horizon, and more importantly connect with theoretical and
practical examples of Europe. Last but not least, I appreciate the students
of Yonsei University, Jeong Jin-Lee and Hwang Hye-Jin who have worked
on the translation of some chapters. Additionally, I am very thankful to
Catherine Christie and Rosemary Chalouache for their proofreading.
This book was basically written based on Christian theology and on the
Republic of Korea backdrop. The two topics are not divided but intercon-
nected. Because the majority of the writers are Korean scholars working
in Korea, they worked on this joint research with Korea’s social culture
as their backgrounds. Still, the academic horizon of this research is rather
universal in that theological, social, and economic ideas are not confined
to one region nowadays.
According to a survey conducted by Gallup Korea on the religious
ratio of Koreans in 2021, the religious population was 50% in 2014, but
decreased by 10 to 40% in 2021. The primary reasons are religious disaffil-
iation of people in their 20s and 30s, the aging of the religious population,
and the decline in overall population. The current distribution of religious
population in Korea is 17% Protestant, 16% Buddhist, and 6% Catholic,
and the population of Korean Christians accounts for about 23% of the
total population (the Greek Orthodox church is thinly populated).2 All
the authors in charge of the theology section of this book are Protestant
theologians. Therefore, the academic terms and concepts in this book
are based on Protestantism. Our research team has led the discussion
of the theology field on basic income discourse in Korean society. This
means that this discussion has not yet spread among Korean Catholic
theologians. Thus, the situation in Korean Catholicism is not mentioned
separately, and the Catholic theological approach is also beyond the
coverage of this book. However, the survey reveals that respondents
were randomly extracted beyond denomination, and the results, including
Catholics, were reflected in the survey commentary.
In terms of Korean names, we ordered it according to Korean custom,
namely family name and given name with hyphen.
Special thanks to publisher Palgrave Macmillan and their editor Meera
Seth, and Dr. Karl Widerquist who is the co-founder of the U.S. Basic
Income Guarantee (USBIG) and gave a lot of advice for publication in
2 Gallup Korea, Religion of Korean: Current state of Religion in Korea, Gallup Korea,
April 7th 2021, https://www.gallup.co.kr/gallupdb/reportContent.asp?seqNo=1208.
PREFACE ix
English. Thanks to their help which enabled academic communication at
an international level, this book could be published in English, albeit with
non-English speaking authors. I hope this book will be widely used as a
valuable material that provokes thought in many readers and resonates
with English-speaking readers. I also sincerely hope that it will contribute
to strengthening international solidarity in practicing the basic income
movement.
Seoul, Republic of Korea Mee-Hyun Chung
November 2021 Professor of Systematic Theology
United Graduate School of
Theology at Yonsei University
Chief of Joint Research
