Collective bargaining institutions and practices in the
Republic of Korea have been neglected subjects in its annals of
academic research. This neglect can be traced to several factors
but only two of the factors warrant mention. First, for the past
twenty years, Korea's extraordinary march from economic
undevelopment to economic development has been led by
ambitious programs of industrialization and export expansion. To
a great extent, these programs have relied heavily on the
intensive use of the labor factor and on social stability for their
success. Because of the importance of these two aspects of
Korea's development plans, researchers and research institutions
have shied away from the study of collective bargaining
problems because of the fear that to do so inadvertently might
trigger adverse political and social reactions which could threaten
the nation's plans for economic development.

In general, it is safe to say that the Korea bargaining
subjects. Second, since 1971 when Korea's collective bargaining
laws and practices were severly constrained by Presidential
Decree and statute, many of her labor-management problems
went unreported. Consequently researchers have been repeatedly
frustrated by either the absence of questionable reliability of data
on critical aspects of Korea's labor relations with management.
The data required to support a wide range of factual statements
about collective bargaining relationships simply have no been
available and this limitation also has discouraged research on
collective bargaining in Korea.

The first concern mentioned above recently has lost its
standing. Following President Chung Hee Park's death on
October 26, 1979 and through May 14, 1980 a rash of labor
disputes erupted in korea. The social and political instability in
this sector and in others spurred new interest in the study on
collective bargaining. Belatedly, perhaps, there has been a
general realization that as Korea's economy has changed and
grown, her collective bargaining institution has not changed.

Thus, there exists a pressing need to identify the
developmental failures in Korea's collective bargaining institution
in order that the system may be reformed and the weakness
remedied. As for the data limitations already mentioned, they
still exist. Recently, some fairly reliable labor disputes data have
become available and they are reported and interpreted herein.
however, we too have not been spared th frustrations of
working with data which are vague in a number of
methodological respects.

This paper will help to fill Korea's analytical void in
collective bargaining. It is far raining and consequently many of
its parts, by necessity, are not covered in an exhaustive way. W
begin the paper with a brief prologue on what collective
bargaining is all about and we conclude it with a lengthy
enumeration of recommendations for collective bargaining
reforms. The middle parts of the paper contain discussions on
the following order of topic: Korea's labor relations practice and
problems. past and present: Korea's economic development
problems and its impact on contemporary collective bargaining;
Korea's major labor law institution and the collective bargaining
limitations they spawn; and an analysis of the content of labor
agreements negotiated in Korea.

The recommendations for reforming Korea's collective
bargaining system are written for inclusion, either in whole or in
part in Korea' s Fifth Five Year Development Plan. There is
little doubt that the Republic of Korea will need an improved
system for dealing with her labor relations problems which will
grown in magnitude as the process of labor intensive
industrialization continues to unfold over the decade ahead.

(※ 서문에서 발췌한 내용임)

Ⅰ. Prologue
Ⅱ. Collective Bargaining and Unionism in Korea
Ⅲ. Economic Development and Its Impact on
Collective Bargaining in Korea
Ⅳ. Major Labor Law Institutions in Korea
Ⅴ. Content of Labor Agreements Negotiated in Korea
Ⅵ. Recommendations for Policy Reform