This thesis examines how Korea’s leading business associations responded to major welfare reforms introduced between 1998 and 2022, including the integration of National Health Insurance, the introduction of the Basic Pension, and the expansion of shareholder activism by the National Pension Service. Despite the substantial political-economic influence of chaebol—large, family-controlled conglomerates that dominate the Korean economy—these redistributive reforms were implemented largely without active business support. Drawing on an interpretive, case-based analysis of three reform episodes, the study shows that peak associations such as the Federation of Korean Industries and the Korea Enterprises Federation neither promoted nor substantively facilitated welfare expansion, instead combining open resistance, strategic restraint, and selective accommodation.
Contrary to employer-centred approaches, which anticipate business support for welfare reforms that enhance competitiveness or organisational security, the findings highlight both the explanatory strengths and the limits of power-centred approaches focusing on business (PABs). While institutional power asymmetries and political context shaped business strategies in ways broadly consistent with PABs, these frameworks alone do not fully account for the internal divisions and elite-driven priorities observed within business associations. The Samsung C&T merger episode illustrates how associations, under certain conditions, prioritised the particular interests of chaebol-controlling families over firm-wide corporate interests.
The thesis further demonstrates the situational and measured character of business engagement. Rather than maintaining stable policy positions, business associations adjusted their strategies according to organisational capacity, internal governance arrangements, and their institutional and power positions within existing power configurations. In this respect, business influence operated less through overt leadership or sustained opposition than through selective participation, tactical quietude, and issue-specific mobilisation. By foregrounding these dynamics, the study advances a more differentiated and organisationally grounded account of business behaviour in welfare politics, with implications that may be informative for analyses of business–welfare relations beyond the Korean case.
