A Flexible Work Environment Is the Start of Work–Family Balance

South Korea’s low birthrate problem cannot be solved by encouraging childbirth. A total fertility rate of 0.75 is not simply a sign that people are choosing not to have children; it is a warning that they are facing a structure in which they cannot. The government has provided cash support and pursued institutional reforms, but there has been little meaningful change in the actual working conditions needed to have and raise children.

Women still live with anxiety over career interruption, and men also hesitate to take parental leave for fear that it may lead to disadvantages in personnel evaluations. In a situation where becoming a parent is directly linked to economic loss and social disadvantage, childbirth has ceased to be a natural part of life and has instead become a burden people want to avoid.

A rigid labor structure makes it difficult to balance work and family. South Korea’s labor market remains excessively fixed around regular employment and a standard five-day workweek. Because diverse forms of work—such as hourly work, part-time work, and flexible commuting hours—have failed to take root institutionally, parents struggle to find ways to combine work and childrearing. Not only workers but even companies tend to view any employment arrangement outside standardized forms as too risky. As a result, becoming a parent is increasingly equated with “exiting the labor market.”

Career interruption remains a major challenge our society must address. As of 2023, women whose careers were interrupted due to childcare accounted for 42% of all career-interrupted women. Many of them are unable to properly use parental leave or cannot bear the disadvantages they face after returning to work, and ultimately leave the labor market. Losing a job is not an individual choice but the result of a social structure that forces it upon them. If they take parental leave, they fall behind in organizational evaluations, and when they return, there is no place for them. In a structure where childbirth and childrearing lead directly to “falling out,” balancing work and family is impossible.

The law and institutions need to be made more flexible. The two-year limit on fixed-term workers is justified as a measure to encourage conversion to regular employment, but in reality it often serves to hasten contract termination. Many companies avoid the rule by ending contracts before the two-year mark, and jobs are repeatedly reproduced in short, unstable forms. Parents who cannot work full-time because of childcare, and women whose careers have been interrupted, are pushed further to the margins. A system intended to promote employment stability is in fact constraining flexibility.

The perception that only regular employment qualifies as a real job must change. Regular employment-centered hiring practices may guarantee stability, but they also suppress flexibility. A labor structure that supports work-family balance must be able to accommodate diverse ways of living. Three-day workweeks, part-time work, and hybrid arrangements combining remote work and office work should become not an option but a necessity. To make this possible, broad revisions to labor relations laws are needed, along with both legal protections and a shift in social perceptions.

Flexible work can function properly only when conditions are created for companies to participate. Flexible work arrangements are essential for balancing work and life, but for companies they may involve real burdens, such as overhauling HR systems, securing replacement workers, and reorganizing tasks. Rather than imposing such systems unilaterally, the government should provide practical benefits—such as tax reductions, incentives, and certification programs—to companies that implement them. Only when flexibility can be accepted as an investment can change take root in a sustainable way.

Childcare infrastructure should move in the direction of greater private-sector participation. A structure that places responsibility for care solely on the government or parents cannot be expected to be sustainable. As forms of childrearing become increasingly diverse, the participation and role of the private sector are becoming more important. For services closely tied to daily life—such as cooperative childcare facilities, substitute caregiver platforms, and education programs for prospective parents—the private sector should take the lead, while the government should provide institutional support. In particular, systems need to be designed to improve accessibility and diversity so that people who are easily excluded from public services, such as small and medium-sized enterprise workers or freelance households, can actually make use of them.

If the foundations are first put in place so that people can work, provide care, and sustain their lives, individuals and families can fulfill their roles. The more the government tries to run everything directly, as it does now, the more the autonomy of the private sector and businesses is constrained, and the harder it becomes for new solutions to emerge. In the face of increasingly complex patterns of life, the government’s role should be closer to that of “an enabler of opportunity” than “a direct operator.”

It should function by easing regulations, connecting private resources, and designing institutional frameworks. Only then can each actor have the conditions to work, provide care, and return to the workplace in ways that suit them. What is needed is a flexible environment in which the market and individuals can combine and experiment in diverse ways. That is the starting point for building a sustainable ecosystem of care and employment.

We need to become a society where people can continue working after having children. A system that allows people to work stably after childbirth is the fundamental solution to the low birthrate problem. A flexible and stable labor structure restores childbirth as a possible part of life. Now is the time to shift policy away from “encouraging childbirth” and toward “work-life balance.”

Hea-lim Park, Senior Research Fellow, Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

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Original title: 유연한 근무 환경이 일·가정 양립의 시작이다

Author: Hea-lim Park

Date: 2025-05-27

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=press&idx=27759