Review: Comparative Social Quality Between Taiwan and Korea

Comparative Social Quality Between Taiwan and Korea by Alan Walker Lih-Rong Wang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I admit, I'd probably be the first to gobble up any book of comparative studies between Taiwan and Korea, no matter what the specific subject. The topic matter has always attracted me. 

This is basically a collection of essays. I had to gloss over a lot of the data, since my chi-squared/ANOVA/SPSS days are long gone, but I found many of the conclusions interesting. I do wish there were an updated edition, however. 

Some of my notes:

Koreans seem to have a much more positive view of Capitalism than Taiwan (I wish they had an updated study for this). 

It seems like South Korea's financial expansion was quicker and greater than Taiwan's, but Taiwan's was more stable (and more equitable?), so when the 1997 crisis hit, Korea was much more affected than Taiwan. 

"When asked for their subjective responses to the word 'capitalism' the terms most frequently chosen in Korea were 'affluence' and 'economic growth' whereas in Taiwan, they were 'economic inequalities' and 'competition'" (p. 11, Graph w/ data: p. 76)

"In general, Korean workers, whether male or female, typical or atypical, are less satisfied with their work than their Taiwanese counterparts." (p. 57)

"High income can lead to better health. High income also results in distrust. Finally, distrust brings better health." (p. 60)

"For interpersonal trust, Taiwan again received a higher score than Korea" (p. 61)

"Growth has been stable in Taiwan but not in Korea; Korea has a centralized industrialization strategy focusing on big business and Taiwan a diffused industrialization strategy focusing on small and medium enterprises." (p. 75)

"The South Korean case can be characterized as recent and rapid financial expansion. This may have caused severe work insecurity over the recent decade, in turn leading to the currently downward class-identification trend..." (p. 106/107)

"The Taiwanese case shows earlier but stable financialization." (p. 107)

"Thus is seems that the economic crisis had considerably more negative impacts on the situation of people living in Korea than Taiwan". (p. 157)

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