The rule that had metropolitan support centers handle the hiring, employment contracts and work management of child care providers has been removed from the law. The amendment passed the National Assembly on March 12 and was promulgated on April 7. Six years after the shift to integrated management at the metropolitan level, the policy has turned to the opposite side.
To see the point it has returned to, one has to go back further. Before the integrated system was set up, individual service agencies took on everything from hiring providers, managing their work and enrolling them in insurance to connecting them with client families. The law changed in May 2020, and from January 2022 mayors and governors designated and operated metropolitan support centers, moving these duties to the metropolitan level.
There were reasons for the reorganization at the time. Child abuse by care providers occurred, and as demand for the service grew, the staffing and operations of service agencies at the basic local government level reached a point that was hard to sustain. The design was to raise management responsibility one level up and prevent incidents.
But legal and practical limits were pointed out in the arrangement where metropolitan support centers employed the workers and service agencies directed the work on site. It is also the result of maintaining for more than four years a state in which the employer and the party giving directions were different. When it becomes unclear which side is responsible, that lack of clarity is borne in the end by the providers and the client families.
Voices from the field were there in the meantime. The Public Solidarity Labor Union stood on the steps in front of the National Assembly main building on November 19 last year. It was a press conference opposing a registration system for private agencies and calling for long service incentives. It was a demand to create conditions under which people who have worked a long time can keep working.
A move to question the frequent changes to the system at its root also emerged. In February, the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy submitted a legislative petition to the National Assembly for a framework act on care. The bill defines care as a right spanning the entire course of life. It sets out together the right to receive care and the right to care for oneself and others, and states the responsibilities of the state and local governments.
The backbone of the bill is a care policy committee under the President. The committee would draw up a basic plan for care policy, and the state and local governments would bear the duty of preparing care guarantee benefits along with basic plans and annual implementation plans. It is a proposal to address care at the level of planning beyond the unit of individual programs. What review stage the petition will go through has not been made known.
The demographic changes in the background leave no room to spare. From 2000 to 2022, the share of the elderly population in Korea rose by 10.3 percentage points. That is about twice the OECD average increase of 5.1 percentage points over the same period. If ultra-low fertility and aging continue as they are, the old age dependency ratio in 2050 is projected to reach 78.8 per 100 people of working age, above the OECD average of 52.7.
Attempts to fill the gaps in care keep appearing. Word came that care on public holidays will be provided through a child gap care service, and discussions are also under way on changing the functions of elderly care facilities to fit community integrated care. The Ministry of Health and Welfare said today that it has selected consortiums in the smart home and smart social welfare facility fields under a program supporting the rapid commercialization of AI application products. As new tools and new programs increase, the ground supporting them has to be firmer.
For parents, child care is not a policy term. It is whether they can let go of a child's hand at the door before leaving for work, whether that day is possible. When the hiring authority changes, whether the familiar provider will keep coming and how the contract will continue become immediate questions for each household. The detailed rules that determine how the amended law will operate remain at the next stage, and how employment succession and management responsibility are written into them will be the actual content of this change.
