ABSTRACT
The Government is the Republic of Korea’s largest employer and has taken the lead in fast economic development for the last three decades. This case study reviews developments in the wages paid in the Republic of Korea’s public sector since the mid-1970s, and examines their relationship to those paid by the private sector. It shows that the Government has attempted to use wage restraint in the public sector as a primary instrument for holding back private-sector wage increases, but it has done so with only limited success.
