Abstract
This article examines the fragmentation of care work undertaken by women in South Korea brought about through the complex interrelationship of the state, the market and the home. The discussion is explored through an examination of the changes introduced by the South Korean government after 2008, which aimed to provide new long-term care benefits to persons over 65 years of age through the social security system, and simultaneously to increase women’s labour market participation through creating employment opportunities as caregivers in
the labour market. The new government programs are implemented through private service agencies, where these caregivers generally work in precarious forms of employment. This article explores the ways in which the marketisation of social care has impacted women at work; creating and reinforcing fragmented work as normative for women and influencing the proliferation of informal and precarious work. It thus reveals the way in which the intervention of the state in the crisis of care for the aged in South Korea and the subsequent reforms introduced to the labour market reproduce and change the fragmented and gender division of labour.
**The other articles in the first edition of the U of OxHRH J can be found here**
