President Park Geun-hye said Thursday that she has taken a cue from former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder over labor reform.
Park made the comment to Schroeder during their encounter at a military parade in Beijing, presidential spokesman Min Kyung-wook told reporters after arriving in Shanghai, the second and last stop on Park's three-day trip to China.
Germany's so-called Hartz reform is credited with transforming the labor market and welfare system in Germany.
Park has repeatedly called for efforts to revive South Korea's faltering economy and to reform the labor sector, warning that everybody would stand to lose unless labor reform is made.
Businesses and the government have called for greater flexibility in the hiring and firing of workers to cope with labor market duality -- the difference in pay and job security between regular and non-regular workers.
South Korea's labor unions have argued that more must be done to reduce the number of irregular workers instead of just striving to weaken the job security of regular workers. (Yonhap)
