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Today the maternity protection of female workers is widely recognized as essential for maintaining and sound develpment of our society, not as the special treatment for women. That is, the very beneficiary of the maternity protection is the whole society not to speak of the female workers. This is why all the developed countries around the world fully support various maternety protection programs. On the contrary, Korean businesses are heavily burdened by bearing high maternity protection costs and this is pointed out as the very reason behind the avoidance and/or discrimination against female workers and low economic participation of females in Korea. It is very fortunate recently this issue has been raised and solutions are discussed seriously for sharing the costs of maternity benefits by the parties concerned. The propose of this study is to discuss the justification of the social sharing of the maternity benefits and to analyze alternative ways of social sharing economically with respect to minimization of the social cost. Out of alternative ways, that is, maintenance of the current employer bearance policy, establishment of a special fund or utilization of social insurance schemes, the support by medical insurance is analyzed as the best way to finance the maternity leave benefits. However, considering some realistic problems in utilizing the current medical insurance system right away, gradual involvement of medical insurance is recommended to support the maternity leave program.
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