A Topic Modeling Analysis on the Welfare Blind Spots in South Korea in the News Articles : Focusing on Major Daily Newspapers

The purpose of this study is to identify issues related to welfare blind spots in Korea since the enactment of the Emergency Welfare Support Act (December 2005). For this purpose, we collected 5,437 news articles from the four major daily newspapers (Chosun, JoongAng, Hankyoreh, and Kyunghyang) reported over 18 years from December 2005 to 2023 using the keywords “welfare” and “blind spot” and conducted LDA topic modeling analysis. As a result of the analysis, the following topics were extracted: ‘Housing support for the vulnerable’, ‘Identification and crisis support’, ‘Unstable employment and livelihood security’, ‘Corona and government measures’, ‘Secure retirement income security’, and ‘Local donation culture’, ‘Children at risk and protection system’, ‘Diversity in welfare blind spots’, and ‘Mental health and insufficient medical care’. Through the analysis, we found that, first, it was discovered that the government’s policies and systems have limitations in sufficiently responding to welfare blind spots. Second, although there are welfare needs of various groups, it was discovered that there is a lack of social services that can appropriately respond to them. Third, we were able to discover the role of private resources as an important actor in resolving welfare blind spots. Based on the research results, the need for system supplementation and the importance of public-private cooperation in the local community were presented to identify and resolve welfare blind spots.