• Hyewon Park Department of Advanced Social and International Studies, University of Tokyo
• Kosuke Sakai Research Associate, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo

• Rieko Kage Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo

Although attempts have been made to elucidate youth support policy within the paradigms of welfare and economics through international comparisons, there is a paucity of research on young people’s transition regimes in East Asian countries. In the Presentation, we analyze East Asian youth support policies by comparing the higher education support policies (HESP) in place in Korea and Japan from the perspective of the target group, the position of young adults, and the major aim. We also check the differences in major aims of the National Student Loan system’s restructuring process and the content of the discussions between the two countries despite a similar transformation in terms of policy targets and young adults’ position.

Hyewon Park is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Advanced Social and International Studies at the University of Tokyo. She is currently working on her dissertation that examines the relationship between social change in East Asia and youth policies.

Kosuke Sakai is a research associate in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo in 2020. His research focuses on the applicability of the sociological theory of Niklas Luhmann to empirical research. His dissertation examines the historical re-description of the theory of functional differentiation as a semantic analysis with a case study of the development of social policy in the 19th century.