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<div><font color="#000000">_Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics
of Class Formation_, by Hagen Koo, 2001. Ithaca & London: Cornell
University Press. 240 + xii pages. (ISBN 0-8014-8696-3).</font><br>
</div>
<div>Reviewed by Changzoo Song</div>
<div>University of Auckland</div>
<div>ch.song@auckland.ac.nz</div>
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<div><font color="#000000"><br>
This book aims to explain how South Korean workers have developed
their class consciousness in the last three decades. Borrowing
E.P.Thompson's thesis, the author argues that working class identity
is not simply a product of structural forces, but grows through the
daily experiences and struggles of workers themselves. In
describing the development of class consciousness among Korean
workers, the author elucidates how the once-docile labour force of
South Korea developed into a militant social force in the 1980s, and
then gradually lost its militancy in the 1990s. The author uses
not only conventional literature but also relies on personal accounts
from workers and union leaders, drawing on in-depth interviews and
diaries.<br>
<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>According to the author, female workers were the main
force of the labour movement through the 1970s and the early 1980s and
called upon the support of progressive churches, intellectuals, and
especially students-turned-workers (<i>hakchul</i>). The
oppression of workers was obvious in manifold spheres: their low wages
and the inhumane treatment they received, society's disdainful
attitude toward manual labour, and the state's hostility to their
needs, which meant a consequent restriction on union activities. The
author argues that the militancy of Korean worker movements in the
1970s and 1980s is explained by these various forms of oppression they
experienced, as outlined above, rather than by economic exploitation,
and that in such an environment labour movements were sporadic and
violent. In Koo's view, South Korean workers' demands focused on
humane treatment and the freedom to organize democratic unions rather
than wage increases.<br>
<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Written with insight and incisive analyses, this
excellent book has many merits. First of all, the author's use
of personal narratives brings out the voice of workers, a feature
largely absent in academic accounts of Korea's economic development.
This emphasis on the human aspects of development gives this excellent
book greater power. </font><br>
<font color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font
color="#000000"><x-tab>
</x-tab>A second virtue is the book's incorporation of cultural
explanations for the labour movements in Korea. The author
describes the Confucian disdain for manual labour aggravated workers'
resentment and their plight. In particular, Koo offers an
original explanation for the movement's militancy through reference
to<i> han</i>, that sense of injustice which has been a central
organizing construct of popular Korean discourse, and<i> hanp'uri</i>
(the act of releasing<i> han</i>). </font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Thirdly, the
book's adoption of comparative perspectives is another strength.
Koo compares the development of a South Korean working class with the
situation in England and other East Asian countries. In dealing
with the status of Korea's working class, the author contrasts the
artisan tradition of Europe, which conveyed privilege and power upon
the artisan class, with quite opposite Confucian attitudes towards
manual labour in Korea. In addition, the author also compares
work ethics and the ideologies of union leaders in Japan and
Korea.<br>
<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>While the book has many
merits, it is not completely free of weaknesses. The book's
examination of the decline of labour militancy in the 1990s lacks
comprehensive analysis. The author maintains that numerous
developments made South Korean labour less militant in the 1990s: the
improved status of the working class both in terms of wages and its
freedom to organize unions, new strategies of management, division
within the working class, and changes in state policy toward
industrial relations. Nonetheless, in making such claims, the
author neglects factors he himself explicated earlier in the book.
For example, he claims that through the Great Struggle of 1987 Korean
workers released their<i> han</i> (pages 160, 186) and at least
partially achieved their goal of more humane treatment and increased
wages. One might thus suspect that declined labour militancy
results from such release of<i> han</i>.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"> <br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>What of the
democratisation of South Korean society in the 1990s? In
previous chapters the author contends that an oppressive and hostile
culture fosters militant labour movements (p.13). South Korea's recent
democratisation, however shallow it might be, did bring important
changes in many areas of society, including workers' attitudes toward
radical activism. The case of labour activist and poet Pak
No-hae, whom the author quotes in an earlier chapter (pp.147-8), is an
example: Pak abandoned his past radicalism and called for broader
democratization of Korean culture upon release from prison in
1998. <br>
<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>The author also neglects to mention
important external factors such as the collapse of socialism in
Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s, and the influx of foreign
workers to South Korea in the 1990s. The dissolution of the
Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War was the main force behind the
weakening of leftist movements all over the world. The issue of
foreign workers, both legal and illegal, is not mentioned at all in
this book in spite of its important role in changes made in the 1990s,
such as Korean labour's avoidance of the so-called "3D" jobs
and a growing class division among Korea's work force in the 1990s
between "regular and irregular, core and periphery, protected and
unprotected" workers (p.216).</font><br>
<font color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font
color="#000000"><x-tab>
</x-tab>Neither does the book go far enough with its comparative
perspective. For example, despite the book's focus on the
"exceptional" militant Korean workers (p. 7), it does not
explore this exceptionalism from a comparative perspective. Why
such militancy in contrast to the relative docility and submissiveness
of workers of other East Asian countries? This crucial question
would have benefited from a juxtaposition of the Korean situation with
those of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, the other East Asian
"tigers."</font></div>
<div><br></div>
<div><font
color="#000000"><x-tab>
</x-tab>In conclusion, however, I wish to emphasize that the
shortcomings I have outlined are minor compared to the book's numerous
strengths.<i> Korean Workers: The culture and politics of class
formation</i> offers a significant contribution to the study of not
merely Korea's working class, economic and political changes, but to
the study of labour in a global
perspective. </font></div>
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<div><br>
<br>
</div>
<div>Citation:</div>
<div>Song, Changzoo. 2004</div>
<div><font color="#000000">_Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics
of Class Formation_, by Hagen Koo</font>, (2001)</div>
<div>_Korean Studies Review_ 2004, no. 08</div>
<div>Electronic file: http://koreaweb.ws/ks/ksr/ksr04-08.htm</div>
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