[KS] KSR 2004-08: _Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation_, by Hagen Koo

[Stephen Epstein]

_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).

Reviewed by Changzoo Song
University of Auckland
ch.song at auckland.ac.nz


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.

	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 (hakchul).  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.

	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. 

	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 han, 
that sense of injustice which has been a central organizing construct 
of popular Korean discourse, and hanp'uri (the act of releasing han). 

	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.

	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 han (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 han.

	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.  

	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).

	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."

	In conclusion, however, I wish to emphasize that the 
shortcomings I have outlined are minor compared to the book's 
numerous strengths. Korean Workers: The culture and politics of class 
formation 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.     



Citation:
Song, Changzoo. 2004
_Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation_, by 
Hagen Koo,  (2001)
_Korean Studies Review_ 2004, no. 08
Electronic file: http://koreaweb.ws/ks/ksr/ksr04-08.htm
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