Korean Workers

Author : Hagen Koo
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2018-09-05
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781501731778

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Korean Workers by Hagen Koo Pdf

Forty years of rapid industrialization have transformed millions of South Korean peasants and their sons and daughters into urban factory workers. Hagen Koo explores the experiences of this first generation of industrial workers and describes its struggles to improve working conditions in the factory and to search for justice in society. The working class in South Korea was born in a cultural and political environment extremely hostile to its development, Koo says. Korean workers forged their collective identity much more rapidly, however, than did their counterparts in other newly industrialized countries in East Asia. This book investigates how South Korea's once-docile and submissive workers reinvented themselves so quickly into a class with a distinct identity and consciousness. Based on sources ranging from workers' personal writings to union reports to in-depth interviews, this book is a penetrating analysis of the South Korean working-class experience. Koo reveals how culture and politics simultaneously suppressed and facilitated class formation in South Korea. With chapters exploring the roles of women, students, and church organizations in the struggle, the book reflects Koo's broader interest in the social and cultural dimensions of industrial transformation.

Author : Chong-Sik Lee
Publisher : Hoover Press
Page : 188 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 1978
Category : Korea (North)
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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The Korean Workers' Party by Chong-Sik Lee Pdf

Author : Hyung-A Kim
Publisher : University of Washington Press
Page : 231 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2020-05-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780295747224

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Korean Skilled Workers by Hyung-A Kim Pdf

South Korea’s triumphant development has catapulted the country’s economy to the eleventh largest in the world. Large family-owned conglomerates, or chaebŏls, such as Samsung, Hyundai, and LG, have become globally preeminent manufacturing brands. Yet Korea’s highly disciplined, technologically competent skilled workers who built these brands have become known only for their successful labor-union militancy, which in recent decades has been criticized as collective “selfishness” that has allowed them to prosper at the expense of other workers. Hyung-A Kim tells the story of Korea’s first generation of skilled workers in the heavy and chemical industries sector, following their dramatic transition from 1970s-era “industrial warriors” to labor-union militant “Goliat Warriors,” and ultimately to a “labor aristocracy” with guaranteed job security, superior wages, and even job inheritance for their children. By contrast, millions of Korea’s non-regular employees, especially young people, struggle in precarious and insecure employment. This richly documented account demonstrates that industrial workers’ most enduring goal has been their own economic advancement, not a wider socialist revolution, and shows how these individuals’ paths embody the consequences of rapid development.

Author : KyungHee Kim
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2014-10-21
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781443870269

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Work and Leisure Policy for Korean Workers by KyungHee Kim Pdf

Working hours in Korea are considerably longer than those of most other countries throughout the world. The 40 hour workweek was eventually introduced in 2005, meaning that many people were finally no longer legally obliged to work on Saturdays or Sundays. Despite expectations that this legislation would have a remarkable impact on both society and each individual, Korea is still one of the highest ranked OECD countries in terms of the length of working hours. The reduced working hours have been filled with ‘overwork’ on weekdays or weekends. Given the large amount of time Koreans dedicate to work, concerns regarding leisure time and expenditure on leisure products are becoming increasingly significant. This book evolved from the initial questions ‘why do Koreans work so hard for long hours?’ and ‘don’t the Korean working population want to spend time on leisure?’, and comes to the conclusion that the lengthy working hours have a major impact on the ability of average Koreans to participate in leisure activities. In the process of solving its initial research questions, this book explores the historical formation of the working class, the labour market, and the relationship between work and leisure and leisure policy. It also conducts various forms of empirical research, such as questionnaire survey and interviews, and uses a range of different research methods, including case studies, comparative historical analysis and secondary data analysis. As such, this book will undoubtedly appeal to anyone wishing to understand more about Korean society, and to anyone with an interest in how a wide variety of research methods are brought together in real world research.

Author : Soon-Won Park
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2020-03-23
Category : History
ISBN : 9781684173297

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Colonial Industrialization and Labor in Korea by Soon-Won Park Pdf

This book is a study of labor relations and the first generation of skilled workers in colonial Korea, a subject crucial to the understanding of modernization in twentieth-century Korea. Born in rural Korea, these workers confronted both the colonial experience and the modern workplace as they interacted with Japanese managers and workers. Based on the archives of the Onoda Cement Factory and interviews with surviving workers, this work analyzes the complex relationship between colonialism and modernization.

Author : Ken C. Kawashima
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 309 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2009-04-17
Category : History
ISBN : 9780822392293

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The Proletarian Gamble by Ken C. Kawashima Pdf

Koreans constituted the largest colonial labor force in imperial Japan during the 1920s and 1930s. Caught between the Scylla of agricultural destitution in Korea and the Charybdis of industrial depression in Japan, migrant Korean peasants arrived on Japanese soil amid extreme instability in the labor and housing markets. In The Proletarian Gamble, Ken C. Kawashima maintains that contingent labor is a defining characteristic of capitalist commodity economies. He scrutinizes how the labor power of Korean workers in Japan was commodified, and how these workers both fought against the racist and contingent conditions of exchange and combated institutionalized racism. Kawashima draws on previously unseen archival materials from interwar Japan as he describes how Korean migrants struggled against various recruitment practices, unfair and discriminatory wages, sudden firings, racist housing practices, and excessive bureaucratic red tape. Demonstrating that there was no single Korean “minority,” he reveals how Koreans exploited fellow Koreans and how the stratification of their communities worked to the advantage of state and capital. However, Kawashima also describes how, when migrant workers did organize—as when they became involved in Rōsō (the largest Korean communist labor union in Japan) and in Zenkyō (the Japanese communist labor union)—their diverse struggles were united toward a common goal. In The Proletarian Gamble, his analysis of the Korean migrant workers' experiences opens into a much broader rethinking of the fundamental nature of capitalist commodity economies and the analytical categories of the proletariat, surplus populations, commodification, and state power.

Author : Jin-kyung Lee
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 317 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780816651252

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Service Economies by Jin-kyung Lee Pdf

A compelling alternative narrative of the modern "miracle" of South Korea.

Author : Jaesok Kim
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2013-04-10
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780804786126

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Chinese Labor in a Korean Factory by Jaesok Kim Pdf

Chinese Labor in a Korean Factorydraws on fieldwork in a multinational corporation (MNC) in Qingdao, China, and delves deep into the power dynamics at play between Korean management, Chinese migrant workers, local-level Chinese government officials, and Chinese local gangs. Anthropologist Jaesok Kim examines how governments, to attract MNCs, relinquish parts of their legal rights over these entities, while MNCs also give up portions of their rights as proxies of global capitalism by complying with local government guidelines to ensure infrastructure and cheap labor. This ethnography demonstrates how a particular MNC struggled with the pressure to be increasingly profitable while negotiating the clash of Korean and Chinese cultures, traditions, and classes on the factory floor of a garment corporation. Chinese Labor in a Korean Factory pays particular attention to common features of post-socialist countries. By analyzing the contentious collaboration between foreign management, factory workers, government officials, and gangs, this study contributes not only to the research on the politics of resistance but also to how global and local forces interact in concrete and surprising ways.

Author : Kevin Gray
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2013-03-07
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781134112319

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Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalization by Kevin Gray Pdf

One of the most remarkable aspects of South Korea’s transition from impoverished post-colonial nation to fully-fledged industrialized democracy has been the growth of its independent and dynamic labour movement. Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalisation examines current trends and transformations within the Korean labour movement since the 1990s. It has been a common assumption that the ‘third wave’ of democratisation, the end of the Cold War, and the spread of neoliberal globalisation in the latter part of the 20th century have helped to create an environment in which organised labour is better placed to overcome bureaucratic national unionism and transform itself into a potential counter-globalisation movement. However, Kevin Gray argues that despite the apparent continued phenomena of labour militancy and the rhetoric of anti-neoliberalism, the mainstream independent labour movement in Korea has become increasingly institutionalised and bureaucratised into the new capitalist democracy. This process is demonstrated by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions’ experience of participation in various forms of policy making forums. Gray suggests that as a result, the KCTU has failed to mount an effective challenge against processes of neoliberal restructuring and concomitant social polarisation. The Korean experience provides an excellent case study for understanding the relationship between organised labour and globalisation. Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalisation will appeal to students and scholars of Korean studies and International Political Economy, as well as Asian politics and economics.

Author : Young-Myon Lee,Bruce E. Kaufman
Publisher : Edward Elgar Publishing
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2018-06-29
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781788113830

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The Evolution of Korean Industrial and Employment Relations by Young-Myon Lee,Bruce E. Kaufman Pdf

The Evolution of Korean Industrial and Employment Relations explores current employment and workplace relations practice in South Korea, tracing their origins to key historical events and giving cultural, politico-economic and global context to the inevitable cultural adaptation in one of Asia’s ‘miraculous’ democracies.

Author : Hwasook Nam
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 426 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2021-08-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781501758270

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Women in the Sky by Hwasook Nam Pdf

Women in the Sky examines Korean women factory workers' century-long activism, from the 1920s to the present, with a focus on gender politics both in the labor movement and in the larger society. It highlights several key moments in colonial and postcolonial Korean history when factory women commanded the attention of the wider public, including the early-1930s rubber shoe workers' general strike in Pyongyang, the early-1950s textile workers' struggle in South Korea, the 1970s democratic union movement led by female factory workers, and women workers' activism against neoliberal restructuring in recent decades. Hwasook Nam asks why women workers in South Korea have been relegated to the periphery in activist and mainstream narratives despite a century of persistent militant struggle and indisputable contributions to the labor movement and successful democracy movement. Women in the Sky opens and closes with stories of high-altitude sit-ins—a phenomenon unique to South Korea—beginning with the rubber shoe worker Kang Churyong's sit-in in 1931 and ending with numerous others in today's South Korean labor movement, including that of Kim Jin-Sook. In Women in the Sky, Nam seeks to understand and rectify the vast gap between the crucial roles women industrial workers played in the process of Korea's modernization and their relative invisibility as key players in social and historical narratives. By using gender and class as analytical categories, Nam presents a comprehensive study and rethinking of the twentieth-century nation-building history of Korea through the lens of female industrial worker activism.

Author : Rinn-Sup Shinn,In-sŏp Sin
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 508 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 1969
Category : Korea (North).
ISBN : UVA:X030449878

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Area Handbook for North Korea by Rinn-Sup Shinn,In-sŏp Sin Pdf

General study of Korea DPR - covers historical and geographical aspects, languages, demographic aspects and social structures, labour force, living conditions, education, cultural factors, tradition, religion, the system of government, foreign policy, the economic structure, national level defence, agriculture, industry, etc., and includes a glossary of Korean terms. Bibliography pp. 413 to 451, maps and statistical tables.

Author : United States. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 34 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 1955
Category : Cost and standard of living
ISBN : CORNELL:31924060515594

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Summary of the Labor Situation in South Korea by United States. Bureau of Labor Statistics Pdf

Author : Kevin Gray
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2013-03-07
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781134112326

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Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalization by Kevin Gray Pdf

One of the most remarkable aspects of South Korea’s transition from impoverished post-colonial nation to fully-fledged industrialized democracy has been the growth of its independent and dynamic labour movement. Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalisation examines current trends and transformations within the Korean labour movement since the 1990s. It has been a common assumption that the ‘third wave’ of democratisation, the end of the Cold War, and the spread of neoliberal globalisation in the latter part of the 20th century have helped to create an environment in which organised labour is better placed to overcome bureaucratic national unionism and transform itself into a potential counter-globalisation movement. However, Kevin Gray argues that despite the apparent continued phenomena of labour militancy and the rhetoric of anti-neoliberalism, the mainstream independent labour movement in Korea has become increasingly institutionalised and bureaucratised into the new capitalist democracy. This process is demonstrated by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions’ experience of participation in various forms of policy making forums. Gray suggests that as a result, the KCTU has failed to mount an effective challenge against processes of neoliberal restructuring and concomitant social polarisation. The Korean experience provides an excellent case study for understanding the relationship between organised labour and globalisation. Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalisation will appeal to students and scholars of Korean studies and International Political Economy, as well as Asian politics and economics.

Author : Yoonkyung Lee
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2011-09-29
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780804781749

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Militants or Partisans by Yoonkyung Lee Pdf

The exceptional experiences of South Korea and Taiwan in combining high growth and liberal democracy in a relatively short and similar timetable have brought scholarly attention to their economic and political transformations. This new work looks specifically at the operation of workers and unions in the decades since labor-repressive authoritarian rule ended, bringing Taiwan, in particular, into the literature on comparative labor politics. South Korean labor unions are commonly described as militant and confrontational, for they often take to the streets in raucous protest. Taiwanese unions are seen as moderate and practical, primarily working through formal political processes to lobby their agendas. In exploring how and why these post-democratization states have come to breed such different types of labor politics, Yoonkyung Lee traces the roots of their differences to how unions and political parties operated under authoritarianism, and points to ways in which those legacies continue to be perpetuated. By pairing two cases with many similarities, Lee persuasively uncovers factors that explain the significant variation at play.