Organizer and Chair: Chae-Jin Lee, Claremont McKenna College
Yoonkyung Lee, State University of New York, Binghamton
Globalization, neo-liberal restructuring, and the race to the bottom are
the terms that have seriously undermined the working conditions and the general
wellbeing of the working people around the globe in recent decades. Then,
what forms of political action and organization do these aggrieved people choose
to articulate and aggregate their interests? Are they social movements or
other forms of political organizations? This paper takes this question, the
ways and processes of how the interest of the working people are articulated
and aggregated, to South Korea, where democratization and economic liberalization
have created mixed conditions for labor. The focus of this study is the organizational
emergence and electoral success of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) as a way
of representing the voices of the working people in Korean politics. This examination
will be based on a comparative question of why and how a progressive labor party
appeared in South Korea, whereas similar efforts in other countries, particularly
in Taiwan, did not materialize. Korea’s labor party represents an anomaly
in an era where the strength and political relevance of labor parties in
many countries in Europe and Latin America are in decline. More closely in Asia,
few democracies in the region have viable labor parties in the electoral
arena, not to mention a new formation of a labor party in this neo-liberal era.
Particularly, when the development of the DLP in Korea is compared with the
experiences of Taiwanese labor movements, it offers an interesting comparative
study because these two countries share a number of commonalities but took a
diverging path for the representation of labor interest. It is an interesting
question to inquire why the grievances of Korean workers came to be represented
by a labor party while the organizational efforts of Taiwanese workers situated
under similar politico-economic conditions were absorbed into established political
parties. There are few studies that address similar research questions as posed
in this paper, but those that are available argue that the electoral advancement
of the DLP was made possible by the changes of the electoral system in 2002,
which increased the proportionality element and made the entrance of small parties
easier than before (Shin 2004, Lee 2006). In this paper, I will argue that
this institutionalist approach looking at the short-term effects of institutional
change does not fully explain the rise of a labor party in Korea. Instead,
this research draws on a more traditional political cleavage approach and explains
that the DLP would not have been successful without the support of a generation
of progressive citizens and union activists who were nurtured through their
pro-democracy social movements in the 1980s. This socioeconomic basis, however,
differs from the traditional left-right cleavage due to the specific historical
circumstances from which this democracy generation was formed in Korean society.
Jong-Sung You, University of California, San Diego
My central claim is that inequality in income and wealth has increased corruption
and that different levels of inequality created by exogenous events in Korea,
Taiwan, and the Philippines have contributed to producing different levels of
corruption in these countries.
I will employ the method of historical process tracing, focusing on the role
of success or failure of land reform and different industrial policies in these
countries. The successful land reforms produced relatively low levels of inequality
in Korea and Taiwan, while the Philippines maintained a very high level of inequality
due to the failure of land reform. I argue that the success or failure of land
reform was little affected by corruption but primarily determined by external
factors such as communist threat and the US policy. In the Philippines, the
high level of inequality produced high redistributive pressures, and the few
wealthy had to rely on buying political influence through corruption to preserve
and to further enhance their interests. In Korea and Taiwan, the dissolution
of the landed elite prevented the state apparatus from being captured by a powerful
class.
Between Korea and Taiwan, chaebol-centered industrialization policy produced
more inequality and corruption over time in Korea than in Taiwan. I argue that
the differences in industrial policy were not affected by corruption or the
lobby of the chaebol but reflected the different preferences of the political
leadership in these countries.
Sungmoon Kim, University of Maryland
While democracy study has focused on political agency or the macro-structural
factors in democratic transition, it has largely dismissed its cultural dimension.
By adopting cultural approach to politics, this essay attempts to shed new
light on the cultural dynamics of the democratic transition of South Korea.
It particularly takes the May Struggle of 1991—the largest political upheaval
since the June Uprising of 1987—as a case study, and examines how peculiarly
Confucian moral rhetoric and practices were employed (or exploited) in a
series of authoritarian-democratic confrontations. My central argument is
that Confucianism was neither in itself an obstacle nor its unquestionable contributor
to the democratization of Korea. Rather, it furnished both authoritarian
and democratic sides with symbolic weapons cultivated in the uniquely Korean
tradition of Confucian moralpolitik. By seeing Confucianism in terms of semiotic
practices rather than a reified system of personal values, the article problematizes
the contemporary discussion of “Confucian
democracy” that overly glosses over its contrasting dimensions by either
idealizing or distorting it.
Pil Ho Kim, University of Wisconsin, Madison
The history of Korean pop music exhibits a tangled array of political, social,
and cultural threads. As a powerful symbol of the post-war American hegemony,
the U.S. military bases remained as the main source of western pop for Korean
musicians and audiences for at least a couple of decades after the Korean
War. By nurturing numerous musicians including future leading figures of Korean
pop, the U.S. military club scene left a deep imprint upon modern Korean culture.
The process involved a complex dynamic of local-based hybridization that
went beyond “cultural imperialism” understood as simple imposition
of foreign culture.
Furthermore, Korean appropriation of rock music unfolded new sensibilities
of the youth that challenged conservative, militaristic nationalism of the
ruling elite in the 1960-70s. Spearheaded by the gifted musician Shin Joong
Hyun, the Korean rock movement, locally known as “group sound”,
extended its reach from youth counterculture to the national mainstream by the
mid-1970s, only to be ruthlessly repressed by the authoritarian Park Chung Hee
regime.
The short-lived prominence of group sound highlights the difficult, sometimes
treacherous task to navigate between American cultural hegemony and the “national
culture” ideology. Since then, various Korean musicians ranging from college
rock bands in the 1970-80s to hip-hop/rap artists of today have been striving
to define creativity as well as “Korean-ness” in their imported
pop styles. Following the history of Korean pop, this paper attempts to construct
a nuanced yet critical view on how cultural nationalism is established in
relation to globalizing cultural hegemony.
Mikyoung Kim, Hiroshima Peace Institute
This study aims to explore the causes of women's labor activism by examining
the case of Dong-Il Textile, where one of the longest and most violent labor
strikes took place in South Korean history. The central question is “why
did the women workers rebel against the factory and government authorities
during a period of overall labor quiescence?” This qualitative research
found that there were four threads which, when interwoven, provide us with
a powerful picture of collective action: socio-economic rupture amid rapid
modernization, patriarchal cultural milieu, solidarity among women because
of sharing similar lived experiences, and existence of an outside support
network. As Mills (1959) argued, the women's biographies intersected with
the rapid structural changes in South Korean society. Poverty, patriarchal
family structure, and limited educational opportunities shaped their paths
to the factory. The repressive labor regime and gender/class-based social
prejudice played out on the factory floor leading to the women's daily hardships.
Despite debilitating circumstances, the Dong-Il Textile women sustained their
resistance over five years. This research found that the women's pre-factory
experiences served as the precursor of their collective action at the factory.
Furthermore, the communal living arrangements, a church group's assistance
(Urban Industrial Mission), and the act of resistance itself empowered their
activism.
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