Korean Workers
Subtitle: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: November 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 272
ISBN-13: 9780801438356
Subjects: Ethnic studies; Social groups & communities; Work & labour; Labor movement; Korea; Social Science; Sociology; Working class; History: World; South Korea; Minority Studies - General; Industrial organization; Ethnic Studies - General; Labor; Labor disputes
First sentence: One major factor that facilitated export-oriented industrialization (EOI) in South Korea was the absence of strong organized labor.
Description: 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.