Labor and Civil Society in South Korea
Christopher Clayton
03/14/2010
Colonial Korea from post-annexation to the Korean War established the importance of women and their specific rights and issues in the labor movement. Migration of Koreans to Japan within the empire for work highlights ethnic rights and issues within labor. Post-industrialist causes in the 1970’s and 1980’s fueled by women led to widespread social changes, but were hampered at first by attention focused on union struggles centered on industry alone and not particular group rights or other issues. The 1990’s saw the expansion of the middle class and new labor questions surrounding them, but also advocacy and rights issues during the Asian Financial Crisis because of ideas of family and other ideologies. Migrant labor entails a host of rights issues based on their differences from ordinary laborers, and the government has not addressed every problem with full advocacy. Key time-periods in colonial Korean and South Korean history demonstrate the civil rights approach to labor on multiple levels.
Continuing women’s issues from the Joseon Dynasty carried into colonial Korea and South Korea in the form of industrial working women and prostitution. The special advocacy needed for women laborers began in the 1920’s with such issues as sexual harassment perpetrated by factory foremen (Barraclough, 345). Unions and their strike activities advanced the cause of women’s unique problems in industry, along with magazines and the literati. It became especially important for labor to address these rights because of the resulting changes in Korean society, such as family-level economics breaking down (Barraclough, 349). The strikes also included speaking out against fellow male workers for their own harassment, even if in sometimes indirect ways. The gender conflict among the working class and the willingness of women to address their own issues emphasizes a civil rights outlook on the colonial situation, rather than a general labor movement view. Some forces in the literati at the time also took conservative views themselves, upholding the passivity of female labor and its need to be led and educated by male workers, further emphasizing the lack of human rights in such areas as gender and so its need to be examined that way (Barraclough, 350). In the area of prostitution, the rights aspect of labor only becomes a greater question in the case of colonial Korea and immediate post-war South Korea. The colonial government created laws regulating prostitution, making state institutions complicit in exacerbating rights issues relating to gender (Soh, 172). The state sponsorship legitimized prostitution on a wide scale, making it a greater problem than it should have been. It did not empower women to ply a trade for their own benefit, because it fed directly into the idea that men have a right to pre-marital sex, so the continuation of prostitution could only mean problems for women and divisions among the working class. Strikes by prostitutes led to some state-enacted improvement in their working conditions (Soh, 173). However prostitution led directly to the dramatic build-up of the “comfort women” system during World War II, which largely exploited lower-class women by deception (Soh, 170). It did not serve as a means for women to evade gender inequality in their families by finding a means to empower themselves, but rather violated women who were not even sexually experienced to serve Japanese soldiers. In this way it fostered rights violation on an ethnic basis, while at the same time enslaving female labor for male workers, creating worse conditions than wage labor and regular prostitution. Its continuation from 1951-1954 in the South Korean military revealed the full extent of masculinist military labor and ideology, even if its instigation by another ethnicity no longer served as a problem (Soh, 173). It demonstrates the long-held patriarchal ideas in Korea which Japan did not need to impose, even if Japan made it worse.
Koreans in Japan found some forms of advocacy, but due to reliance on unstable Japanese employers, inter-Korean competition and business income supplementing became other strategies. Koreans who migrated to Japan as part of their imperial rights were able to find advocacy in labor unions, such as the Kawasaki Rousou Communist union (Kawashima, 465). However, continuing the example of this union, its demonstrations were suppressed by the Japanese police (Kawashima, 467). State forces targetted labor especially on an ethnic basis as well as on an ideological basis. The Japanese police’s formation on an anti-Bolshevik, social-defense goal naturally meant that ethnic Koreans could not be trusted, and so their specific workers rights were targetted (Kawashima, 469). The use of stereotypes such as the “unruly Korean” further legitimized the ethnic strife instigated by the Japanese state towards their own imperial citizens. The police also used the Souaikai organization, a group supposedly dedicated to providing welfare to fellow Koreans, to continue targetting Korean rights (Kawashima, 482). In an incident in Yamanashima Prefecture, workers who refused to join the organization received violent suppression. When significant migrations of Koreans to Japan began during and after World War I, other issues began before this kind of ethnic strife. Gender issues continued because most Korean laborers who went to Japan were inexperienced males meant for industrial work, and the women who migrated mainly occupied the textile industry (Bayliss, 36). The men also were prone to back-and-forth migration between Japan and Korea. Therefore, the prospects for labor organization of any sort suffered until labor settled down.
Colonial Korean workers in Japan serve as a unique case to study from the point of view of civil rights. Even as Koreans stabilized to form permanent families in Japan in the 1920’s and 1930’s, frequent risk of lay-off by Japanese employers created a precarious situation (Bayliss, 39). Once again the special ethnic problems of Korean labor demands a rights-based outlook. Koreans competed with one another jobs, meaning that Koreans even with an elementary school education had better job opportunities than their fellows (Bayliss, 42). In this way the labor question became an inter-ethnic issue as well, because Korean worker unity in Japan risked fragmentation. Some families turned to investing part of their income into a business, which could lead to becoming part of the middle class (Bayliss, 43). These Koreans could circumvent having their ethnic rights completely crushed as the most successful of the businesses serviced Japanese customers. The middle class also had an opportunity to move into Japanese neighborhoods, potentially further reducing inter-ethnic clashes for those particular Koreans (Bayliss, 45). However, it also meant potentially abandoning fellow Koreans’ interests, due to support for Japanese imperialism and Korean integration without actually solving lower-class Koreans’ social plights. In this way the ethnic rights situation for colonial Koreans living in Japan was complicated, dealing with strife between Koreans and Japanese, as well as between integrated higher-class Koreans and other Koreans.
Pro-democracy in the 1980’s led labor on a rights-based approach to fundamental social change. Women’s groups in their own right, in alliance with other organizations, confronted a variety of social issues which eventually led to the 1987 democratization of Chun Doo-hwan’s government. Despite the important leadership that the organizations took, the labor unions and heavy industry were often under more focus at the time (Nam, 94). Men in these industries were seen as the ones most likely to purvey wide-spread social change. In this way the same gender issues in Korean society that Japanese colonialism exacerbated continued. In particular women’s rights continued to suffer set-backs because they were cut off from the main labor and pro-democracy movement working in small firms, leading to their initial perception as unimportant. However, the growth of gender consciousness from factory exploitation in the 1970’s assured the rise of organizations that could stand up for civil rights, beginning with middle class women activists (Nam, 97). The male chauvinism that labor displayed in the early 1980’s could be overcome, and greater advocacy could be had compared to earlier times. Sexual torture cases at the hands of police, such as the one involving Korean student In-sook Kwon, who attempted to obtain labor as a factory worker, served as a vehicle for women’s groups and other organizations to rally for greater social change and receive notice for their approach (Nam, 99). The chauvinist state denounced the activists as the work of immoral women, but eventually one rapist police officer in the case was indicted under the pressure of thirty women’s organizations, the Korean Federation of Bar Associations and church groups. Organizations such as Korean Women’s Association United pushed for equal pay for equal work, maternity protection, and childcare, and others further advocated environmental causes such as tear-gas effects (Nam, 103). The women’s organizations successfully addressed labor issues and associated rights issues along with organization across many groups, forming a comprehensive pro-democracy movement which rights-ignorant labor organizations could not orchestrate. In order to unite families, organizations also included wives and mothers into their labor activism due to gender conflict over husbands and sons wishing to become active, but with the females trying to hold them back to prevent job loss (Nam, 106). A strike against the Kyungwon factory, for example, based on whole families participating won agreements for union democracy recognition. The organizations had the foresight to organize institutionless women in order to aid male labor and to help break down gender conflict within labor.
As South Korean civil society grew throughout the 1990’s, labor took on an increasingly middle-class character along with continued advocacy across many issues, but numerous challenges arrived with the Asian Financial Crisis and further damage by market liberalization. South Korea saw the widespread growth of civic organizations and voluntary associations after 1987, with 7,600 NGOs being formed, mostly in the 1990’s (Koo, Civil Society, 42). Thus the potential for rights-based advocacy greatly increased, destroying the need for long struggles with the government. However its middle-class character became apparent, such as with the Coalition for Economic Justice, made up only of professionals but who were geared towards income distribution across the classes. Organizations such as the Small Shareholder’s Rights Campaign firmly entrenched the character of labor in its service sector form. Smaller companies as well as chaebols could be pushed by financial shareholders to fix problems such as mismanagement, as opposed to labor militancy. The white collar and professional workers acted as a majority, and the system reflected this by advocating their kinds of rights (Koo, Civil Society, 44). This became possible because up to two-thirds of Koreans came to see themselves as middle class as the economy grew stronger and stronger throughout the 1990’s, and as protectionism decreased (Koo, Globalization, 2). However, this was also at the expense of constant labor cost cutting and maximalization of labor utilization, beginning a race to the bottom (Koo, Globalization, 5). It culminated in the 1996 labor law reform designed to cut job protection, and even though organized labor won struggles, it could do nothing in the face of the 1997 financial crisis and IMF bailout agreements which destroyed the last vestiges of protectionism in favor of market liberalization. Despite this further liberalization, during the crisis Kim Daejung blurred the established lines between government and civil society when he partnered GOs and NGOs together, and allowed government funding for NGOs and NPOs (Song, 42). Civil society took part in his programs, so even though some criticized him, it was hypocritical. Organizations developed since democratization failed to keep their independent advocacy forms during the crisis. The initial crisis affected manual laborers first, which confirms how their rights couldn’t be protected by organized labor, especially because of the previous shift to a majority of white-collar, professional and service-sector organizations (Koo, Globalization, 3). A shift towards just-in-time workers, contract workers, temporaries and daily hires characterized the crisis period, leading to regular workers with secure retirement becoming unemployed (Koo, Globalization, 7). The rights of these particular regular workers were crushed, replaced with workers with less rights because of their insecurity and earnings at 60% of regulars. Civil society obviously could not do anything for those they advocated. White-collar workers attempted to increase their skills for competitive purposes, further fragmenting labor, but it remained difficult even to hold a job that would guarantee staying middle-class throughout retirement. Businesses also outright failed, leading to increased urban poor and ten percent of workers in the largest chaebols losing their jobs, but after the crisis, fifty percent came to regard themselves as middle class. Therefore despite the issues brought about by the crisis and the IMF, the shift towards the service sector and the stabilization of the middle class and its jobs remained entrenched in society. The post-collapse world also meant a new flood of foreign goods, leading to the middle-class to identify itself mostly on consumption grounds (Koo, Globalization, 8). Individual rights became the new idea of the middle-class, rather than other rights models related to labor and groups with particular rights issues. On the other hand, old rights issues came back in full force during the collapse, within the context of new and continuing problems. The IMF homeless phenomenon led to some recognition of homeless rights, but with many contradictions towards recognizing the rights of different groups of homeless, unlike what one would have seen in the 1980’s towards different groups. The men who lost their jobs and their rights because of the IMF market imposition became the focus of international middle-class donations and foreign humanitarian group aid (Song, 44). The government also spent more welfare on this group than on any other in previous times. These homeless who were considered worthy of support were contrasted with the “vagabonds”, or those who had been homeless for some time and were considered unable to ever work again (Song, 45). Those seen as deserving were those men who had a desire to work and go back to a life seen as normal by society. For them their family breakdown was forgiveable because they were hard-working male bread-winners who couldn’t help losing their jobs, whereas the “vagabond” poor, who suffered family breakdown supposedly due to their own laziness, drunkenness, disease, and inability to pay for residence, didn’t deserve anything (Song, 46). Thus their rights could be safely ignored under this model. Much in the same way, city managers could claim that homeless women did not exist at all, because it sullied the image of what a fallen middle class family should look like. Therefore, if the homeless women did exist, it was because they were immoral and broke their family that way, so they were also undeserving of help (Song, 48). One can see how much women’s advocacy and rights for women in their particular labor situations fell dramatically leading up to the crisis, and then the actual crisis revealed its extent. At least for the male “vagabonds”, social workers mobilized to help them and to show that they could be rehabilitated, and that they were not much different from the IMF homeless (Song, 46). In contrast, civil society organizations such as the National Movement to Overcome Unemployment only offered programs such as the Movement to Survive Winter based on if the candidates met their ideal IMF-induced poverty status requirements (Song, 52). Instead of upholding the rights of the homeless based on their particular situation and former class situation, aid provision for and opinions towards the homeless relied on family ideology, depriving certain groups of help if they did not meet criteria.
Migrant labor faces its own issues in South Korea, dealing especially with government and corporate programs, and the government continually denies full rights to them through tricks. Labor from other countries began migrating to South Korea in the beginning of neoliberalism after democratization, breaking the country’s traditional national homogeneity ideology (Lim, 29). Earlier, through the government “wink-and-nod” system, labor was restricted to the professional and entertainment industries (Lim, 33). Government rarely cracked down on work in fields illegal to immigrant workers, leaving a large group in need of advocacy. The rise of undocumented workers also increased over time. In response to migrants the government used co-ethnic migration to uphold the idea of preventing homogeneity from being dilluted, and preferred Koreans from China, even though they made up most of the undocumented migrants in the 90’s. Their preference by the government as the largest group of migrants means that other groups do not get the same rights conferred on them, because these Choseonjok have even had the benefit of getting considered for special visa plans as of 2006. The government’s Industrial Training system supposedly does not distinguish between foreign or native, legal or illegal laborers for receiving labor organization rights, making it a seemingly attractive option for migrants (Lim, 34). However, it makes an exception for trainees, who receive no labor law benefits and have a one-year limit. The government expanded it in 1997 to allow for legal worker status after two years and taking an exam, but it still represents the government’s neglect of their rights and special situation, and differences between migrant groups. The Employment Permit System allows migrants full legal rights, but it restricts workers to five industries, imposes impossibility or difficulty in changing jobs, requires bilateral agreements to exist with the country in question and instates quotas per country with a three-year limit per laborer. Thus the government ends up taking rights away from migrant workers with this program as it seemingly gives them. Workers have been able to get around the programs on their own to find jobs that pay more money, however (Lim, 36). Even if they do not have advocacy, workers have been able to find ways around the system. Other issues became apparent when Daejung attempted to cull all foreign labor as unemployment increased during the financial crisis in order to preserve jobs for native labor (Lim, 39). This would have violated all of those laborer’s rights to keep their jobs, but in fact the number of foreign workers increased the most in 1999 at the height of unemployment due to native labor refusing to work in the SME sector. The dichotomy between native and foreign labor in what kinds of jobs it can do thus acts as a rights issue which divides labor, due to native labor refusing those jobs out of its own ideology. A further issue confronting the particular situation of migrant laborers is the migrant industry which takes advantage of their particular situation to make money (Lim, 41). Domestic private employment agencies rose, also leading to issues of officials and brokers taking more money than what bilateral agreements indicated. The industry also changes the living conditions of those laborers in respect to others, because they must live in concentrated areas in already geographically concentrated factories (Lim, 44). However other industries such as restaurants have acted as advocates catering to these concentrations of people, opening businesses geared towards them. NGOs have also responded by providing healthcare regardless of nationality. For-profit industry and advocacy groups have both attempted to help migrant laborers, but it also does not excuse the approach that the government has taken towards undue favoritism towards certain groups while at the same time neglecting other group’s particular situations and overall favoring native labor instead of giving the necessary advocacy.
Civil rights and the issues of different groups within different kinds of labor is the most informative way to look at labor throughout South Korean history, and the only way when groups specifically use such models in their struggles. In the Korean colony, the women’s labor issue in industry and prostitution serves as one situation that requires this outlook. This is especially true because of the ethnic conflict between women and the Japanese military male workers that they were forced to serve in an extensive system which maintained itself for a time in South Korea because of continuing Korean patriarchy. It also came at the heels of South Korean women’s issues and the rise of women’s organizations during industrialization, and the break-down of women’s rights during liberalization, culminating in the patriarchal values of the government and NGOs deprecating certain groups of women’s rights after all of their gains. Colonial Korea saw Korean labor in Japan which faced some common problems, but also underwent inter-ethnic competition amongst themselves for jobs as well as inter-ethnic strife with the state and employers. Some Koreans also became part of the middle-class, upsetting ethnic ties. Therefore a rights-based model which can consider each group’s individual interests is the only way to make sense of such complicated social relations. The rise of civil society as separate from government and with the freedom to advocate the rights of different groups in the 1990’s also heralded a middle-class post-industrial identity. It seemed threatened by the Asian Financial Crisis, IMF and further subsequent economic failure, but took on an increasingly individual rights stand as the middle-class recovered and partook in globalization. For the same neoliberal reasons, migrant labor and its particular rights situation has grown as an issue since the 1990’s, especially because of how the government has treated this kind of labor and subsequently what NGOs have done about it.
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