a brief history of South Korea's labor force 1960s-present

Here is a paper I just finished for my Modern Korean Society course. If you aren't interested in academic papers please skip, but if you want to learn anything about the history of South Korea's labor movements it might be interesting to read. I thought it was a really interesting subject to learn about, and do keep in mind it's supposed to be a bit of an opinion paper. Have fun!

Amy Delahanty
Modern Korean History
December 08, 2007        The Democratization of the Labor Force

    It's hard to imagine the economic and political instability as well as the social unrest  that ensued during the 70s, 80s, and 90s while living in Seoul Korea today. If you were unaware of the events that took place, Seoul would seem as though it is a prospering, affluent city that is flourishing under the wonders of globalization quite seamlessly. If you are to visit the markets in 동댸 문 or 이 대 you can enjoy the inexpensive plethora of 5,000 won shirts and skirts, or the 10,000 won shoes that are clustered and hung on racks up and down the streets. Upon first coming to Korea and spending my first couple weeks shopping and eating, I was amazed at the cheap textiles that flooded the stores. It seemed as though these textiles are what has kept the Korean consumption of goods at a staggering rate and as a result helped keep export rate high and GDP climbing. However, these textiles and shoes also come at a very different price, one that has a history of hardships and strife all for the growing Korean economy. The focus of this paper is to illuminate the instability among the labor force and labor unions during the 1970s and 80s, mapping out its history as well as the South Korean government's justification for manipulation and oppression(suppression?) in the name of economic growth. Furthermore, I would like to briefly present the differing opinions about Korea's economic tactics (namely, the manipulation of the labor force) to stay afloat during the "20th century rat race" (as described by Cummings) to become a equal power among the western powers. Finally, I will conclude with a summary of my opinions of Korea's deplorable political policies and actions against its own people ironically for the sake of the nation they were stifling.
    The growing oppression of the working class intensified in the 1970s with the threat of western powers gaining momentum and power over the eastern countries. Korea, looking to prove its place in the imperial powers as an Asian tiger utilized the Export-Oriented Industrialization (EOI) trade and economic policy. This policy aimed to speed-up the industrialization process of Korea by exporting goods in which Korea had a comparative advantage. This advantage was cheap labor. The Korean government under Park Chung-hee utilized its power to pay their workers low wages in the textile and shoe industry. These wages ranged from 1,500 won to 3,000 won per month (Cummings 374) and the typical working day averaging 15 hours, starting at 8am and ending at 11pm. In addition to the long working days, the workers were entitled to only 2 days off per month, and if there was a lot of work to be done, they were forced to work throughout the night...stay awake...and even take stimulants such as amphetamines. 83% of the workforce in these textile factories were women, many of those age 14-20 years of old (Koo 70-71). This unabated labor exploitation and the enormous amount of human suffering is what provoked the need for the labor force to band together, organize, and improve the conditions in the workplace.
    The beginning of the labor movement in South Korea can be identified prior to 1970s, however, one of the first notable labor protests in the history of South Korea's working-class formation took place on the afternoon of November 13,1970 in the garment district known as Pyunghwa Market. On this day a dozen young workers shouted slogans demanding the improvement of the working conditions for the workers. Shortly after the protest began, the police rushed to break up the protest. The refractory protesters were insusceptible to the coercion of the police and matters escalated quickly. The man who organized the group demonstration was a tailor known as Chun Tae-Il. Chun had been deeply concerned about the wretched working conditions in the garment district and devoted a significant amount of his time to improve the working conditions in the market (Koo 70). After repeated peaceful attempts prior to the protest such as petitions and letters to the Bureau of Labor, Chun resorted to more shocking measures to obtain the results he wanted. While the police were using brute force, Chun disappeared for a few minutes and returned with a can of gasoline.  After dousing gasoline all over his body, he then set himself on fire and shouted within the flames, " We are not machines!";"Let us rest on Sunday!";"abide by the Labor Standard Laws!" "Don't exploit workers!" (Koo 70). This desperate act used as a result of the imbalance of power among the labor force, dispersed the spirit of resistance and rebellion among the minds of millions of workers, and "provided a powerful symbol...that has thus far had no sacred symbol or venerable tradition to inspire and mobilize workers for a collective goal" (Koo 70). The martyr Chun Tae-Il flung the industrial problems into the limelight, and caused the industrial workers into a stage of history as a critical force in the social transformation in South Korea.
    Following the lead of Chun Tae-Il, union consciousness permeated throughout the minds of other textile workers, more specifically women in the two largest textile companies, Wonpoong and Dongil. The labor activism began in the second half of the 1970s (Koo 72) when class/labor consciousness grew and workers began to realize the importance of more systematic and collective efforts to improve conditions. Typically, the unions that existed prior to the union coups at Wonpoong and Dongil were controlled by the textile companies themselves. Anyone can foresee the problems that can occur from a union being controlled by the company that workers file grievances against, therefore the main prerogative of the textile workers was to create new independent unions and transform company unions into genuine representative unions. At Wonpoong and Dongil women workers staged a coup to take control of the company union. As described in Song's article, "Unions at Wonpoong built the strongest union established in the 1970s, representing an exemplary case of the independent union movement".  Women workers at Wonpoong Textiles staged an electoral revolt at the union election and elected a new union president alongside the majority of women occupying floor delegates positions (Koo 74).  With the help of Bang Yong-suk, one of the few men who had the courage to participate in the women-dominated 1970s union movement, developed probably the strongest and most well-organized grassroots union at Wonpoong Textile (Koo 76). Despite the progressive path the unions were pushing towards, it was no match for severe repression from the military government of Chun Doo Hwan and the divisive techniques of management of pitting male workers against females.
    Similar to the union movement at Wonpoong, the democratic union movement fared much the same, perhaps worse. Like Wonpoong, the union movement at Dongil Textile was led be a cadre of women workers who were active participants in small-group activities. The feisty group of women maneuvered events to elect the first woman president in South Korea in 1972 and replaced corrupt union officers with activist women representatives (Koo 76). In this giant leap towards a democratic and gender neutral union, bitter conflicts ensued among men and women. The South Korean government saw these independent unions and their possible impact on labor laws and restrictions as a threat to the growth of the economy and a challenge to it's power.  As a result, the South Korean government implemented all possible means to  block attempts to organize independent unions or to reform the management-contolled unions. One of these tactics was to mobilize male workers to destroy the female-dominated independent unions. Aforementioned above, the union leadership at Dongil Textile was won in 1972 by women, therefore, union activists had to overcome tremendous harassment, mistreatment, and bribery by management. Song states in his article, A Martyr, Women Workers, and Churches that women were given "extra work, transfered to the most arduous and menial posts, subjected to sexual harassment, and reprimanded severely for every minor mistake". When these tactics failed, companies bribed males to coerce other male workers as well as scare the more passive female workers in order to oust the incumbent union leadership. In July 1976 when the new elections were scheduled the Dongil Textile company went to the extent to lock the women participants in the dormitories and nail the doors shut to sway the vote. Following this, the women participants were enraged and staged a unusual sit-in-strike. On July 25, when police arrived at the sit-in-strike, Dongil workers undressed and stood half-naked in front of them. One participant described the scene saying, "In the face of such an enormous threat of violence, it was our ultimate resistance, an action spontaneously taken, with no shame or fear....we hung tightly together in our nakedness. Can steel be stronger and harder than this?" Despite the passionate and intense beauty of this scene, it only stunned police for several minuets. After being dumbfounded, police arrested the women, but not before they would violate their bodies. Another extreme example, was prior to the election in February 1978, thugs sprang out of the toilet area after the night shift workers finished their work and spread feces all over the women's faces and brassieres. This is an extreme, but relevant example at the gritty extent in which the government and companies stooped to in order to preserve the deplorable labor laws in South Korea.
    In the 80s, many of the progressions that were achieved in the early 70s in the labor unions were squashed in the 80s with unjustified police force and administrative decree. Protests such as the YH Trading Company highlight a new problem in the labor laws: companies being able to lay of workers without any compensation. As described in Chapter 7 of Bruce Cummings book Korea's Place in the Sun,  in August of 1979 young female textile workers held a sit-down strike after YH had lost its hold on its place in the wig market and abruptly shut down its factory, dormitories, and mess halls. Per usual the police intervened, but this time they resulted to brute force evicting 170 women from the dormitories and beating most of them mercilessly.  In January 1981, just before his visit to Washington, General Chun Doo Hwan dissolved the Chonggye Garment Worker's Union by administrative decree, thus ending the union that had begun with Chun Tae-Il's suicide (Cummings 383). Chun even created "white skull" (parkkol) strikebreakers, known for their martial arts skills that would arrive at the scene on motorcycles  and wade into workers, breaking heads (Cummings 384)
    In the 90s, brute force was replaced with less obvious forms of coercion which manifested in means of corrupt public policies.  In January 1997, controversial labor laws were passed that gave employers more power to lay off workers and hire temporary workers and scabs while disallowing the formation of competing unions in a single workplace (Koo 1). With these newly passed laws, job stability among Korean workers was the focus among activists rather than past grievances of  the 70s such as long hours and small pay. A general strike of 3 million formed which shut down production in the automobile, shipbuilding, and other major industries instigating  world wide support. A protest on such a grand scale was significantly different than past sporadic protests in the 70s and 80s, and it made a difference. The protest ended in late January when the government reluctantly agreed to revise the new labor laws. Even though this general strike achieved only minimal concessions from policy makers, it raised awareness of labor militancy in South Korea. This international spotlight helped make the 90s a decade of change for labor relationships in South Korea. By the late 1990s, the normal work day was 8 hours, overtime was compensated, and wages were no longer set unilaterally by employers...triumphant leaps from the progress in the 60s,70s,80s.
    I would like to point out that this argument and history is far to one sided at this point... I have focused heavily on the trials and tribulations of the worker and not on the economical benefits of such an exploitation. This may seem a little unemotional considering I feel as though you can never justify such disreputable actions, but for the sake of the argument, I will present the viewpoints of developmental economists who feel as though this labor exploitation was necessary for Korea to stay competitive in such a critical time. Economists' (see, for example, Cole and Lyman 1971; Jones and Sakong 1980, Kuznets 1977) primary concern in these literatures is to explain how South Korea and other East Asian tigers gained economic performance (Koo 4). The amazing recovery by South Korea during the economic IMF crisis sparked interest in many economists to dive into the history of South Korea's labor tactics. The source was the EOI strategy of cheap, hard working labor. Economists clearly acknowledge that EOI in East Asian newly industrialized countries depended on this cheap labor, and agree that "the abundant supply of cheap high-quality labor at the early stage of industrialization, they agree, was the key source of comparative advantage of these economies in the world economic system (Koo 4).
    The dominating rationalization provided by the state to its workers included diction alluding to nationalism, familism, harmony, and national security.  South Korea propagated national goals of "modernization of the fatherland" to make the nation rich, and protect itself from the "hostile communist north" and other foreign powers as a reason to mask, and justify the exploitation of its workers. The government exercised brute force, public policy, and now cultural means as they asked the worker to apply confucian ideals of family, trust, respect, and loyalty to its workplace. The government used slogans such as, "Treat workers like family members, Do factory work like my own work" (Koo 12) Every means possible was used to execute the governments goals of cheap labor at the expense of its people...essentially asking it's workers to sacrifice themselves on the cross of the country,
    I suspect many of these same ploys to exploit labor are still occurring currently in South Korea, which is why there are still cheap textiles flooding the market. My opinions on these matters mirror those of Song, and Cummings in that I believe that the price workers paid for a rise in the standard of living wasn't worth the pain, harassment, manipulation, and physical/emotional abuse. I side with a humanistic approach to the labor disputes in Korea rather than an economical approach. Viewing labor as simply a commodity and a means that can be manipulated at will without consequences is abhorrent. The workforce is not simply a line on a graph to be examined in terms of supply and demand, it should also be viewed through a sympathetic lens placing ourselves in the lives of those who were exploited. For the multitude of American economists, business pundits, and political scientists who saw only Korea's development as a "miracle" or "dynamic", and viewed the confucian work ethic as not a hardship but a "heaven sent opportunity to help family and nation"  I wish they could have examined the facts through the eyes of the worker not the government (Cummings 385). I agree with Cummings when he stated, "I still do not understand why the immense sacrifice that the Korean people made to drag their country kicking and screaming into the 20th century rat race should merit such a uncritical, well-nigh hysterical enthusiasm from academics who presumably not paid for their views". It is the job of the people to view these events objectively, and weigh our stoic academic interests in a universal logarithm of morality. This sort of moralistic evaluation should quickly yield the almost natural realization that observing human progress as phenomenal and extraordinary yet disconnecting those accomplishments from the individuals who engineered them is, in itself, unnatural; we must pay homage through respect for the individual vigilance of every person who worked to accomplish the result in question. We cannot very well go about celebrating the exuberance of united human progress without identifying and attributing credit to the individual colors that constitute that impressive development.

Works Cited:

Cummings, Bruce. 1997. Korea's Place in the Sun: a modern History. New York: WW Norton & Co.
    Chapter 7. "The Virtues, II: The Democratic Movement, 1960-Present." (pp. 343-403)
Koo, Hagan. 2001. Korean Workers: the culture and politics of class formation. Ithaca: Cornell
    University Press. Chaps. 1 and 4 (pp.1-22; 66-99)