Gender, Work and Resistance: South Korean Textile Industry in the 1970s

Abstract

This paper examines the forces behind South Korean women workers' labour activism in the 1970s, an era of rapid export-orientated industrialisation. Most of the labour strikes initiated by women occurred in the labour-intensive manufacturing sector, and they were in sharp contrast to the overall labour quiescence of male workers during the same period. The actions of South Korean women refute widely held assumptions about the docility of Asian women workers. This case study suggests that women rebel when their lives undergo drastic changes under a set of macro and micro circumstances. Women dialectically interact with the capitalist-patriarchal structure as conscious human agents, and the result of such interaction is their gender- and class-based collective resistance.

Key Words:

• Women
• development
• gender
• labour
• textile industry
• Korea
• resistance

Notes

¹ Another account showing that passive resistance simply is not the dominant mode of women's labour struggles can be found in Park (1998).

² The emergency fund transfusion from the International Monetary Fund to the Korean economy in 1997 suggests that Korea's development experiences may no longer be an ideal model for other developing economies.

³ Wage policy was determined at a factory level. At that level, there were discriminatory work assignments to women entailing less managerial authority and fewer promotion possibilities. Very few women were assigned as shop floor team leaders and foremen. Factory management believed that paternalistic male figures were more suitable to lead young women workers. Women's less important and prestigious work assignment compared to their male counterparts was used as the justification for their lower wages. Non-job-related considerations in determining a worker's wage, such as the number of dependents, marital status and military service, also led to substantial wage discrepancy between men and women workers.

⁴ Such wage differences between other Asian countries and Korea seem to be positively associated with the degree of patriarchal beliefs. Women's socio-economic value seems to reflect on the value they carry as members of the society and workforce.

⁵ Korean workers were often called “industrial warriors,” fighting for the nation's industrialisation, on the “export front.” A woman worker from Dong-Il Textile wrote the following poem conveying her scepticism against such euphoria: Drinking a Cup of Hot Coffee/ I drink a cup of hot coffee/ Dispensed from a vending machine./ A cup of coffee and one tablet of Timing awaken my tired body./ My head feels numb,/ My exhaustion feels numb,/ and the passage of time feels numb./ Would a cup of coffee and a tablet of Timing qualify me/ As an industrial warrior? /The industrial warrior who has to work/ All the time (Ch[obreve]ng, 1985: 83).

⁶ The Urban Industrial Mission (UIM) began factory evangelism in the city of Inch[obreve]n in the early 1960s, and soon became an active advocate of workers' rights. The UIM provided tangible assistance to workers' strikes, such as religious justifications, strategy consultation and legal assistance (Korean National Christian Council, 1979).

⁷ Korean labour unions had three hierarchical apparatuses: the national-level union (Federation of Korean Trade Unions), industry-level unions (e.g. National Textile Workers' Union) and enterprise level unions.

⁸ The women's movement in South Korea picked up its velocity and expanded its constituencies as society as a whole was gearing towards political democracy after 1987. Other civic movements, such as the environmental movement, NGOs and local autonomy, began to bloom in the atmosphere.