Industrial Warriors: South Korea’s First Generation of Industrial Workers in Post-Developmental Korea

Abstract

This study analyses the skills upgrading programmes of South Korea’s first generation of skilled workers, focusing on their political and social trajectories from bulwarks of the developmental regimes up until 1987, to a “labour aristocracy” of regular workers employed mainly in large companies in heavy industries in South Korea. The term “labour aristocracy” highlights how the “regular workers”, employed mostly in monopolistic large enterprises in heavy industries, have better wages, job security and other social benefits than “non-regular workers” and other regular workers employed in small and medium companies. It argues that these “Industrial Warriors” were the product of the Korean developmental state’s creation of an egalitarian social contract, and that the political and social trajectories since then must be seen in its totality. This is necessary because it manifests the profound change in Korea’s political economy from state-grassroots synergistic developmentalism to neoliberal industrial capitalism, wherein having a regular job has become a substantial asset in an era of non-regular employment. This study contributes to the literature on the political economy and to sociological discussion of the Korean developmental state that continues to this day and is far from over.

본 연구는 한국의 일세대 숙련공들의 기술 향상 (skills upgrading) 프로그램을 그들이 거쳐온 정치.사회적 행로 (trajectories), 즉 철옹성같았던 1987년이전 개발정권하에서 방파제 (bulwarks) 역활을 시작으로, 현재는 대기업에 대부분 고용되어 있는 정규직 “노동귀족”으로 변신된 과정을 중심으로 분석한다. 여기서 ‘노동귀족’이란 용어는 대부분 독점적 중화학관련 대기업에 고용된 “정규직노동자들” 이 “비정규직 노동자들”과 기타 중소기업에 고용된 다른 정규직노동자들에 비해서 얼마나 나은 임금과 고용보장 및 다른 사회적혜택을 누리는가를 돋보이게한다.

본 연구는 이른바 한국의 “산업전사들”은 개발정권이 고안해낸 평등주의적 사회계약의 산물이어서 개발정권이후의 그들의 정치.사회적 행로는 총체적 견지에서 파악되어야 함을 주장 한다. 왜냐면 이들 산업전사들의 정치.사회적행로 자체가 근본적의로 변한 한국의 정치경제, 즉 국가와 민생이 서로밀접하게 상호작용을했던 개발주의 (developmentalism)로부터 정규직 그자체가 상당한 재산이되는 비정규직 고용시대의 신자유주의적 산업자본주의로 바뀐걸 증명하기때문이다. 이연구는 정치경제 문헌에 기여하고 또한 현재까지도 지속되고있는 한국발전국가의 사회학적 담론에 기여한다.

Keywords:

• South Korea
• Industrial Warriors
• developmental state
• industrial skilled and semi- skilled workers
• unionisation movement
• economic restructuring

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank Robert Cribb and Adrian van Leest for their valuable comments. I gratefully acknowledge the research grants from the AMCI Foundation, Australia and the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, South Korea.

Notes

1. Lim Young-Il (1998, p. 80) briefly noted that the workers employed in heavy and chemical industries after the late 1970s were skilled and semi-skilled.

2. Kang Myung-Koo is another Korean sociologist who elaborates on the term, “developmentalist mentalité”. See Kang (2011).

3. The term Saemaŭl in Korean means “new village”. The initial Saemaŭl Movement was launched in April 1970 by President Park as a top-down rural development campaign. After 1973, however, the state promoted the term “Saemaul” as “New Community” in documents published in English, including President Park’s own books and official speeches, including those on the New Community Movement.

4. Alice Amsden notes that by 1970 the number of primary school graduates and those with no schooling in Korea’s labour market was as high as 67.4 per cent of Korea’s workforce, while only 26.4 per cent had secondary schooling. See Amsden (1989, p. 222).

5. This term was first introduced in a report entitled ‘A Survey Report on Manpower Resources in the Science and Technology Field’, produced in 1962 by the then military junta administration.

6. Korea’s education system was then based on a 6-3-3-4 system, as it is today. In addition to this system, however, there were a variety of technical schools ranging from three-year junior technical high schools to five-year vocational colleges that combined the three-year high school curriculum with two-year college courses. This paper, however, examines the mainstream technical high schools only.

7. The Korean school system is strikingly similar to that of Japan, especially in terms of both its highly egalitarian structure (including lottery-based placements allocated by the Ministry of Education) and overheated competition for credentials, excessive private tuition, and so on.

8. In addition to these four categories of technical high schools, there were also three-year “higher level technical schools” which provided the same level of high school curriculum, as well as five-year vocational high schools. These schools, however, were not mainstream and are thus omitted from this study.

9. At the end of 1975, a total of 32 Korean companies, including Hyundai Construction and Dong-A Construction, had operations in the Middle East, and yet only 561 industrial skilled workers were working there.

10. In the case of Chinju Technical High School, 350 students passed the NTQT, exceeding their allocated target of 150 by 200.

11. Located in Kumi, a small town in North Kyungsang province, the birth place of President Park Chung Hee, this KTHS was established in 1973 with an initial repatriation fund of ¥394 million from Japan.

12. The success rate in the NTQT increased from 65 per cent in 1976 to 85 and 90 per cent in 1979 and 1980 respectively. All trainees undertaking vocational training also had to sit for the NTQT.

13. The 1987 labour revolt was initially started on 5 July by workers of Hyundai Engine, a relatively small firm in Ulsan which belonged to the Hyundai conglomerate group.

14. The term “Goliat” initially derived from the Goliat crane, 82 metres tall, used by strikers at Hyundai Heavy Industries in January 1990. The strikers claimed that their strike using that crane represented “a big fight with a dictatorial regime with the trust and pride of 25 million workers at stake” (cited in Koo, 2001, p. 210).

15. There were serious divisions within the labour movement, including the radical National Congress of Trade Unions (NCTU or Choˇnnohyoˇp). The internal division essentially reflected the then rapidly growing debate within the labour movement arguing for moderation and social partnership with the government and business.

16. NGO-led neoliberal reform began initially under President Kim Young Sam’s globalisation campaign in the early 1990s. The number of NGOs grew from 3,800 in 1996 to 6,159 in 1999 and 7,400 in 2003, creating the so-called NGO era under the consecutive liberal governments of Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo-hyun (2003–08).

17. Pak Choˇm-kyu, ‘Urinŭn Hyundai ch’a choˇnggyujik nojo-ŭi “paisin”-ŭl kioˇk hamnida’ (We remember the “betrayal” of the Hyundai regular workers’ union’). PRESSian, 2 March 2012. Available at http://www.pressian.com/article/article.asp?article_num=30120302131651&section=02, accessed November 2011.

18. ‘T’ujaeng-ŭi sangching koliat-i “nosa hwahap” sangching-ŭiro’ (Goliat, the symbol of struggle transformed into a symbol of “harmony between labour and capital”). Available at http://www2.korea.kr/newsWeb/pages/brief/categoryNews2/view.do?newsDataId=148693900&category_id=su&section_id=&metaId=main_news, accessed October 2010.

19. This figure of non-regular workers is used by most observers of Korean labour issues. Kyunghyang shinmun, however, suggested six million in August 2011. See Kim Tasul (2011)