This essay is an analytical reading on Hagen Koo’s book Korean Workers: the Culture and Politics of Class Formation. It introduces Koo’s main objective and questions, his sociological and theoretical arguments applied to explain Korean worker phenomenon, and how he treats data to facilitate and strengthen his sociological arguments in his effort to answer the main issue addressed in the study. At the end of this essay, I will limit my analysis for practicality on how students have played a very important role using their cultural capital in the process of class formation in South Korea in relation to Koo’s logic dynamic.
Apart from poor and inhumane work conditions, workers’ wages in 1970s were very low and unilaterally decided by the employers. A series of workers’ conflicts and strikes against the hegemony of their capitalist employers and pro-capital authoritarian state in 1980s and 1990s had given rise to the promising and dramatic change of workers’ class, status and identity. Koo in his book seeks to explain why South Korea’s workers turned drastically from docile and submissive workers to become one of the most militant, if not the only, class movements recorded in the modern history of Asia. On the other hand, from his comparative perspective, he advanced the question of why “South Korean workers were far more successful than their counterparts elsewhere in East Asia in developing a strong and aggressive labor movement” (p. 3). Thus, his study deals with the history of South Korean workers and industrialization. Koo emphasizes, however, that this book is not the history of workers and industrialization from the ruling class perspective; it is a history from the grass-root perspective. Thereby, I think, this study is critically done to encounter the hegemony of the ruling class in the working-class literature. Koo explains that because labor does not play aggressive role in development, there has been little attention given to the labor issues in East Asian countries. This leniency is in line with the orientations of several writings available on labor. These writings, as Koo criticizes, do not show enough inclination to show labor issues as a class problem, rather they focus on labor docility, weakness and exclusion from politics. In addition, Koo sees that issues raised regarding labor are too general (i.e. applicable across East Asian countries) around confusion culture, rapid economic growth and role of the state, and this, as a result, fails to properly capture the aggressive labor movement in South Korea (p. 6-7). Furthermore, available literature tends to see the problem from a simplistic, reductionist and essentialist point of view. This less critical and simplistic studies have led Koo to the idea of using comparative approach (e.g. European class formation experiences, and other less progressive class movements in other Asian countries) within historical, contextual and constructivist perspective toward cultural and political aspects that interacted closely to facilitate the dramatically progressive formation of class in South Korea. This implies that this study wants to show that class formation process is not a structurally static and closed-ended process, but it is a dynamic and open-ended one. I think because of this conceptual stand, Koo emphasizes that class formation is not a straight forward process of completion, but it is a back and forth process or a water flow-like process in which the actors intelligibly and consciously negotiate with their real conditions in the process of to be or not to be. In short, Koo uses the dynamic dialectical logic to explain the process of class formation in which cultural, political and social factors closely intertwined to facilitate the rapid formation of the working class in South Korea. Therefore, throughout his writing, he strongly argues that workers’ experiences of severe aggravation and excessive humiliation give rise to the class-consciousness. However, these experiences, according to Koo, will not bring about expected changes without the existence of other forms of movement resources, i.e. cultural, economical and political.
In addressing his questions, Koo comes with different types of supporting data, i.e. statistics, interviews, news documents and pictures. He deals with these data in a unique way of combining complexity and simplicity with one clear goal - is to support different arguments that he lays out in the book. I think this way of treating data is a necessity required by his theoretical and conceptual approach; an approach not guided by a simple linear logic, rather it is a comprehensive approach that takes the complexity of issues into account in order to bring out better argued and supported explanations. Such an approach, I think, is not an easy choice to accomplish due to the dominance of positivistic paradigm during Koo’s initial intellectual training (i.e. his graduate). In addition, the non-linearity of thought employed by Koo increases the explanatory power of the study at the expense of its more predictive power. However, this does not mean Koo has not considered social change prediction in his analysis. This prediction effort had been, by and large, made when Koo introduced the issue of undecided features of South Korean working class within national and global context at the last chapter of his book.
My analysis, as I said initially, will focus on how students played a very important role using their cultural capital in the class formation process in South Korea. In chapter 5, Koo explains
“Entering the 1980s with bitter political experiences and a growing awareness of the need to build broad alliances with other democratic forces in their struggle against the immensely power state, students developed a new orientation toward labor. They no longer look at industrial laborers as mere objects of humanitarian concern. They now looked on them as their most important political allies and as potentially a most powerful force for social transformations … They realized, however, that the power of labor remained only a potential; it had yet to be tapped and mobilized” (p. 105).
Repressive state that was preoccupied with rapid economic growth for the interest of the capitalist and politicians who collaborated to control the majority of the assets or resources in South Korea caused social resentment and depression both at minor (e.g. working places) and macro level (e.g. public sphere). The interaction between students and workers that started earlier in the 1970s has moved to become more complex, from focusing on the humanitarian issues to the democratic and political issues. Students and workers were united by their common goals, namely to enjoy equal opportunities to obtain better life chances as South Korean citizens. This unique combination, according to Koo, was among the reasons why the worker movement in South Korea obtained higher level of strength and quality compared to other industrializing countries in the region. In addition, this more mature worker movement actually was the result of a long-term upgraded process of class awareness socialization by the students who had involved directly and side by side with the factory workers to fight against injustice. These direct working experiences enabled students to be fully committed to the enlightenment process of workers. Furthermore, the extreme level of capital-aligned state’s repression made the student and workers’ intimacy to be unpredictably far more solid and unturned.
Koo argued strongly that it was the close collaboration between students and workers in the moment of political crisis that had made the path of South Korean workers movement very distinctive compared to their counterparts in other Asian countries. However, in his discussion of students and workers, I found two points that are interesting for me to make comments on. Notably, the comments I will make are not directly related to the points he made on the above-mentioned argument, but they are related to his logic dynamic. First, Koo uses the terms ‘intellectuals’ and ‘intelligentsias’ to refer to students, dissident political intellectuals and religious leaders. He emphasized in p. 99 of the book that even though intellectuals played a very important role in the labor movement, they were not the real agents of the struggles; but those female workers were the real agents and those of intelligentsias were only the catalysts. Koo wants to stress the importance of role played by the female workers and he succeeds to do that without underestimating the role played by the intelligentsias. Nevertheless, when students became deeply involved in labor struggles by entering factories, I think, there was a recursive direction of internal capital exchange between workers and students. Empowered and enlightened workers had obtained a certain level of intellectuality through training led by students, students-turned-workers, on the other hand, had gained the capacity of becoming agents of struggle as their counterpart workers thorough work experiences. At this stage, Koo does not seem to have an interest in addressing this issue of agency as he does initially in relation to the female workers and church leaders. Second, Koo talked about Lee, a female student worker, who was not given a leadership role in the union once her identity was revealed (p. 122). Koo did not explore this data further (i.e. why she was excluded by the real workers). I think there was an agency conflict or agency misidentification here. If it is important to clarify who are the agents and who are the catalysts in the initial chapter as he did, it also becomes conceptually important at this stage to identify the agency status, and how it guides the interest relations among actors. Being able to identify the agency issue at this stage, I think, can facilitate to highlight the inter-agent dynamic of the labor movement in the 1980s (e.g. Lee case). However, both points do not deter the depth and the richness of Koo’s significant study on South Korean movements. This study has recorded analytically and critically the most important moment of the labor movement in South Korea and more or less has brought about an important impact on the way people, especially in South Korea perceive labor and political movements in the country.
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Apart from poor and inhumane work conditions, workers’ wages in 1970s were very low and unilaterally decided by the employers. A series of workers’ conflicts and strikes against the hegemony of their capitalist employers and pro-capital authoritarian state in 1980s and 1990s had given rise to the promising and dramatic change of workers’ class, status and identity. Koo in his book seeks to explain why South Korea’s workers turned drastically from docile and submissive workers to become one of the most militant, if not the only, class movements recorded in the modern history of Asia. On the other hand, from his comparative perspective, he advanced the question of why “South Korean workers were far more successful than their counterparts elsewhere in East Asia in developing a strong and aggressive labor movement” (p. 3). Thus, his study deals with the history of South Korean workers and industrialization. Koo emphasizes, however, that this book is not the history of workers and industrialization from the ruling class perspective; it is a history from the grass-root perspective. Thereby, I think, this study is critically done to encounter the hegemony of the ruling class in the working-class literature. Koo explains that because labor does not play aggressive role in development, there has been little attention given to the labor issues in East Asian countries. This leniency is in line with the orientations of several writings available on labor. These writings, as Koo criticizes, do not show enough inclination to show labor issues as a class problem, rather they focus on labor docility, weakness and exclusion from politics. In addition, Koo sees that issues raised regarding labor are too general (i.e. applicable across East Asian countries) around confusion culture, rapid economic growth and role of the state, and this, as a result, fails to properly capture the aggressive labor movement in South Korea (p. 6-7). Furthermore, available literature tends to see the problem from a simplistic, reductionist and essentialist point of view. This less critical and simplistic studies have led Koo to the idea of using comparative approach (e.g. European class formation experiences, and other less progressive class movements in other Asian countries) within historical, contextual and constructivist perspective toward cultural and political aspects that interacted closely to facilitate the dramatically progressive formation of class in South Korea. This implies that this study wants to show that class formation process is not a structurally static and closed-ended process, but it is a dynamic and open-ended one. I think because of this conceptual stand, Koo emphasizes that class formation is not a straight forward process of completion, but it is a back and forth process or a water flow-like process in which the actors intelligibly and consciously negotiate with their real conditions in the process of to be or not to be. In short, Koo uses the dynamic dialectical logic to explain the process of class formation in which cultural, political and social factors closely intertwined to facilitate the rapid formation of the working class in South Korea. Therefore, throughout his writing, he strongly argues that workers’ experiences of severe aggravation and excessive humiliation give rise to the class-consciousness. However, these experiences, according to Koo, will not bring about expected changes without the existence of other forms of movement resources, i.e. cultural, economical and political.
In addressing his questions, Koo comes with different types of supporting data, i.e. statistics, interviews, news documents and pictures. He deals with these data in a unique way of combining complexity and simplicity with one clear goal - is to support different arguments that he lays out in the book. I think this way of treating data is a necessity required by his theoretical and conceptual approach; an approach not guided by a simple linear logic, rather it is a comprehensive approach that takes the complexity of issues into account in order to bring out better argued and supported explanations. Such an approach, I think, is not an easy choice to accomplish due to the dominance of positivistic paradigm during Koo’s initial intellectual training (i.e. his graduate). In addition, the non-linearity of thought employed by Koo increases the explanatory power of the study at the expense of its more predictive power. However, this does not mean Koo has not considered social change prediction in his analysis. This prediction effort had been, by and large, made when Koo introduced the issue of undecided features of South Korean working class within national and global context at the last chapter of his book.
My analysis, as I said initially, will focus on how students played a very important role using their cultural capital in the class formation process in South Korea. In chapter 5, Koo explains
“Entering the 1980s with bitter political experiences and a growing awareness of the need to build broad alliances with other democratic forces in their struggle against the immensely power state, students developed a new orientation toward labor. They no longer look at industrial laborers as mere objects of humanitarian concern. They now looked on them as their most important political allies and as potentially a most powerful force for social transformations … They realized, however, that the power of labor remained only a potential; it had yet to be tapped and mobilized” (p. 105).
Repressive state that was preoccupied with rapid economic growth for the interest of the capitalist and politicians who collaborated to control the majority of the assets or resources in South Korea caused social resentment and depression both at minor (e.g. working places) and macro level (e.g. public sphere). The interaction between students and workers that started earlier in the 1970s has moved to become more complex, from focusing on the humanitarian issues to the democratic and political issues. Students and workers were united by their common goals, namely to enjoy equal opportunities to obtain better life chances as South Korean citizens. This unique combination, according to Koo, was among the reasons why the worker movement in South Korea obtained higher level of strength and quality compared to other industrializing countries in the region. In addition, this more mature worker movement actually was the result of a long-term upgraded process of class awareness socialization by the students who had involved directly and side by side with the factory workers to fight against injustice. These direct working experiences enabled students to be fully committed to the enlightenment process of workers. Furthermore, the extreme level of capital-aligned state’s repression made the student and workers’ intimacy to be unpredictably far more solid and unturned.
Koo argued strongly that it was the close collaboration between students and workers in the moment of political crisis that had made the path of South Korean workers movement very distinctive compared to their counterparts in other Asian countries. However, in his discussion of students and workers, I found two points that are interesting for me to make comments on. Notably, the comments I will make are not directly related to the points he made on the above-mentioned argument, but they are related to his logic dynamic. First, Koo uses the terms ‘intellectuals’ and ‘intelligentsias’ to refer to students, dissident political intellectuals and religious leaders. He emphasized in p. 99 of the book that even though intellectuals played a very important role in the labor movement, they were not the real agents of the struggles; but those female workers were the real agents and those of intelligentsias were only the catalysts. Koo wants to stress the importance of role played by the female workers and he succeeds to do that without underestimating the role played by the intelligentsias. Nevertheless, when students became deeply involved in labor struggles by entering factories, I think, there was a recursive direction of internal capital exchange between workers and students. Empowered and enlightened workers had obtained a certain level of intellectuality through training led by students, students-turned-workers, on the other hand, had gained the capacity of becoming agents of struggle as their counterpart workers thorough work experiences. At this stage, Koo does not seem to have an interest in addressing this issue of agency as he does initially in relation to the female workers and church leaders. Second, Koo talked about Lee, a female student worker, who was not given a leadership role in the union once her identity was revealed (p. 122). Koo did not explore this data further (i.e. why she was excluded by the real workers). I think there was an agency conflict or agency misidentification here. If it is important to clarify who are the agents and who are the catalysts in the initial chapter as he did, it also becomes conceptually important at this stage to identify the agency status, and how it guides the interest relations among actors. Being able to identify the agency issue at this stage, I think, can facilitate to highlight the inter-agent dynamic of the labor movement in the 1980s (e.g. Lee case). However, both points do not deter the depth and the richness of Koo’s significant study on South Korean movements. This study has recorded analytically and critically the most important moment of the labor movement in South Korea and more or less has brought about an important impact on the way people, especially in South Korea perceive labor and political movements in the country.
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