Yoonkyung Lee

Militants or Partisans: Labor Unions and Democratic Politics in Korea and Taiwan

The exceptional experiences of South Korea and Taiwan in combining high growth and liberal democracy in a relatively short and similar timetable have brought scholarly attention to their economic and political transformations. This new work looks specifically at the operation of workers and unions in the decades since labor-repressive authoritarian rule ended, bringing Taiwan, in particular, into the literature on comparative labor politics. South Korean labor unions are commonly described as militant and confrontational, for they often take to the streets in raucous protest. Taiwanese unions are seen as moderate and practical, primarily working through formal political processes to lobby their agendas. In exploring how and why these post-democratization states have come to breed such different types of labor politics, Yoonkyung Lee traces the roots of their differences to how unions and political parties operated under authoritarianism, and points to ways in which those legacies continue to be perpetuated. By pairing two cases with many similarities, Lee persuasively uncovers factors that explain the significant variation at play.

Sky Protest: New Forms of Labour Resistance in Neo-Liberal Korea

ABSTRACT This article examines the rise of “sky protest,” a new form of labour resistance in Korea, by focusing on three major labour struggles at Hanjin Heavy Industry, Ssangyong Motors, and Hyundai Motors. Through a close examination of these instances of labour contention, this study argues that the rise to this new form of labour unrest is associated with deepening chasms in neo-liberalised Korean society, such as the division between globalising capital and immobile labour, the division between regular and non-regular workers within the labour market, and the division between the represented and the unrepresented by political institutions and collective organisations. This article ultimately argues that these multiple and severe divisions within Korean society pose a serious strain on its democratic governance.

Modern Korean Society: Its Development and Prospect (review)

gral part of the April 19th Student Uprising. Then, the author’s brief summary of the April 19th movement itself is a part of rewritten history. The most intriguing, but least complete, part of this book is the discussion on the politics of representation. Without negating the author’s analyses of labor literature in the 1980s or the alliance between workers and students, I would expect a survey on political representation to include intellectuals’ relation with agricultural and urban poverty sectors that had been integral parts of the minjung discourses. Considering the fact that many former activists are playing significant roles in civil society and contemporary Korean politics, the addition of in-depth interviews with such activists would greatly enrich this section. This book concludes with a brief remark on the minjung movement as history. It is here that the author expresses her responsibility to ‘‘rescue the minjung movement’’ by treating it ‘‘as a rightful subject of history’’ (p. 303). It is noteworthy that during the recent anti-U.S. beef demonstrations (April–July 2008), some images and symbols of the 1980s undongkwon culture returned to the streets of Seoul. Especially when the protest groups began to bring up an antineoliberal agendum in mid-July, the flag and song of the Chondaehyop (National Committee of University Student Representatives: see p. 302), which had been seen as the symbol of demising Korean undongkwon but is now being greeted as legendary heroes, drew attention from thousands of street bystanders and citizens. Interpretations on the 1980s counter-public sphere have always been fluctuating. Now, it appears that those symbols and images are being revived as vibrant elements of Korean civil society. Jungmin Seo University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa