AFTER NEOLIBERALISM: Democracy and Class in South Korea/East Asia

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1 Participants Contact Information Name Affiliation Chang, Kyung-Sup Seoul National University Cho, Sungdai SUNY-Binghamton Choi, SeongSoo Yale University Chung, Rakkoo University at Albany-SUNY Deyo, Frederic SUNY-Binghamton Jung, Chungse SUNY-Binghamton Kang, Woo Chang New York University Kim, SangJun Kyung Hee University Koo, Hagen University of Hawai i Kwon, Oh-Jung okwon@sociology.rutgers.edu Rutgers University Lee, Kwangkun klee@binghamton.edu SUNY-Binghamton Lee, Yoonkyung yklee@binghamton.edu SUNY-Binghamton Yang, Myungji Myung_Ji_Yang@brown.edu Brown University Center for Korean Studies With the Academy of Korean Studies Grant for the Overseas Leading University Program Korean Studies Symposium in 2012 AFTER NEOLIBERALISM: Democracy and Class in South Korea/East Asia May 11-12, State University of New York at Binghamton Center for Korean Studies

2 FRIDAY, MAY 11 SCIENCE :00-4:15 pm Opening Remark Sungdai Cho (Director of the Center for Korean Studies) 4:15-6:00 pm Keynote Speaker Hagen Koo (University of Hawai i) Class Restructuration after East Asia s Growth with Equity 6:30-8:00 pm Dinner Fuji San 4105 Vestal Pkwy East, Vestal, NY :30-9:00 am Breakfast SATURDAY, MAY 12 FINE ARTS BUILDING 258 9:00-10:45 am Roundtable: Debating Modernization Trajectories in East Asia Chair & Discussant: Fredric C. Deyo (SUNY-Binghamton) Kyung-Sup Chang (Seoul National University) Compressed Modernity in Perspective: Through the Korean Aperture Chair & Discussant Frederic C. Deyo (Professor of Sociology, SUNY-Binghamton) Frederic C. Deyo is Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. Professor Deyo s research has focused on economy and society in Asia: including studies of economic development and reform, economic governance and institutions, corporate strategies, employment, labor markets, and labor movements. His most recent work dealt with the implications of economic reform and restructuring for the employment and social livelihood of workers in Thailand, China, and South Korea. The most recent book is Reforming Asian Labor Systems: Economic Tensions and Worker Dissent (Cornell University Press, 2012). In addition to his Asian research, Professor Deyo maintains active teaching and research interests in global and U.S. economic and employment change over the past 40 years. He is currently researching crises on U.S. and World Capitalism. Yoonkyung Lee (Assistant Professor, SUNY-Binghamton) Yoonkyung Lee is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Asian and Asian American Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton. Yoonkyung Lee s research interests encompass the fields of comparative politics, democratic theories, political economy, labor studies, and social movements with a regional focus on East Asia. Her research across these fields probes questions about democratic representation, particularly focusing on the causes, processes, and actors involved in social transformations such as democratization and economic development. Currently her working on two projects: (1) The dynamics between political parties and social movements in Asian democracies in shaping their political and economic trajectories, and (2) The new forms of labor resistance under neoliberal economic structure in technologically savvy East Asia. Articles appeared in Studies in Comparative International Development, Critical Asian Studies, Korea Observer, Asian Survey, and Asia Pacific Forum. The most recent book is Militants or Partisans: Labor Unions and Democratic Politics in Korea and Taiwan (Stanford University Press, 2011). SangJun Kim (Kyung Hee University) Overlapping Modernities and East Asia 10:45-11:00 am Break

3 2012. Her research interests include state-society relations, class formation, and development and democracy in East Asia from a comparative historical perspective. Her dissertation is on how authoritarian states sought to legitimize state projects of development and to produce political legitimacy through the creation of the urban middle classes in South Korea and China. Kwangkun Lee (Ph.D. Student of Sociology, SUNY-Binghamton) Not Only a Transition But Also an Intermezzo: The 1987 Labor Regime of South Korea in Retrospect This paper aims to contribute to the Korean labor regime debate in three ways. First, it elaborates the concept of labor regime. The labor regime is a cohesive mode of dynamics of political, economic, and social interactions among capital, labor, and the state. Analytically, it consists of four moments integral and inevitable to capitalist production and its reproduction: (1) social reproduction and protection of labor, (2) labor market, (3) labor process, and (4) class politics. Second, it tries to present a holistic approach toward the Korean labor regime through the lens of the labor regime. A heuristic exploitation of this analytical framework would help to overcome the descriptive character of the existing literature. And, third, with the wisdom of hindsight, I raise a question on the one-sided interpretation of the 1987 Labor Regime as a transition period from the authoritarian to the neoliberal regime: The 1987 Labor Regime was also an intermezzo between two historical acts in which price of labor power is made right by the state intervention. The formal changes of labor from commodified labor to commoditized labor is indeed the expression of the resumption of the asymmetry between capital and labor, which was effectively challenged under the 1987 Labor Regime. In May 2012, Kwangkun Lee defended his PhD dissertation, Getting Prices Right Again?: An Actor-Oriented World-Systems Approach to the Transformation of the South Korean Labor Regime, , in Sociology Department of Binghamton University- SUNY. He published an article, Towards a Reformulation of Core/Periphery Relationship: A Critical Reappraisal of the Trimodality of the Capitalist World- Economy in the Early 21st Century in Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 8(2-3): [republished in Jerry Harris, ed. (2009). The Nation in the Global Era: Conflict and Transformation, pp Amsterdam: Brill]. He is interested in world-systems analyses, global inequalities, capitalist state transformation, multinationalization of capital, global value chain analyses, innovation, global and regional division of labor, labor regime changes in South Korea, and the interface dynamic between global capitalism and national economies. 11:00 am- Panel 1: 12:45 pm Democracy and Politics in Neoliberal Korea Chair & Discussant: Yoonkyung Lee (SUNY-Binghamton) 12:45-2:00 pm Lunch Rakkoo Chung (University at Albany-SUNY) Development, Globalization, and Elites: Consolidation of Nominal Democracy Oh-Jung Kwon (Rutgers University) Hegemonic Discourse and Institutional Ethos in the Politics of the Korean Economic Crisis Woo Chang Kang (New York University) Electoral Cycles in Patterns of Tactical Allocation: The Analysis on the Intergovernmental Transfers in South Korea :00 3:45 pm Panel 2: Class and Social Structure in Neoliberal Korea Chair & Discussant: Kyung-Sup Chang (Seoul National University) 3:45-4:00 pm Closing Myungji Yang (Brown University) The (Un)Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea: From Collective Imagination to Frustrated Aspiration SeongSoo Choi (Yale University) Economic Crisis and Occupational Mobility: An Experience of South Korea Kwangkun Lee (SUNY-Binghamton) Not Only a Transition But Also an Intermezzo: The 1987 Labor Regime of South Korea in Retrospect

4 SYMPOSIUM ABSTRACTS & BIOGRAPHIES Keynote Speaker Hagen Koo (Professor of Sociology, University of Hawai i) Hagen Koo is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawai i at Manoa, US and journal editor of Korean Studies. Born in Seoul Korea, He received his BA in Korea and PhD from Northwestern University. Professor Koo has published extensively on the political economy of East Asian development and the industrial transformation of South Korea. His books include the award-winning Korea Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation and State and Society in Contemporary Korea. Currently, he is writing a book on the changing nature of class inequality in a globalized Korea, focusing on the disintegration of the middle class. Roundtable: Debating Modernization Trajectories in East Asia Kyung-Sup Chang (Professor of Sociology, Seoul National University) Compressed Modernity in Perspective: Through the Korean Aperture Compressed modernity is a civilizational condition in which economic, political, social and/or cultural changes occur in an extremely condensed manner in respect to both time and space, and in which the dynamic coexistence of mutually disparate historical and social elements leads to the construction and reconstruction of a highly complex and fluid social system. Compressed modernity can be manifested at various levels of human existence i.e., individual, family, secondary organizations, urban and rural spaces, societal-national units, and, not least importantly, the global society. At each of these levels, people s lives need to be managed intensely, intricately, and flexibly in order to remain normally integrated with the rest of society. In this lecture, I will (1) present a formal configuration of compressed modernity and compare its theoretical logic with some of the major theoretical perspectives on modernity (and postmodernity) in international scholarship, (2) delineate various (in particular, individual, national, and global) levels/units of practical manifestation of compressed modernity, (3) bring in South Korean experiences to explicate various dimensions of compressed modernity and to explore various historical and structural conditions for its emergence, and finally (4) discuss the historical and transnational relevance of compressed modernity beyond the South Korean context. Kyung-Sup Chang is Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Political Economy and Social Policy Research Center at Seoul National University. His research interests Korea s case, which was hit by the Asian financial crisis in late By using the Cox proportional hazards model, I analyze the patterns of occupational mobility in pre and post-crisis Korea. Findings include: First, the economic crisis served as an exogenous social incident and affected job mobility even after controlling for gradual institutional and structural changes. Second, I find a significant interaction effects between the economic crisis period and labor market structures and institutions. The findings support the idea that South Korean labor markets experienced a dramatic transition from the closed- or coordinated system to the open and competition-based system over the economic crisis. SeongSoo Choi is Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at Yale University. His research interests include educational inequality, social and economic mobility, social stratification, labor markets, quantitative methods, causal inference, formal modeling, and East Asia. He published several articles in Health and Social Sciences, Korean Journal of Gerontology, Korean Journal of Social Issues, and Korean Journal of American Studies. Myungji Yang (Ph.D. Student in Sociology, Brown University) The (Un)Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea: From Collective Imagination to Frustrated Aspiration This paper explores the trajectory of middle class formation in South Korea, from the state-directed middle-class formation in the 1960s and 70s, to the rise of the middle class in the 1980s, and to the downward mobility of the middle class since the economic crisis in the late 1990s. There have been two approaches to study the middle class in developing countries: one has been to conceptualize the middle class and estimate its size based on quantitative measurements; the other has been to focus on the cultural and consumption practices of the middle class. However, few studies have examined the political dynamics and processes through which the boundaries of the middle class have changed over time. Through an analysis of middle class formation in Korea, this paper argues that the middle class plays a key role in the politics of state hegemony by representing opportunity and upward social mobility. Drawing from archival sources and in-depth interviews, this paper analyzes how the state shaped the production of a middle class identity and how the rise of the middle class, in turn, influenced the political dynamics of economic development, democracy, and globalization. Myungji Yang will receive her Ph.D. degree in Sociology at Brown University in May

5 Oh-Jung Kwon (Ph.D. Student in Sociology, Rutgers University) Hegemonic Discourse and Institutional Ethos in the Politics of the Korean Economic Crisis In order to understand the actual power of liberal ideas, I examined two different types of ideational influences on the reform politics after the late 1990s financial crisis. I approached the neoliberalism as a hegemonic discourse which is exogenous and shortterm influences, operating in formal policy discourses. In contrast, I used the concept of institutional ethos to identify rather endogenous and long-term assumptions, acting as underlying practical norms in policy making process. By tracing the history of endogenous Korean liberalism from developmentalism to globalization, I identified its core institutional ethos such as public-private mix in state function and instrumental rationality. Then, I documented the crisis discourse to show how the crisis transformed the endogenous Korean liberalism into a showcase neoliberalism in which the fundamental principles of neoliberalism could legitimize the reform measures imposed by the IMF. I discussed how the ideologically challenged institutional ethos was activated to compromise the hegemonic discourse of neoliberalism focusing on the crisis discourse, reform agendas, and their implementations. Oh-Jung Kwon is a Ph. D. candidate in Sociology at Rutgers University working in the areas of institutional change, welfare politics, and comparative-historical sociology. She published an article The logic of social policy expansion in a neoliberal context: health insurance reform in Korea after the 1997 economic crisis. in Theory and Society (2011, Vol. 40: ). Her dissertation research investigates the institutionalization of neoliberal ideas in Korea s state-centered institutional environment. Focusing on the labor and welfare reforms after the late 1990s economic crisis, she estimates to what extent neoliberal ideas were effective in replacing Korea s local institutions. Panel 2: Class and Social Structure in Neoliberal Korea SeongSoo Choi (Ph.D. Student in Sociology, Yale University) Economic Crisis and Occupational Mobility: An Experience of South Korea In spite of its striking impact on individual life chances, literature has infrequently addressed the relationship between individual career mobility and macroeconomic shocks in established market economies. In this paper, I investigate how patterns of occupational mobility change under economic crisis by taking an example from South include: comparative modernities (compressed modernity); developmental politics and social policy (Korea and China); comparative citizenship (developmental citizenship); family-life course-political economy relationship; illiberal bourgeoisie and Asian democracy, etc. His recent books in these areas include: South Korea under Compressed Modernity: Familial Political Economy in Transition (Routledge, 2010/2011), Contested Citizenship in East Asia: Developmental Politics, National Unity, and Globalization (co-edited with Bryan S. Turner, Routledge, 2012), Developmental Politics in Transition: The Neoliberal Era and Beyond (co-edited with Ben Fine and Linda Weiss, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). He is currently working on two book projects on Developmental Politics in South Korea: From Developmental Liberalism to Neoliberalism and Compressed Modernity: The Korean Configuration and Beyond. SangJun Kim (Professor of Graduate School of Public Administration and Civic Engagement, Kyung Hee University) Overlapping Modernities and East Asia Recently the long-prevailed idea of one-single modernity has been challenged. Theories of multiple modernities and alternative modernities represent the challenge. Sympathizing the esprit of the challenge, this paper tries to overcome the weakness and limits of the challenging theories. Firstly, theories of multiple modernities (MMT) have not successfully proffered any clear-cut concept of modernity of their own. They just have maintained that there are many versions of modernities. With only differences, they cannot reach any alternative definition of modernity which can incorporate multiplicity and universality of modernity. Critiques of the challenging theories have put their fingers on this vulnerable spot, arguing that MMT make the definition of modernity impossible or infinite, thus meaningless. Secondly, the challenging theories also presuppose that European modernity is the origin or the original type of modernity. Modernities of the rest are, at best, creative adaptations of the original type (Gaonkar 2001:18). It is a critical limit of the theories. For these weakness and limit, the challenging theories have not yet made themselves a truly alternative theory to the classical one. Much required theory of modernity must base itself firmly upon recent historiographical evidences as well as updated theoretical perspectives. This paper presents an alternative conceptualization of modernity, namely, a theory of overlapping modernities which can incorporate the multiplicity and universality of the multiple modernities. In addition, it contemplates the implications of the alternative perspective for East Asian studies.

6 SangJun Kim is a Professor of Graduate School of Public Administration and Civic Engagement at Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Korea; He was a Paul F. Larzarsfeld Fellow of Columbia University and received his Ph.D from the sociology department of the University (BA from Seoul National University, MA from New School for Social Research). He has been working on issues in social theories, historical sociology, ethics of modernity, civil society, social movements and theories of justice. His publications in English include Inventing Moralpolitik: A Sociological Interpretation of Confucian Ideology, Ritual and Politics (2000: Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University); "The Genealogy of Confucian Moralpolitik and Its Implication for Modern Civil Society", Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy and the State, edited by Charles Armstrong, London and New York(2002): Routledge; Moralpolitik, Encyclopedia of Sociology vol.vi, edited by George Ritzer, Oxford: Blackwell(2007); Democracy and Reflexive Consensus: Korean Context and Global Relevance, Inter- Regional Dialogues: Democracy and Social Justice in Asia and Arab World, Paris: UNESCO(2007). He recently published two books (in Korean), Democracy in Postneoliberal era (2009, Expanded edition 2011) and Confucian Civilization and Universal Human Values (2011). Panel 1: Democracy and Politics in Neoliberal Korea Rakkoo Chung (Ph.D. Student in Sociology, University at Albany-SUNY) Development, Globalization, and Elites: Consolidation of Nominal Democracy This paper attempts to explain the conditions and mechanisms of the emergence of a large number of new democracies between 1975 and 2000, namely the third wave of democratization. The leading theories of democratization cannot explain, and did not predict, the third wave. Employing a mixed-methods approach, this paper aims to find the dominant factors of third-wave democratizations (in the quantitative part) and to explain the ways in which a nondemocratic country adopts democracy (in the qualitative part). First, I conduct event history analysis of 121 third-wave transitions. Based on the findings, I propose alternative theories of democratization, which serve as tentative models for the comparative historical analysis of carefully selected cases: South Korea and Nigeria. For Korea, I focus on the years before and after For Nigeria, the years around 1999 are of interest. Many third-wave democracies share this common characteristic: They have the institutional form of democracy but lack the substance of democracy, which is referred to as nominal democracy. Ironically, democratic institutions (particularly the representation system and election) do not necessarily broaden political participation but often inhibit the civic coalition from growing. Consequently, nominal democracy is consolidated. In the last decades of the twentieth century, democracy had become the only legitimate type of political system. Under this global pro-democracy climate, the critical moments of many third-wave democratizations came in two ways. First, as in Korea, powerholders were faced with substantial pressure from below when their regime was rendered illegitimate by its poor economic performance, violence against its people, and/or severe inequality. Second, as in Nigeria, powerholders found incentives for democratization when democratization would better position their economy in the global market and attract more foreign capital. In the aftermath of democratization, however, powerholders effectively inhibit further democratic growth by absorbing the democratic potential of civil society into the electoral system (in Korea) or by co-opting civil leaders (in Nigeria). Rakkoo Chung s research interests include political sociology, organization, economy and work, quantitative research methods, comparative historical analysis, globalization, stratification, intersection of race, class and gender, social networks, and area studies in South Korea and Nigeria. His dissertation title is The Third Wave of Democratization: Consolidation of Nominal Democracy? Woo Chang Kang (Ph.D. Student in Politics, New York University) Electoral Cycles in Patterns of Tactical Allocation: The Analysis on the Intergovernmental Transfers in South Korea This paper suggests political business cycles (PBCs) in tactical spending of government funds. Specifically, it makes two claims. First, an incumbent changes his primary targets of distribution following an electoral calendar. When an election is imminent, he tries to buy off swing votes. Once elected, however, he wants to reward his core constituents. Second, such a distributive strategy does not necessarily accompany fiscal expansion. Without an increase in total expenditure, an incumbent may divert resources from opposition and core voters to swing voters. These claims are tested with an analysis of intergovernmental transfers in South Korea between 1989 and Empirical findings are generally consistent with expectations. Woo Chang Kang is Ph.D. student in Politics at New York University. He awarded the Fulbright Scholarship in , and is winning the MacCracken Graduate Fellowship in New York University in He presented several papers at MPSA, APSA, SPSA, and AAS Annual Meetings.