The Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea ( ) and China ( ): Nationalism, Modernity, and New Identities.

Transcription

1 The Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea ( ) and China ( ): Nationalism, Modernity, and New Identities by Myungji Yang M.A. Yonsei University, 2003 B.A. Yonsei University, 2001 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Sociology at Brown University Providence, Rhode Island May 2012

2 Copyright 2012 Myungji Yang

3 This dissertation by Myungji Yang is accepted in its present form by the Department of Sociology as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Date Patrick Heller, Chair Date John R. Logan, Committee Member Date Melani Cammett, Committee Member Date James Mahoney, Committee Member Date Paget Henry, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date Peter M. Weber, Ph.D Dean of the Graduate School iii

4 EDUCATION CULICULUM VITAE Ph.D. Sociology, Brown University, May 2012 Dissertation: The Making of the Urban Middle Class in Korea and China: Nationalism, Modernity, and New Identities Committee: Patrick Heller (Chair); John R. Logan; Melani Cammett; and James Mahoney Exams: Political Economy of Development; Comparative-Historical Methods; and Political Sociology M.A. Sociology, Yonsei University, South Korea, 2003 Thesis: Class Politics as a Ruling Strategy: Working Class Exclusion and Middle Class Inclusion during the Park Chung Hee Regime in South Korea. B.A. Sociology and Korean Literature, Yonsei University, South Korea, 2001 RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS Political Sociology Comparative Historical Sociology Comparative Development Civil Society and Democracy Globalization and Political Economy East Asia PUBLICATIONS The Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea: Discipline, Nation- Building, and the Creation of Ideal National Subjects. Sociological Inquiry. In Press. What Sustains Authoritarianism? From State-Based Hegemony to Class Based Hegemony during the Park Chung Hee Regime in South Korea Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society, Vol. 9, Issue 4 (December 2006): Class Politics as a Ruling Strategy: Working Class Exclusion and Middle Class Inclusion during the Park Chung Hee Regime in South Korea (in Korean). Journal of Social Development Studies, Vol. 9 (2003): WORKS IN PROGRESS Making Revolution from the Middle: Middle-Class Formation in Democratic Movements in South Korea and the Philippines (Co-authored with Celso Villegas). Under review. The Disciplinary Revolution? Middle Class and Economic Development in South Korea and China. The (Un)Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea: From Collective Imagination to Frustrated Aspiration. iv

5 AWARDS, GRANTS, AND FELLOWSHIPS 2012 International Conference Travel Grant, Office of International Affairs, Brown University 2011 (With Irene Pang and Derek Sheridan) Graduate International Colloquium Fund, Office of International Affairs, Brown University 2011 Conference Travel Grant, Department of Sociology, Brown University 2010 Travel Grant, XVII International Sociological Association World Congress of Sociology 2009 Travel Grant, SSRC Korean Studies Dissertation Workshop Dissertation Fellowship, Graduate School, Brown University 2008 Financial Aid Award, Princeton in Beijing, Princeton University 2008 Beatrice and Joseph Feinberg Memorial Award for Graduate Education, Department of Sociology, Brown University 2008 Research Fellow, S4 GIS Institute, Brown University 2007 Summer Fieldwork Grant, Graduate Program in Development, Brown University 2006, 2007 Conference Travel Grant, Graduate School, Brown University Graduate School Fellowship, Graduate School, Brown University 2003 Best Thesis Award, Graduate School, Yonsei University Merit Scholarship, Yonsei University CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS The (Un)Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea: From Collective Imagination to Frustrated Aspiration. Korean Studies Symposium (Selected Participant). State University of New York, Binghamton, NY. May Making Gender and Nation? The Construction of Housewives Discourses in South Korea in the 1970s. Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting. Toronto, Canada. March Making Revolution from the Middle: Construction of Middle-Class Narratives in Democratic Movements in South Korea and the Philippines (with Celso Villegas). Social Science History Association Annual Meeting. Boston, MA. November American Sociological Association Annual Meeting. Las Vegas, NV. August The Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea: Discipline, Nation-Building, and the Creation of Ideal National Subjects. International Sociological Association World Congress of Sociology. Gothenburg, Sweden. July Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meeting. Boston, MA. April The Illiberal Path to Development: The Urban Middle Class and the State in the Making of Development in South Korea ( ) and China ( ). SSRC Korean Studies Dissertation Workshop (Selected Participant). Monterey, CA. July v

6 Democracy without Labor? The Dynamics of Labor Politics since Democratization in South Korea. Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting. Atlanta, GA. April Contested Politics of Economic Reform in South Korea and China. GPD Summer Fieldwork Workshop. Watson Institute, Brown University, Providence, RI. October Biopolitics of Family Planning: Disciplinary Development in South Korea in the 1960s-80s. American Sociological Association Annual Meeting. New York, NY. August Family Planning in South Korea in the 1960s-80s: Power, Development, and Discipline. Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meeting. Philadelphia, PA. March Class Politics as a Ruling Strategy: Working Class Exclusion and Middle Class Inclusion during the Park Chung Hee Regime in South Korea. American Sociological Association Annual Meeting. Montreal, Canada. August Inter-Ivy Sociology Symposium. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. April TEACHING EXPERIENCE Instructor Summer Studies Program, Brown University Work in the Global Economy (Summer 2010 and 2011) Introduction to Sociology (Summer 2011) Teaching Assistant Department of Sociology, Brown University Globalization and Social Conflict (Spring 2012) Organizational Theories in Private and Public Sectors (Fall 2006 & 2009) Comparative Development (Spring 2008) Corporations and Global Cities (Fall 2007) Social Inequality and Exclusion (Spring 2007) Introductory Statistics for Social Research (Fall 2005, Spring 2006 & Spring 2010) Department of Sociology, Yonsei University Introductory Sociology (Fall 2002) Social Stratification (Fall 2001) Social Psychology (Spring 2001) Invited Guest Lecturer Department of Sociology, Brown University Authoritarianism and Democracy in South Korea (July 2010 and 2011, Social Change, Democracy and Dictatorship) vi

7 RESEARCH EXPERIENCE Labor and Civic Movements in South Korea (March 2008, Comparative Development) Resource Mobilization Theory in Organization (November 2006, Organizational Theories in Private and Public Sectors) Dissertation Fieldwork Research Seoul (The Institute of Social Development, Yonsei University) and Beijing (The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), Aug Aug Collected primary data including newspaper, magazines, and political speeches; interviewed state officials, journalists, and local experts; interviewed white-collar workers, professionals, and managers; collected existing local research. Research Assistant Globalization and Business Politics (for Prof. Melani Cammett), Fall Reviewed theories of globalization and development in East Asia for Prof. Melani Cammett s book project (Globalization and Business Politics in Arab North Africa: A Comparative Perspective) The Origin of Real Estate Investment in Korea (TV documentary), Supervisor: MBC (Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation), Seoul, Korea, Jan Mar Collected data on developing Gangnam areas in Seoul during the Park regime for a TV documentary Impacts of Working Time Reduction in Women s Employment, Principal Investigator: Korean Women s Development Institute, Seoul, Korea, Summer 2003 Reviewed theories of gender and employment for the project ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE TRAINING Princeton University, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China Summer Coursework for Intensive Chinese Language Training (2008) PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Level III Teaching Certificate: Professional Development Seminar, the Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Brown University, Level II Teaching Certificate: Classroom Tools Seminar, the Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Brown University, Bridging Knowledge and Power: GIS for Social Science Research Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences (S4) Institute, Brown University, Level I Teaching Certificate: Sheridan Teaching Seminar, the Harriet W. Sheridan vii

8 Center for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Brown University, PROFESSIONAL SERVICE Occasional Reviewer for British Journal of Sociology, Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy, European Journal of Development Research Year of China Social Sciences Colloquia Series Organizer, Brown University, Spring 2012 Student Assistant, GPD (Graduate Program in Development)/IGERT (Integrated Graduate Education Research and Training) Program, Brown University, Fall Student Assistant, BIARI (Brown International Advanced Research Institute), Summer 2010 Inter-Ivy Sociology Symposium Organizer, graduate student research conference MEMBERSHIPS IN PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS American Sociological Association Association for Asian Studies Eastern Sociological Society International Sociological Association Social Science History Association 2004-present 2007-present 2006-present 2008-present 2011-present LAGUAGES English (Fluent) Korean (Native) Chinese (Proficient) viii

9 ACKNOLWEDGEMENTS While writing my dissertation, I always felt like going through an endless tunnel. I would not have finished this long journey without much guidance, support, and advice from a number of people. Though this journey was tiresome and challenging, my colleagues and friends made the experience enriched and invaluable. First of all, I am really grateful of my dissertation committee members who provided critical intellectual and moral support. I was tremendously lucky to have a patient, encouraging, and supportive mentor Patrick Heller, who read every chapter of this dissertation with care and enthusiasm and gave insightful feedback at every stage of this project. Patrick always lent me endless hours to make this dissertation better and generously shared his vision about democracy and development. He has been a great role model of a critical intellectual and passionate teacher. John Logan always challenged me to rethink my arguments in key ways and guided me to draw a big picture. He brought his expertise on urban China and insights to improve the substance and framework of the project. Melani Cammett always provided timely, constructive comments, helped me to make a better research design, and sharpen analytical framework. In addition to feedback on my dissertation, she always provided much needed support and encouragement. As a young, female scholar, she has been a great source of inspiration. Last but not least, James Mahoney guided me closely in my first year at Brown. I learned how to study history from a sociological perspective from him. Despite being away since my second year at graduate school, he has continually offered insightful advice. I would also like to thank my dissertation reader Paget Henry for his critical and theoretical comments. ix

10 Critical thinkers and stimulating scholars, they inspired me all along the way toward the completion of this dissertation. I am deeply indebted to my fellow graduate students for incessant academic and moral support during my entire years at graduate school. The members of a dissertation writing group greatly helped to clarify and refine my ideas. Thanks to Erin Beck, Jen Costanza, Chris Gibson, Esther Hernandez-Medina, Sukriti Issar, Shruti Mamjudar, Cecilia Perla, and Oslec Villegas, who showed what friendship and solidarity are. I also thank to my friends and colleagues in the Department of Sociology at Brown who shared a countless cups of coffee, lively conversation, and years of company at Maxcy, including Carrie Alexandrowicz-Shandra, Justin Buszin, Jennifer Darrah, Julia Drew, Rachel Goldberg, Adriana Lopez, Holly Reed, Gabriela Sanchez-Soto, Dan Schensul, Laura Senier, Jing Song, Matthias vom Hau, and Hongwei Xu. I am also grateful for staffs in Maxcy, Joan Picard, Kristen Soule, and Muriel Bessette especially Karl Dominey for sending out hundreds of letters of recommendation. This dissertation is a product of a year of field research in Korea and China. During my field research, I got enormous help from the Institute for Social Development at Yonsei University in Seoul and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. Special thanks go to Professor Zhang Yi, who shared his ideas about the Chinese middle class and introduced a number of interviewees in Beijing. I also appreciate useful comments for a group of SSRC Korean Studies Dissertation Workshop held in Monterey, Cal., July Professors Bruce Cumings, John Duncan, Laurel Kendall, and Seungsook Moon shared their regional expertise and provided critical comments on this project. The group of participants Dukhyo Choi, Sukyung Han, Nicholas Harkness, x

11 Whitney Taejin Hwang, Jaeeun Kim, Monica Kim, Hyunok Lee, Jaeyoun Lee, Kwangkun Lee, Sangsuk Lee, and Saeyoung Park discussed my work for days and provided me with comradeship among Koreanists. This research would not have been possible without participation and consent of a number of anonymous people that I interviewed in both Seoul and Beijing. They sat with me for countless hours to talk about their lives, both achievements and frustrations. Their life stories are the essential part of this dissertation. It is beyond my expression to describe how much I appreciate their welcome and warm interests about my research. As a sociologist, I was enormously fortunate to have an opportunity to observe and write how ordinary people struggle to make their lives better and how these small movements transform society. Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my family for unending love and patience. To my parents, thank you for emotional and financial support to make me get through this arduous process. To my only and younger sister Hyunjung, thank you for sending unwavering faith and confidence. I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, who made a lot of sacrifice for their children, endured difficult times, but never lost their hopes. I hope this dissertation could be a small gift to their unfulfilled dreams. xi

12 TABLE OF CONTENTS CURRICULUM VITAE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv ix CHAPTER 1. Introduction 1 CHAPTER 2. Bringing the Middle Class Back In: National Modernization, Developmental Discourse and the Urban Middle Class 31 CHAPTER 3. The Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea ( ): Nation-Building, Discipline, and the Birth of the Ideal National Subjects 59 CHAPTER 4. Cultural Construction of the Chinese Middle Class: Economic Reform, Urban Consumer Culture, and the National Desire 94 CHAPTER 5. My Home, My Car: Pursuing the Middle Class Dream in South Korea, CHAPTER 6. A Place of My Own: Seeking Privacy and Seclusion of the Urban Middle Class in Contemporary China 177 CHAPTER 7. Conclusion 215 BIBLIOGRAPHY 228 xii

13 LIST OF TABLES Table Managerial Resources in the Manufacturing Sector, Table Relative Monthly Earnings by Occupation, Table Ownership Rates of Major Household Goods (by household) 85 Table Occupations of Party Members ( ) 106 Table Education of Party Members 106 Table Per-Capita Annual Disposable Income of Urban Households 114 Table Life in Beijing ( ) 115 Table Annual Possession (Per 100 Households) of Main Durable Consumer Goods in 3000 Urban Households ( ) 116 Table Population Change and Rate of Urbanization in Seoul 136 Table Rates of Returns per Pyung 151 Table Land Values of Seoul ( ) 152 Table Ownership of Major Durable Consumer Goods 170 Table Surveys of Middle-Class Consciousness 170 Table Housing Survey 1985: Provision of Facilities 181 Table Housing Conditions of 5000 Urban Households 188 Table Characteristics of the Middle Class 217 xiii

14 LIST OF FIGURES Figure The City of Seoul 136 Figure Apgujŏng-dong in the 1970 s 137 Figure Jamwon-dong in the early 1980 s 138 Figure The current Gangnam landscape 139 Figure Apartment Distribution in Seoul 156 Figure Distribution of Cram Schools in Seoul 157 xiv

15 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION Social scientists and journalists have celebrated the middle-class surge over the last two decades. Recently, the Economist claimed, more than half the world is middleclass thanks to rapid growth in emerging countries. 1 Many journalistic accounts have described this new middle class as a global consumer: walking through megamalls, buying brand-new consumer electronics and a shiny new car in Beijing, Mumbai, or São Paulo. This particular image of the middle class has resulted in construing the middle class as an economic category and led to research in measuring the size of the middle class. Few have focused on how non-market forces political and discursive as well as market forces construct the middle class in developing countries. Instead, the middle class has been treated as an outcome of economic expansion and industrialization (Huntington 1968; Lipset 1959). Little attention has been paid to how the state deliberately produces specific meanings, symbols, and values through the middle class and how the rise of the middle class in turn influences the political dynamics of developmental processes. This dissertation examines how state-sponsored middle-class formation contributed to new nation-building based on economic development and cultural civilization in South Korea ( ; hereafter Korea) and China ( ). Through the creation of the middle class, both these authoritarian states attempted to generate internal unity and mobilize the entire population for development. The emerging middle class symbolized new social values of modernity, progress, and civilization that could make a break with the backward and stagnant past. Along with particular 1 Economist (February 14, 2009, pp.3-4). 1

16 economic policies and institutional arrangements, politico-ideological projects in middleclass formation were also critical in the success of the developmental push that led to rapid economic growth with relatively little social backlash. Social Transformations without Revolution? Explaining Disciplinary Development in East Asia In the 1950s Korea was a poor, war-shattered nation. Korean society was characterized by backwardness and misery, and extreme poverty prevailed throughout the country. Beggars and war orphans were commonplace, and city-dwellers lived in miserable shacks with other families on the hills. Roads were dusty, and electricity and running water were still luxuries of the well-to-do. To outside observers, Korea seemed destined to remain an isolated and agricultural hermit. After almost three decades of industrialization ( ), however, Korea has achieved unprecedented economic development and has become a model for other developing countries. Korea s growth was explosive, with thirty years of growth averaging almost 9 percent a year. The country doubled its real per-capita income in 11 years from 1966 to 1977 (Clifford 1998:17). During this period, Korea underwent substantial social transformation, including rapid urbanization and far-reaching changes in economic and class structure. Formerly an agricultural country, where farming was the livelihood of most of the population, Korea became industrialized; manufacturing and service industries reached 80 percent in total industry in 1987 (Korean National Statistical Office 1998: 99). The proportion of the new middle class, including professional, managerial, and clerical workers (not including sales employees), increased 2

17 from 6.7 percent to 16.6 percent of the population during the two decades from 1963 to 1983 (Koo 1991:485). Over the five years , seven million out of its 36 million people had left their rural hometowns to work in cities (Choi 1997: 67). The population of Seoul, the capital city, increased almost five times, from 2.5 million in 1960 to reaching 10 million by the end of the 1970s (Choi, ibid.). In a similar vein, after Mao s death in 1978, China has experimented with economic reform and has seen the most rapid economic growth of any country, sustaining double-digit average annual growth rates for almost three decades. The Chinese economy recently surpassed Japan s as the second-biggest in the world and economists predict that China will overtake the United States by 2025 or 2030 (Leonhardt 2010). Only three decades ago, China was a populous, poor socialist country afflicted by the Great Leap Forward famine and the dislocations of the Cultural Revolution. Discarding ideological radicalism after Mao, the Chinese government promoted incremental reform and a gradual transition to a market economy, privatizing most state-owned firms and implementing broad structural changes. Many people moved out of poverty or near poverty and saw remarkable improvements in living standards. Some market research firms expect that in less than two decades, 350 million people more will migrate from rural to urban areas, creating an urban population of approximately one billion, about two-thirds of that middle class (Wang 2010:7). It is surprising that two different countries with different socioeconomic systems at two different points in time both experienced great social transformations with relatively little large-scale conflict and at relatively little social cost compared to other economies. In particular, both countries underwent dramatic social conflict before the 3

18 stages of high economic growth. Before promoting developmental projects, both countries suffered extreme social chaos and economic hardship. The three years of civil war in Korea not only completely destroyed the social infrastructure, but they also caused two million civilian deaths and tragic family separations. And the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution in China brought about massive political violence toward ordinary people and great social dislocation by sending urban youth to the countryside for manual labor. Given these abnormal conditions, it was remarkable that these two countries could restore social order and accomplish economic development within a mere generation. This sustained boom has no parallel in history. It took nearly an entire century for early European developers to reach the same level. The United States took 47 years ( ) to double its real per-capita income and Britain took 58 years ( ) (Clifford 1998:17). Britain s economic growth averaged only 1.2 percent a year between 1830 and The United States grew 2.7 percent in and 3.4 percent in the 1980s (Clifford, ibid.). Further, late developers in Latin America were not as successful as China and Korea because massive political and social conflicts erupted in the wake of social and economic transformation. The miracle of economic growth in Latin America was sustained only for a short time, and nations there suffered a long period of economic recession. By contrast, both Korea and China achieved their development goals in an ordered way without experiencing political change. Though some resistance and political crises were encountered (consider the student movements in Korea and the Tian anmen Square protests in China), social challenges from below never disrupted the existing social order. In this sense, the great transformation in both countries was disciplined. 4

19 What made this particular developmental path possible in these two countries? Under what conditions did they promote their disciplined economic development? How did the state reorganize society with this developmental push and how in turn did the societies react to the state? Many students of development would say that the role of centralized state power and a capable, efficient bureaucracy was critical in Korea s and China s particular developmental paths (Amsden 1989; Chibber 2003; Evans 1995; Johnson 1982; Kohli 2004; Woo-Cumings eds. 1999). In order to catch up with more advanced economies, the late- or late-late developers became actively involved in organizing the market; the state provided incentives to make private capital become more entrepreneurial as well as providing a suitable environment for capital (Gerschenkron 1962; Hirschman 1958). While there is no denying that the role of the state is crucial in designing and implementing appropriate economic policies, the analysis of this institutionalist approach is always limited to the economic arena and often ignores the sociocultural aspects: the state not only makes the incentives and prices right, but also shapes particular cultural norms, identities, and political subjects. To promote economic transformation and mobilize the entire population, the state must impose a new social order and new sets of rules and must foster certain dispositions and attitudes. Oftentimes, this social aspect of development has been taken for granted in the previous literature. However, as Gramsci noted, domination without consent of the subordinated classes increases the cost of domination by heightening the possibility of social instability (Gramsci 1971). Constructing hegemony and political legitimacy for the development project not only 5

20 reduces the cost of domination, but also provides a cultural framework through which ordinary people can engage in the state project. Some culturalists argue that unique Asian values explain the East Asian successes. They claim that the distinct Confucian culture of fervor for higher education, hard work, and loyalty to one s superior common in this region has been able to yield successful economic outcomes without disrupting social order (Seah eds. 1977; Zakarina 1994). Still, this approach seems simplistic and furthermore cannot identify the causal mechanisms of economic success in this region. For example, the Asian values of hard work and self-help are also long-standing western values claimed by Weber as the Protestant ethic. Rather than a systematic explanation, the Asian values approach has been an ideological doctrine for authoritarian governments to justify political repression and lack of freedom in Asia. While culture still matters, this approach fails to explain how specific values are imposed and practiced because it overlooks the role of agency. Instead, there are particular social actors that construct an ideological backbone and through which certain ideologies and cultural values are disseminated and practiced. In order to explain disciplinary development orderly and controlled economic transformation without significant social backlash within the authoritarian regimes this dissertation pays attention to how the state engages in creating a developmental subject and disseminates social discipline through the social body. As Davis notes, the developmental gains are enormous when a disciplinary ethos infuses both society and the state (Davis 2004:11). Gorski also argues that the disciplining of groups is an organizational and communal process in which the activities and goals of group members are shaped by institutional restraints and shared values so as to generate highly 6

21 uniform patters of collective life (1993:271). The disciplinization process decreases administrative costs, that is, the material and ideological resources necessary to maintain social order, by effectively educating and controlling the population (Laitin 1985, 1986). The question is now how and through whom the state so effectively promotes and diffuses social discipline. Among the various social groups, the new urban middle class is a potentially powerful protagonist in disciplinary development by being the carrier of the values such as self-discipline and self-help. The nascent urban middle class could become a model of economic success and upward social mobility by supporting the state s vision of national development and appealing to a larger population. The rising cultural and political prominence of the new urban middle class gives the state a vital political base for maintaining state power symbolizing a new nation of urbanity and modernity. By looking at the middle-class emergence in East Asia, this study explores how the authoritarian Korean and Chinese states successfully imposed social discipline and spearheaded disciplinary economic development. Bringing the Middle Class Back In The middle class has been missing from the literature on East Asian development. Most development scholars of late industrialization focus on every social actor but the middle class: capitalists, the working class, and the state always appear on stage. In particular, in the context of East Asia, scholars provide explanations of state-business alliances or state-labor conflicts (Chibber 2003; Kim 1997; Dickson 2003; Koo 2001; Lee 2007; Pearson 1997; Pun 2005; Silver 2003). For development scholars, the middle class 7

22 was not a key actor in shaping industrial and economic development. This is quite strange when one considers the important location of the middle class in the wider development literature. Scholars have paid attention to the middle class s critical role in retaining cultural values (Huntington 1968; Lipset and Solari 1967), as a coalition partner of dependent development in Latin America (Cardoso and Faletto 1979), or as a coalitional actor for democracy (Rueschemeyer et al. 1992). As Davis (2004) points out, many scholars in the field of East Asian development have assumed that middle classes were the result of economic modernization and growth. Because of this dominant assumption, most of the literature fails to analyze the middle class, treating it merely as an epiphenomenon of economic development. While the middle class is thus absent from the analysis of developmental processes, it suddenly appears as a (potentially) strong supporter for democracy and as a central player in consumerism as a result of economic development. Davis (2004) argues that middle classes actually shaped developmental trajectories by allying itself with developmental states that promoted sustainable macroeconomic growth. Rather than treating the particular cultural repertoires of the middle class, she focuses more on the logic of political coalition building and the significance of divergent middle-class consumption patterns for political alliances with the state. While Davis highlights the importance of the middle class by returning it to the central stage in the literature, her institutionalist focus underestimates the discursive and cultural role of the middle class in the development process. As Fernandes (2006) remarks in her case study of the new Indian middle class: The new middle class is marked by a set of interests that are identified with India s embrace of a free-market-oriented approach to development. In other words, the new 8

23 middle class in late-developing countries such as Malaysia or India serves as a group that represents the promise of a new national model of development, one with a global outlook that will allow such nations to successfully compete with the advanced industrialized countries (xxvii). Likewise, both the Korean and Chinese cases show that the state called on the middle class to be a promoter of national development and that widespread middle-class discourse helped shape the terms of development and national identity, thereby reducing social conflict and tension. This dissertation locates the middle class at the intersection of nation-building, modernity, and development. I ground my analysis of middle-class formation in three arguments. First, I argue that the middle class is created by a conscious and concerted state project. While existing studies look at the middle class as a natural outcome of modernization and economic development, they ignore the deliberate implementation by states of policies nurturing a middle class. The formation of the middle-class was a political-ideological project of the authoritarian state to reconstruct the nation and strengthen the regime s political legitimacy. Second, the middle class plays a key role in the politics of state hegemony. As a bearer of the ethos of opportunity and mobility, the middle class forges national unity by promising other aspiring segments of the population the benefits of economic development. Third, once the middle class is produced and begins to grow by state sponsorship, the middle class reproduces its privileged position through everyday class practices. Through exclusionary gate-keeping practices in everyday life, the middle class seeks to advance its interests against the other less privileged, lower classes in the name of citizenship. This exclusive form of citizenship 9

24 prevents the expansion of citizenship rights or of further democracy by supporting the existing social order. Middle Class Formation as an Ideological Project When Korea and China launched their development projects, each faced serious obstacles: stagnant economies, political turmoil, persistent poverty, and mental trauma resulting from the Korean War and the Cultural Revolution. In both countries, political leaders believed it imperative to break through these crises by enacting new systems and reconstructing the nation. Economic development, in this sense, was important as a means of building new nations that would be differentiated from their backward and inefficient past. The new nations that political leaders in both countries aimed to build symbolized the ideas of modernity progress, science, and rationality. By abandoning and denying the past of poverty, inefficiency, and backwardness, both the Korean and Chinese regimes emphasized that their countries would fall behind in the competitive world unless thorough reform was launched. The reform not only included institutional changes to increase overall efficiency and competitiveness, but it also demanded changes in the mentalities of the ordinary people. Identifying the traditional social body as backward, undisciplined, and unruly, the political leaders believed that only new people with self-discipline, responsibility, and autonomy could create a new nation. In the eyes of state officials, both passive socialist men dependent on state welfare and the undisciplined traditional social body would delay national development in post-mao China and post-war Korea. 10

25 The making of a middle class was equated with the making of a nation strong and modern. The creation of a middle class in a relatively classless society did not imply the appearance of social conflicts or differentiations, as among other social classes. Instead, it meant ultimate social homogenization: improving the overall standard of living of the entire nation. In contrast with the backward and humiliated national past, the comfortable lifestyles and mass consumption of the urban middle class represented the prosperous and modern nation. In order to achieve the goal of national modernization and civilization as soon as possible, the state needed an economically productive and politically docile social body that it could manage and govern easily and efficiently. In other words, the state required self-disciplining citizens, who would not only contribute to stimulating economic growth and entry in the global market, but also maintain the existing regime without disrupting the social order. Thus, the rise of the middle class was an important political-ideological project for the state that would showcase its economic modernization to the world and further legitimatize state developmental projects. Dual Processes of Middle Class Formation This dissertation examines two concurrent processes of middle-class formation by which the state actively engaged in nurturing a middle class. One was the discursive production of urban middle-class norms; the other was a growth of the middle class in an objective sense, as a result of state-directed economic development. As an ideological project for constructing societal support for development, the state disseminated cultural norms and official discourse on the middle class before the middle class actually existed. Nevertheless, the middle class was not merely an illusion manufactured by the state; it 11

26 became a substantive entity as the state provided favorable conditions for some groups of people. Nurturing middle-class norms The state actively engaged in creating the middle class as a desirable social subject in a new society. In order to create new social subjects that would build a civilized and modern nation, the state and mass media disseminated official discourse about comfortable lifestyles and good citizenship that reflected particular middle-class values and images. The mass media and academics alike addressed the political role of the middle class in promoting social stability and gradual social change. The construction and dissemination of middle-class ideals as a mainstream social force contributed to the emergence of an esprit de corps. In the economic arena, the dominant discourse described middle-class citizens as wise consumers who, by striking a balance between saving and consumption, would contribute to stimulating economic growth. By consuming advanced modern household commodities, the middle class also showcases a prosperous economy and modern lifestyles. The images reflected in cars, high-rise apartments, and summer vacation trips, which were specifically associated with middle class, identified increasing purchasing power and a rising standard of living as points of national pride. Dominant discourses on middle-class lifestyles and consumption gave hope for a better future and a specific vision of national development. By doing this, the state successfully generated widespread societal support for its development project by suggesting what modern lifestyles would be for the majority of the population. 12

27 The state also promoted images of a politically docile middle class as maintaining existing social order and stability. The middle class was described by the mass media and academics as a moderate, rational social force advocating gradual social reform, not radical social changes. As an educated social group, the middle class reflected good citizenship ; not only were they hard working and civilized, but their balanced worldview would contribute to social stability without being agitated by any oppositional ideologies. In a society in which the entire population had recently experienced extreme political chaos, war, and social conflict, the middle force between the upper and lower classes could be expected to become a strong buffer that would decrease social tensions and class polarization. In this sense, the middle class did not necessarily represent a class category that created a growing disparity in the nation between the haves and have-nots. Rather, its upward social mobility and the overall upgrading of the nation in the world economy reflected in the middle class embraced social homogenization and harmony. State provision of a material base for middle-class lifestyles Class is not merely an illusion or ideology manufactured by the state or government officials. When a particular group of people has a material base, it can be called a class (Marx 1978). Unlike the West, where social classes were formed over the long term without strong state intervention, the state in the developing world could engineer class structures and class interests. As the developmental state literature emphasizes the state s role in envisioning the macroeconomic landscape, the expansion of the middle class resulted from state subsidy of the purchasing power of government employees and private-sector professionals. Since there were no organized social classes 13

28 or groups that could resist state power, state structures and state policy-making power tended to be highly centralized. Davis suggests that the state in developing countries plays a critical role in middle-class formation in three ways: as the source of employment, as the institutional regulator of social and economic policy, and as the site for expressing political preferences and channeling political conflicts (Davis 2010: 253). The state itself was a major employer that provided an array of jobs in the public sector for citizens at all skill levels. In both capitalist and socialist contexts, the state usually offered salaried jobs with lifetime job security and pension benefits that gave government employees a middle-class status. Because of these advantages, the government or public sector jobs absorbed most college graduates from elite universities in the developing world. In addition, as the overall regulator of the market, the state s extensive economic policies shaped income distribution and class structure. The government bureaucracy and state officials decided what kind of industrial, labor, welfare, and tax policies they would adopt, and these would affect the pattern of income distribution and social inequality. For example, unbalanced industrialization that favored big businesses (chaebol) in Korea produced a widening gap between big and small-to-medium businesses and thus between employee welfare in big and small businesses. In post-socialist China, market reform and privatization eroded the socialist principle of egalitarianism and strengthened the meritbased system, emphasizing competition and educational credentials. Employment in the private sector provided higher income and better benefits for those with higher education and professional skills. Another noteworthy state policy surrounds housing. Housing is the major item of expenditure for most people and indicates their social status. Homeownership is a long- 14

29 standing dream for most people and they spend a large sum of money in buying their own houses. Becoming homeowners gives a great sense of security and relief as well as indicating wealth. For these reasons, housing policy is an important tool in redistributing overall wealth and shaping class identities in a given territory. Housing privatization and urban redevelopment plans created a real-estate boom, spurred by a coalition between the state and developers, that boosts certain groups wealth and clusters different groups in specific geographical locations. A real-estate boom and increasing housing prices disadvantage those unable to afford their own houses and achieve the dream of becoming homeowners but enables the homeowners themselves to accumulate wealth from rapidly increasing housing prices. In particular, some employees who received significant help with housing costs from employers could benefit greatly from a real-estate boom. These advantaged employees were usually government employees or upper-tier employees in big business firms offering handsome housing subsidies. The subsidies supported by the state (or local governments) provide crucial material conditions for these people to approach middle-class status and realize middle-class lifestyles through their power to consume (Tomba 2004). The Politics of Exclusion of the Middle Class: Kicking the Ladder Away? During the first phase of economic reform and industrialization, the state tried to create and nurture a new middle class as a social group that would produce its future modern, affluent country. The state contributed to creating a new middle class through a top-down process by which some groups of people enjoyed higher income and welfare benefits provided by either government or employers, and above all, could become 15

30 homeowners and later benefit from skyrocketing housing prices. Through specific images of a middle-class lifestyle, such as modern high-rise apartments and advanced household goods, the state and mass media produced aspirations for social mobility. While middleclass identity was fabricated by the state and the mass media in the beginning stages of economic reform and industrialization, the growing number of people who benefited from new economic policies and accumulated material wealth developed their own identities from below through distinctive cultural practices (Bourdieu 1984). The appeal of the new middle class is precisely its projected openness and inclusiveness, which allow other segments of the population to envision themselves living such a life one day (Fernandes 2006). Yet, paradoxically, the social distinctions the middle class enjoyed were often produced through exclusionary practices. Once those who could take advantage of the new market economies went up the ladder of social mobility, they kicked the ladder away so that the rest of the population would not be able to enjoy their distinctive and privileged lifestyles. In particular, the urban space is a showcase of middle-class practices that exclude other unprivileged classes. While before urban redevelopment housing and residential areas were relatively homogeneous, afterwards living space became more stratified and segregated between the relatively well-to-do and the urban poor. These processes not only included rearrangement of housing and community production, but also cultivated new lifestyles, mentalities, dispositions, and aspirations among those who came to inhabit the new places (Zhang 2010:4). In societies in which most welfare benefits came through employers or work units (danwei), people s socioeconomic status was partly shaped by their employers; if firms or 16

31 work units were relatively stable and had large resources, employees got many benefits; if not, employees did not benefit greatly from their employers. In the early phase of economic change, ordinary people achieved homeownership through employer-provided subsidies. As the real estate market developed, the homeowner early birds enjoyed owning increasingly valuable properties. At the same time, rapid growth in the construction of private housing and the development of a real-estate market offered various choices in size, style, and location for residents of different socioeconomic status. While residents of the same neighborhood pursued similar lifestyles, they practiced social distinctions toward other social groups of different socioeconomic backgrounds. Residents in a neighborhood shared similar backgrounds in income, educational level, and even cultural tastes. In particular, residents in the upper- and middle-class neighborhoods engaged in particular consumption practices in order to validate their own status and gain their neighbors respect (Lett 1998; Zhang 2008). Unspoken competition arose among residents to display their greater cultural taste and personal wealth. Through watching and comparing their own homes and consumption practices with their neighbors, the residents kept up with the Joneses while constructing similar lifestyles and class identities. E.P. Thompson (1966) posits that class is made and remade by sharing daily experiences. Just so, middle-class identities in urban Korea and China were constantly cultivated and performed through everyday consumption practices. The efforts of the middle class to defend their property and interests often excluded the socially disadvantaged in their neighborhoods. Street vendors and migrant workers were often considered harmful to urban beautification and public order, and their presence in middle-class neighborhoods aroused fears of decreasing property values. In 17

32 the name of public order and crime prevention, middle-class residents built walls and gates to prevent strangers from invading their paradises. Gate-keeping by the middle class made class boundaries more sharply visible in the urban space. The exclusionary spatial practices of the middle class created a tension between social harmony as an ideal and social inequality as an actuality. Development, New Class Hegemony, and Political Change A number of scholars have considered the rise of the middle class in the developing world and its political implications, in particular whether an educated urban middle class leads to democracy in developing countries (Jones 1998; Koo 1991). Conventional wisdom has supported a strong correlation between the presence of a middle class and democracy in both developed and developing countries (Lipset 1959; Huntington 1968; Prezeworski et al. 2000). Looking at democratic transition in Korea, some argue that the educated middle class joined protests for democracy and eventually led to liberal democracy (Han 1989; Koo 1991). While I do not completely disagree with this argument, I find that it does not acknowledge the middle class vis-à-vis the construction of a state hegemony during Korea s three-decade high growth period. So far, no signs of political change have been seen in China. In addition to political repression and coercive power as an important tool in controlling society in an authoritarian regime, the cultural politics of middle-class norms and values can contribute to strengthening authoritarian regimes while effectively blocking counter-hegemony. 18

33 State hegemony through middle-class formation has both cultural and material bases. 2 Both Korean and Chinese states treated the middle class as sites of certain values such as merit, autonomy, and self-help. By emphasizing these middle-class values, the states tried to create new, proactive social subjects that sought their own opportunities and were responsible for their own lives. The making of neoliberal subjects could become a cultural justification for increasing the social inequality brought about by rapid economic growth. Recent scholars have pointed to the paradox of the neoliberal subjects: these entrepreneurial subjects were free to seek personal freedom and private interests in the new economy, but always within the political limits set by the state not touching the essential (Ong and Zhang 2008; Singley 2006). The authoritarian states invoked individual desires for economic well-being and private consumer choices, but produced an apolitical social body that accepted unquestioningly. As Gramsci noted, hegemony can be maintained only when it has material as well as an ideological-cultural bases (Gramsci 1971:161; Przeworkski 1985). Without material conditions, delusions cannot be perpetuated on a mass scale (Gramsci 1971:105). When an ideology expresses people s interests and aspirations, hegemony can be maintained. In this sense, the presentation of middle-class lifestyles could be strong evidence for authoritarian states by suggesting that anyone could achieve middle-class status by working hard and making efforts for self development. The booming housing market, modern department stores, and consumer products were not merely dream images; comfortable middle-class lifestyles and consumption patterns appealed to a larger 2 Gramsci s hegemony has often been regarded as ideological and cultural (Miliband 1969; Scott 1985). However, hegemony can be maintained only if it has a material basis (Przeworski 1985). Gramsci pointed out that whereas hegemony is ethical-political, it must also be economic, must necessarily be based on the decisive function exercised by the leading group in the decisive nucleus of economic activity (1971: 161). 19

34 aspiring segment of the population. The continued economic upturn and growing middle class not only signified national reconstruction and development, but made people s anticipation of upward social mobility seem more promising. While the rise of the middle class was effective in constructing state hegemony in the short term, it can produce tensions and ruptures over the long term due to the increasing differentiation and disparities among social groups (Fernandes 2006: xxxiii). On the state s part, the new urban middle class and its lifestyles were beneficial in symbolizing westernization and globalization and highlighting the success in building a strong and modern nation. Furthermore, the fluid and broad definition of the middle class and its open membership encouraged ordinary people to believe in the possibility of upward social mobility and a better livelihood. The widespread aspiration and confidence in the future could be translated into support for the existing regimes. On the other hand, however, the increasing social disparities and exclusionary practices of the middle class in daily life perpetuated social inequality and notably failed to improve the lot of the unprivileged. Lacking social security systems, differentiation and disparities based on education, income, and consumption allowed only a small number of people to gain middle-class status. Due to these contradictory characteristics embedded in middle-class formation, the politics of the middle class are shaped by the interactions between historical legacies and everyday practices. 20

35 Conceptualization of the Middle Class 3 Conceptualizing and defining the middle class has long been a controversial and debated issue in the social sciences. Not only is the concept of the middle class ambiguous, but the heterogeneity of the middle class itself makes it difficult to classify it as one social class. As Wacquant has noted, the epistemic ambition of defining the real boundaries of the middle class is doomed to failure because it rests on a fundamentally mistaken conception of the ontological status of classes: The middle class, like any other social group, does not exist ready-made in reality (1992: 57). Yet, if one is interested in understanding the political dynamics of the middling sector and the state in the course of development, tone must begin from some vantage point. Neo-Marxist scholars have defined the middle class by objective economic characteristics (e.g. Abercrombie and Urry 1983; Burris 1992; Wright 1985). As Wright (1985) pointed out, the middle class is in a contradictory class location because it belongs to neither the bourgeoisie nor the working class. The middle class is distinct from the bourgeoisie since it does not own any means of production. Rather, middle-class people derive their economic opportunities from organizational authority or possession of scarce occupational skills (Fernandes and Heller 2006). Moreover, as distinguished from the working class whose labor is reduced to commodity form, the middle class has more autonomy and capacity to reproduce the relative scarcity of their own skills (Fernandes and Heller ibid.). 3 The term middle class is not used in the same way in all contexts. The Chinese meanings of the middle class are identified as middle propertied class (Zhongchanjieji), middle propertied strata (Zhongchanjieceng), intermediate class (Zhongjianjieji), intermediate strata (Zhongjianjieceng), or white-collar workers (Bailing). The Korean meanings of the middle class are interchangeable with middle propertied strata (Jungsanchung) or salaried employees (salary men). 21

36 According to this definition, the middle class has three broad strata. The first includes professionals and technical elites with professional credentials or advanced skills. Because of their upper position, this group of people might align closely either with the bourgeoisie or the ruling class. The second category includes salaried employees in both private and public sectors, who are mostly white-collar workers. The last group is small employers or petty bourgeoisie, including small business owners, merchants, and farmers. In neo-marxist terms, the last category is also identified with the old middle class. The category of the middle class embraces a variety of social groups, such as white-collar employees and professionals, the self-employed, and intellectuals who do not engage in manual labor. We can list a myriad of occupational groups making up the middle class, including bank clerks, school teachers, shopkeepers, lawyers, government functionaries, doctors, engineers, accountants, managers, military officers and journalists. However, the category of the middle class shares a state of mind oriented to a dynamic social and economic arena that is not reducible to a specific occupational group (Owensby 1999:8-9). The middle class consists of people that earn educational credentials, engage in office work, gain respectable status, and enjoy upward social mobility as a result of hard work and individual effort. As previous scholars have pointed out, however, social classes are not fixed; class boundaries and identities are constructed and reconstructed every day as people perform cultural, symbolic strategies (Bourdieu 1984; Fernandes 2006; Thompson 1966). From this perspective, class is not a fixed term based on objective socioeconomic conditions, as Marx (1978) assumed. Instead, class is created as people arrive at awareness of class through engaging in particular collective actions and consumption activities on a day-to- 22

37 day basis. The lived experience in daily life creates a class boundary. Yet, a particular point of view from the middle outward can also come to articulate the notion of class (Owensby ibid.). In other words, the middle-class boundary is shaped as it is thought, talked about, presented, discussed, and imagined in particular ways in newspapers, books, magazines, advertisements, radio shows, and public meetings. The middle class is an arena in which people interpret and construct meanings, representation, and discourses in a specific historical context. Some scholars have questioned the ambiguity and theoretical impracticality of the middle class (Tsai 2007) and have instead used the term new rich as an alternative (Robison and Goodman 1996; Goodman eds. 2008). Particularly in the Chinese context, these studies focus on enriched cadres and private entrepreneurs. Identifying the new rich as private entrepreneurs and professionals, the concept of the new rich covers only the uppermost sector of the elites or ruling class, not encompassing ordinary white-collar workers who predominate in the middling sector. The concept of the new rich might be misleading in limiting analysis to elite groups and excluding the broader groups of the middle class. This concept also fails to highlight the broader political and cultural implications of social class in its sole focus on the objective and economic conditions of a particular social group. The concept of the middle class is still useful in looking at how varying segments of people create collective aspirations and influence the broader political landscape. 23

38 Methodology and Data Collection This dissertation examines how two different societies started at very different points, yet converged to a common model. In class relations, politics, ideologies, and socioeconomic conditions, Korea and China are vastly different societies. China had much in common with other Leninist states that implemented the Soviet model; Korea had much in common with other East Asian developmental states strongly allied to businesses. I chose to compare Korea and China because they are extreme cases: no other states experienced such swift growth of the new middle class starting from egalitarian, classless societies. China s recent economic success and its maintenance of one-party system can be compared with Korea s developmental pattern three decades ago. Comparing these two cases helps to understand the formation of hegemony and middleclass identity in two different contexts and by two different processes. Both Korea and China were exceptionally homogeneous countries in terms of class structure. Korea was an officially classless society. The confrontation with communist North Korea made the use of class language taboo in South Korea. Furthermore, after the war, Korea was quite an egalitarian society in which small peasants made up most of the population. In socialist Chinese official discourse, only the working class existed due to the emphasis on egalitarianism and collectivism. Though the strong state was crucial in creating a class, the two different states allied with different social actors to create a middle class in both countries. While the Korean state allied with big business groups (chaebols) and created a middle class through growth of the private sector, the Chinese party-state created a massive middle class in the public sector by providing job security and homeownership as well as opening up the private sector. 24

39 In constructing middle-class identities and consciousness, the two cases also differ: only a few Chinese identify themselves as middle class, while many do in Korea. In China, the prevalent working-class identity (regardless of objective socioeconomic status) prevented potential social conflict and relative deprivation from becoming severe and made state hegemony stronger. The prevalent though false middle-class consciousness in Korea was effective in consolidating state hegemony in the short term. Yet, as opposition groups mobilized socially disadvantaged and marginalized groups, state hegemony was more unstable than its counterpart Chinese state. While recognizing these variations across the Korean and Chinese cases, this dissertation systematically traces the process of state-directed middle-class formation in times of economic transformation. This dissertation combines comparative historical analysis and qualitative methods in order to demonstrate the political processes through which the middle class ascended to become a national representative and conferred legitimacy to state-directed economic development. During a year of intensive field research in Seoul and Beijing I conducted archival research and in-depth interviews. The archival research enabled me to examine the top-down process of middle-class formation as a state project. I collected a wide range of data, including government documents, newspapers, academic and popular magazines, and political speeches. While official statistical data confirmed the numerical expansion of the urban middle class, newspapers and other magazines helped illuminate what official and popular discourses on the middle class were created and appropriated. On the Korean side, I examined the three major newspapers, Chosun Ilbo, Joongang Ilbo, and Donga Ilbo, during the authoritarian regimes from 1963 to Though all mass 25

40 media were severely censored by the government at the time, facts about state policies and official discourses could be reported with relatively little distortion. As supplemental materials, I also used some smaller newspapers such as Kyunghyang Shinmun and Maeil Gyungje using a particular search engine. For China, I investigated mainly two newspapers, Renmin Ribao and Nanfangzhoumo. All Chinese newspapers belong to the Party and represent its official opinions, and thus differences in opinions across various newspapers are few. I chose Nanfangzhoumo because it is relatively liberal and targets more educated people. I also used some other newspapers such as Beijing Qingnianbao as supplemental sources. For both China and Korea, I also examined some popular magazines, including Sasanggye, Sedae, and Sindonga in Korea and Zhongguo Xinwenzhoukan in China, to see what specific discourses and images were constructed around the middle class. Finally, I also explored secondary sources and academic discussions by Korean and Chinese scholars. Middle-class formation has been a popular topic among social scientists and intellectuals, and along with the official discourse disseminated by the states, academic circles actively examined the middle class. These latter sources make it possible to look at how academic scholars constructed particular knowledge about facts and events and influenced a broader society. My interviews with middle-class citizens effectively illuminate the bottom-up process of middle-class formation. In each city I conducted 30 interviews, including white-collar workers, professionals, government employees, and managers. The interviews allowed me to discover key mechanisms through which the individuals came to accumulate wealth, how they identified themselves, and how they came to have specific attitudes or dispositions toward the government and its policies. Furthermore, 26

41 they also allowed me to discover the cultural narratives that were produced and circulated about the class. There is, of course, a gap between the official discourse disseminated from above and subjective understandings of class identification. Examining how people perceived these disparities helped figure out how people reconciled their lived realities and their own expectations. By analyzing both official discourse and people s own narratives, this dissertation revolves around the creation of a new class as a constitutive sociocultural process. A Look Ahead Chapter 2 reviews major theories of developmental states and class formation and constructs a theoretical framework from these literatures. I reconcile both the politicaleconomic and the cultural-anthropological approach. The mainstream study of political economy has much to gain from a cultural approach that analyzes the social construction of a group and the dominant discourses that served to consolidate political legitimacy during a time of social transformation. By the same token, a cultural analysis will also benefit from a discussion of socioeconomic conditions and institutional practices. The making of a social class lies in the intersection of objective socioeconomic factors and subjective discursive practices. Furthermore, considering both socioeconomic conditions and discursive practices lets us fully explain middle-class formation from above and its reproduction from below. Part II looks at how both authoritarian countries implemented specific state policies and created official discourses in order to bring about the urban middle class as a state project. Chapter 3, The Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea,

42 1979: Nation-Building, Discipline, and the Birth of Ideal National Subjects, explores how the authoritarian state (the Park Chung Hee regime) tried to cultivate an urban middle class. Making the urban middle class into a mainstream social force was an important project because the rise of the middle class and its comfortable lifestyle showcased successful economic modernization, which could draw societal support and legitimatize developmental projects. Through governmental documents, political speeches, and academic articles addressing the importance of the making of the middle class, this chapter looks at how the values of autonomy and austerity embedded in the middle class were viewed positively by the state as a promoter of national modernization. The imagined middle class was thus created by the state in the early stages of industrialization. Chapter 4, Cultural Construction of the Chinese Middle Class: Economic Reform, Urban Consumer Culture, and the National Desire, investigates how the dominant middle-class discourses were created consciously by the Chinese government and the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) in order to create a strong ally for economic reform and strengthen the image of a civilized and modern country. The growth of an urban middle class that enjoyed economic well-being and comfortable lifestyles could exemplify successful economic reform and national prosperity. In fulfilling official discourses of a xiaokang (well-off) and harmonious society, the urban middle class represented the social values of self-help and autonomy. Drawing evidence from Chinese academic documents, political speeches, and news articles, this chapter highlights how the middle -class values of efficiency and productivity have replaced the old and stagnant socialist egalitarian vision. 28

43 Part III looks at how nascent middle-class identities are cultivated, staged, and contested at local levels. By examining urban redevelopment and housing policies, this part explores the massive increase in homeownership and middle-class spatial formation, thus legitimatizing the authoritarian states. Chapter 5, My Home, My Car: Pursuing the Middle-Class Dream in South Korea, , uses urban redevelopment in South Korea to examine how ordinary people strived to benefit from the state policies, improve their standards of living, and claim their social status on a daily basis. I argue that statedirected urban redevelopment plans and apartment construction projects provided the material conditions under which the urban middle class could improve its standard of living. Through the apartment lottery system, the authoritarian states provided apartments at less than market value and allowed ordinary white-collar workers to become homeowners. While in the 1970s the urban middle class existed only in the arena of discourse created by the state and mass media, it finally materialized in the 1980s real estate boom in Gangnam, Seoul. The state-led development of Gangnam not only transformed the desolate area into high-rise apartments and modern skyscrapers, but also spatialized the concept of social class. The popularization of apartment living that originated and prevailed in Gangnam served to identify the urban middle class in Korea as educated, comfortable apartment owners. Chapter 6, A Place of My Own: Seeking Privacy and Seclusion of the Urban Middle Class in Contemporary China, argues that the state-directed megaproject of housing reform has favored public employees by subsidizing homeownership and has created a Chinese urban middle class. I examine how state intervention in the housing sector provided a vehicle for the middle-income public employees to improve their 29

44 material conditions and enhance their social status. Exploring housing consumption in Beijing, this chapter looks at how the urban middle class is spatially formed, how class cultural practices and place-making strategies are enacted, and how middle-class identities are cultivated on a daily basis. The final chapter of this dissertation summarizes the major findings and presents the contributions and limitations of this research. I will also discuss the post-trajectories of middle-class formation in both countries, particularly the implications of middle-classbased development for democracy and citizenship. 30

45 CHAPTER 2. BRINGING THE MIDDLE CLASS BACK IN: NATIONAL MODERNIZATION, DEVELOPMENTAL DISCOURSE AND THE URBAN MIDDLE CLASS This chapter builds on a theoretical framework bringing the urban middle class in as an important social actor during the developmental processes in developing countries. The rise of the urban middle class produced consumerist dreams and created an urban imagination of a particular lifestyle that could rationalize unbalanced economic policies and emerging social inequality. Adding the middle class to the existing literatures helps to revisit the developmental states and class formation literatures in three ways by linking institutional and cultural approaches. First, I am challenging the developmental state literature by highlighting the cultural politics of development. As Weber drew attention to a Protestant ethic as one of important factors to bring about the rise of capitalism in the West, culture is a crucial component to shape a developmental trajectory, along with institutional factors. Looking at how states played around cultural values or discourses, I will argue that state is not only administrative but also ideological and discursive. Second, this chapter also complements existing literature of middle class formation. Whether it emphasizes structural conditions or daily practices, class has been treated separately from the state or political institutions. In the context of developing countries, the state or political institutions play a crucial role in shaping class interests and actions. By adding the institutional practices to class formation, this chapter tries to reconcile between developmental state and class formation literatures. Third, middle-class narratives based on hierarchical differentials become a powerful means to justify emerging social 31

46 inequality. Middle-class narratives represent social distinctions characterized by the middle class, the markers of cultural capital and consumer taste, which serve to produce the others that do not acquire those characteristics and to reproduce hierarchical social order. By bridging a theoretical gap between the political economic and the cultural approaches in class formation, this chapter suggests that there are three intersecting, intertwined processes in middle class formation: structural formation of the middle class (class-in-itself); discursive production of the middle class (class-for-itself); and class reproduction through daily practices. Through processes of middle class formation during the time periods of economic transformation, this chapter tries to understand how the authoritarian state promoted an exclusionary, but compressed development model embedded in the middle class in Korea and China. Revisiting a Weberian Concept of Developmental States The developmental state literature has contributed to explaining East Asian development by providing extensive empirical evidence. Currently, developmental state literature is the most influential explanation of East Asian development. Inspired by Weber and neo-weberian approaches, this perspective emphasizes the nature of the state as an autonomous actor (Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol 1985). The origin of the developmental state approach dates back to the work of Gerschenkron (1962), who argued that as late-late developers, follower countries needed a more organized initiative from banks or financial institutions to help industry take off by mobilizing capital and facilitating technology transfers. This approach is mainly concerned with the role of the 32

47 state and bureaucratic capabilities in strategically promoting economic growth. By exploring the cases of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, Johnson (1982), Amsden (1989), and Wade (1990) have developed this approach. In order to promote economic growth, they argue that the state actively engaged in the economy. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) in Japan was a classical example of the plan-rational capitalist developmental state which made rapid and sustained industrial growth possible (Johnson 1982). Amsden (1989) argues that the state acted as entrepreneur, banker, and shaper of the industrial structure in Korea: the state not only actively promoted the growth of business groups, it also controlled their use of subsidies and other supports. Similarly, Wade (1990) also argues that Taiwan s industrial success lay in the governed market, a series of policies that enabled the government to guide market processes of resource allocation so as to produce different production and investment outcomes than would have occurred with free market (p ). These authors describe the state as something omnipotent, deciding which particular economic policies would be implemented as the state planned and designed. While scholars in this line of research agree that the nature of the state is crucial, the second generation of developmental state literature provides more sophisticated explanations. These scholars found that state autonomy itself is not enough to produce successful outcomes of economic development. For example, Evans (1995) argues that not only the efficient state bureaucracy but also the non-bureaucratic bases of internal solidarity and the nature of ties to the surrounding social structures contribute to the economic success (p. 51). Some other authors have focused more on the long-term process of development by exploring the historical conditions under which the 33

48 developmental state could implement industrial policies effectively (Doner et al. 2005; Kohli 2004; Waldner 1999). Waldner (1999) argues that the developmental state is an outcome of state building in which elite conflict was less intense, and thus state elites could exclude the lower classes from the political coalition because the state elites did not rely on societal support. In a similar vein, Doner et al. (2005) focus on systemic vulnerability as the origin of developmental states in the newly industrialized countries (NICs). Contrary to the common view that developmental states were built by state autonomy, they argue that ruling elites in East Asian countries constructed coherent bureaucracies and public-private consultative mechanisms in response to a similar set of political-economic constraints. All were pressed to build and maintain broad coalitions and to address security threats without easy access to revenue. Kohli (2004) also traces the historical origins of particular state types (particularly their colonial histories) that brought about different patterns of industrialization and developmental outcomes. In Korea, a highly authoritarian and competent regime as an outcome of Japanese colonialism could facilitate industrialization by allying with dominant classes, and thus discipline workers. Similarly, some scholars look at Chinese economic development since market reform from the theoretical perspective of the developmental state. China s economic reform has been driven by the party-state that deliberately implemented piecemeal and gradualist economic reform. Like other developmental states in East Asia, the Chinese Communist leadership has pursued economic development and technological modernization as an indispensable means for national power, and as a new legitimacy principle for the Communist party (Castells 1998:306). While commonly arguing for the 34

49 central role of the state in initiating economic reform, different authors emphasize different aspects of the developmental state. Some scholars argue that local states have driven rapid economic development (Blecher and Shue 2001; Oi 1992), whereas others highlight the entrepreneurial business activities of China s local governments and agencies (Blecher 1991; Duckett 1998). Despite these efforts to extend the developmental state model to China, some scholars claim that this approach is not convincing because a Chinese party-state is not as coherent, bureaucratically disciplined, or supportive of the private sector as the original developmental state model requires (Tsai and Cook 2005). However, this critique of the developmental state cannot continue to ignore the important role of the state in supervising the economy. In sum, the developmental state literature provides ample empirical evidence and elaborates explanations. Yet, this perspective has some limitations that this dissertation aims to build on. Firstly, this elite-centered perspective ignores social dynamics that have led to particular developmental trajectories in these countries. Since the focus of these analyses is limited to state elites (and bureaucrats) and their linkages with private business, the literature often fails to incorporate the majority of society from its analyses. Therefore, developmental patterns are assumed as being imposed from above as a result of decision making by state elites and bureaucrats, regardless of the actions of social groups from below. Even if specific industrial and developmental policies were largely implemented by strong states and autonomous institutions in East Asia, we cannot assume that the developmental outcomes were always produced as the institutions intended. Rather, political contestations and concessions among different social actors also affect the developmental outcomes (Heller 1999). This implies that we need to look 35

50 at how the developmental state legitimatized its development project in the first place and how it brought other social actors on board with its agenda. Secondly, the role of the state in the developmental state literature is limited in the arena of political economic institutions. This approach understands development as an economic and material condition of capital accumulation. While promoting economic growth and sustaining specific political regimes are political and administrative processes, they equally involve disseminating social discipline and knowledge through a social body (Gorski 1993: 266). Social discipline helps power operate productively as well as repressively (Foucault 1977). As Gorski (2003:165-66) notes, states are not only administrative, policing and military organizations. They are also pedagogical, corrective, and ideological organizations. The developmental state literature does not pay attention to how the state exploits and imposes specific ideologies and discourses to legitimize developmental projects, how capitalist discourses/knowledge are diffused and how they discipline a social body. While the developmental state literature helps understand how capable and autonomous states efficiently implemented policies and promoted economic growth, it is still unable to explain how the state is also involved in transforming an unproductive and backward social body into a productive and industrious one by capitalist imperatives and techniques (Ong 1987; Pun 2005). In this sense, Bourdieu s symbolic power and Foucault s disciplinary power help to address the problem of a Weberian concept of the state. As recent works on state formation point out, existing studies of state formation have adopted materialist conceptualization of the state (Gorski 1993; 2003; Loveman 2005; Scott 1998). However, this materialist approach fail to recognize cultural and symbolic dimensions of state 36

51 power, which serves the legitimate exercise of military, economic, and political power altogether. Symbolic power is the power to create things with words, the power to consecrate or to reveal things that are already there (Bourdieu 1989:23). It is the power to make groups by imposing and inculcating a vision of divisions (Bourdieu Ibid). In other words, this power provides categories and cognitive schemes through which the dominated understand and experience the social world. 4 The construction of the state is accompanied by the construction of a sort of common historical transcendental, immanent to all its subjects. Through the framing it imposes upon practices, the state establishes and inculcates common forms and categories of perception and appreciation, social frameworks of perceptions, of understanding or of memory, in short state forms of classification. It thereby creates the conditions for a kind of immediate orchestration of habituses which is itself the foundation of a consensus over this set of shared evidences constitutive of (national) common sense (Bourdieu 1991:68). Symbolic power makes individuals recognize the given power or regime as natural without questioning the legitimacy of power. The operation of symbolic power is a process through which people are tamed in a given territory. Through practices of classification, codification, and regulation, modern states mold mental structures and help constitute particular kinds of people, places, and things (Bourdieu 1999; Loveman 2005). For example, by universally imposing and inculcating a dominant culture as legitimate national culture, the school system inculcates the fundamental presuppositions of the national self-image (Bourdieu 1999:62). The concept of symbolic power can be a 4 Mara Loveman (2005) notes that symbolic power is not equivalent to cultural or ideological power. While ideological power is exercised through the use of specific symbols, the promotion of specific cultural messages, or the inculcation of particular beliefs, symbolic power is exercised through naturalization of the practices and cognitive schemes that make it possible for such messages to resonate with their intended audiences (1656). 37

52 powerful tool to understand how state power produces and imposes categories of thought that we spontaneously apply to all things in the social world. In the context of developmental states in East Asia, this implies that state-directed development project could be effectively implemented in the name of national development and modernization by inculcating and legitimatizing state visions of development. However, while the concept of symbolic power helps to understand topdown process of development, it is still unclear about how the state makes the social body productive for capital accumulation and how state power can be reproduced as a bottomup process. Foucault argues that state power could be transmitted through much finer, ambiguous channels on a small scale through institutions of social discipline (Foucault 1981: 71-72). Modern disciplinary power, Foucault argues, makes subjects assume responsibility for self-discipline through the discursive practices of various institutions (e.g., penal, medical, industrial, educational) (Foucault 1977). Modern power, which is differentiated from earlier repressive powers, is held to be effective in that it traverses and produces things: it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, and produces discourse (Foucault 1980: 119). Power is exercised in a subtle and lenient manner instead of in the form of torture. The true objective of penal reform was not to punish less, but to punish in a more efficient way (Foucault 1977: 82). Thus, the strategy of power changed in such a way that power was inserted into the social body more deeply and thoroughly by diminishing the economic and political cost of punishment. Foucault understands power in a triangle between sovereignty-disciplinegovernment (Foucault 1991: 102). The first is governance through state bureaucracy in 38

53 the conventional sense. The second form of power is governance through intermediate disciplinary institutions such as schools, hospitals, armies, and prisons. The third form of power is self-governance by individuals of themselves, which is often promoted and guided by states and professional experts (Greenhalgh and Winckler 2005:23). The process of governmentalization has steadily led towards its pre-eminence over older, separate versions of state sovereignty, institutional discipline, and self-cultivation (Foucault 1991: ). Since the process of governmentalization does not completely eliminate the old form of power, it includes both institutional and discursive practices. While including building formal organizations for regulating behavior through politicaleconomic mechanisms such as monitoring and sanctioning, it also embraces the development of various mentalities or rationalities of government bodies of knowledge and expertise and the elaboration of sociocultural discourses and practices for such governance (Greenhalgh and Winckler Ibid). Foucault s approach provides insights on how particular norms and discourses are disseminated through social body, working to constitute population, politics, and programs. By drawing theories of Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault, Gorski challenges the predominant Weberian state theories by demonstrating that the state is also an institution penetrating deeply into the population through disciplinary techniques and ethics. Through case studies of Holland and Prussia in early modern Europe, Gorski (1993) claims disciplinary revolution was a necessary condition for the formation of a strong, centralized, monarchical state under conditions of relative backwardness. Complementing a prevalent understanding that state formation was a process of an administrative and political centralization, Gorski emphasizes the role of religious ethic in this case, 39

54 Calvinism that disciplined not only civil servants but also the popular classes, which resulted in cementing state domination. Gorski points out: [a] successful disciplinary revolution contributes to state formation directly in two ways: (1) it forges a disciplined ruling group capable of and committed to imposing social order, and (2) it creates disciplinary institutions through which the larger population can be more effectively educated and controlled. Not all types of state formation, then, involve disciplinization. All disciplinary revolutions, however, involve processes of state formation (Gorski 1993:273). Gorski s perspective on the concurrent top-down and bottom-up processes of disciplinization helps to understand how the developmental state could be successful in mobilizing the entire population to the state development project so rapidly without encountering a large scale social conflict. Looking at only state bureaucracy and institutional arrangements does not give a fully satisfactory answer about why Korea and China came to succeed in rapid economic development by overcoming the prevalent political chaos and economic backwardness. Instead it demands a more careful observation of how the state successfully managed the population and imposed social discipline throughout society. Middle Class Formation in Developing Countries Karl Marx and Max Weber, two social class theorists, though they define social classes in different ways, are preoccupied with objective classifications of social classes, whether it is money or authority. Most comparative historical sociologists, who explain class alliance and social change, adopt a class analysis from this Marxist or Weberian perspective (e.g. Collier and Collier 1992; Luebbert 1991; Moore 1996; Rueschemeyer et al. 1992). In this literature, the essential assumption has been that class 40

55 behaviors and actions are derived from a class structure; in other words, class-in-itself as a structural condition will indeed lead to class-for-itself as class actions. What these theorists miss out is how to think about the linkages between specific class structures on the one hand and thought, culture, and action, on the other (Katznelson 1986:5). These theorists, primarily structuralists, overlook the ways in which social interactions based on workplaces or communities shape people s thoughts and actions in class-based ways. Thompson criticizes this structural, econocentric scholarship and forcefully argues that class structures and actual lives of working people cannot be thought separately: Class formations arise at the intersection of determination and self-activity: the working class made itself as much as it was made. We cannot put class here and class consciousness there, as two separate entities, the one sequential upon the other, since both must be taken together the experience of determination, and the handling of this in conscious ways. Nor can we deduce class from a static section (since it is a becoming over time), nor as a function of a mode of production, since class formations and class consciousness (while subject to determinate pressures) eventuate in an open-ended process of relationship of struggle with other classes over time (Thompson, 1978:299; emphasis in original). This relational approach of class advocated by Thompson inspired later scholars and they started to pay attention to the intersection of class structures, way of life, shared dispositions, and collective actions (Katznelson ibid.). In a similar vein, Bourdieu emphasizes the primacy of relations by linking class structures and class practices. For Bourdieu, class is not reducible to economic wealth, level of education, or cultural knowledge but rather is realized and reproduced through the interaction between objective conditions and subjective experiences, and between economy and culture. In his famous book, Distinction (1984), Bourdieu argues that cultural taste reflects economic stratification and class position. Through a concept of habitus, he claims that the largely 41

56 unconscious dispositions or lifestyle choices are actually the outcomes that people internalize in the course of their lives by their class positions in society (Bourdieu 1984: ). In this approach, class is not a simple category assigned by its characters; rather it is a practice. Class and consumption have to be seen as mutually constitutive cultural processes (Liechty 2003:30). Students of class formation have applied this approach to the formation of the working class (see Katznelson and Zolberg 1986). While many scholars have addressed working class formation in their works (e.g. Katznelson and Zolberg eds. 1986; Somers 1992; Steinmetz 1992; Thompson 1966), middle class formation has not been illuminated to the same extent in part because of a vague and controversial concept and its definition since middle class has been believed to include the rest of the population except capitalists and workers as a residue category. Classical sociologists have explored the rise of the new middle class in the context of industrialization and urbanization. C. Wright Mills s pioneer study of the new middle class in the US, White Collar: The American Middle Classes, argued that American society saw the rise of the new middle classes as a result of the growth of corporations and rapid bureaucratization. Ezra Vogel was the first scholar to pay close attention to the emerging middle classes in Asia. In his seminal work, Japan s New Middle Class: The Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb (1963), Vogel argues that Japan s high economic growth during the post-war period created the new middle class, the white-collar employees of the large business corporations and government bureaucracies, replacing the old middle class. Both studies assume that the new middle class is a product of modernization that changed industrial structure and thus provided an 42

57 array of high skilled jobs. Therefore, the new middle class is defined as a category of specific occupational groups that shape a particular lifestyle and culture. In line with this research, various case studies have examined the rise of a new middle class in developing countries. This classic Weberian approach focuses on structural processes of income- and occupational-based group formation (see Hsiao ed. 1993; Pinches 1999; Robinson and Goodman 1996). In this approach, particular occupational groups such as highly educated salaried professionals, technical specialists, managers and administrators assume powerful positions in large corporations and state agencies. This occupational grouping leads them to share a particular lifestyle, including political orientation and consumption pattern. The Bourdieusian approach, on the other hand, focuses more on middle-class cultural and consumption practices (see Fernandes 2006; Leichty 2003; Lett 1998; Zhang 2010). While the Weberian approach sees class as shaped by structural conditions such as similar occupations, incomes, and educational levels, the Bourdieusian approach is more interested in how a distinct form of social life and culture arises and is reproduced by class practices at the local level. Though this approach does not deny the fact that similar socioeconomic backgrounds produce a class, it argues that a class is made and remade through everyday practices. As E.P. Thompson succinctly put it, I do not see class as a structure, nor even as a category, but as something which in fact happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships (1964: 9). Because of this theoretical orientation, recent scholars adopting this approach maintain that a range of practices produces the boundaries of a particular class. These practices are the outcome of a dynamic set of processes that are both symbolic and material, and that are shaped both by 43

58 longer historical processes as well as by the temporality of the everyday (Fernandes 2006: xxx). As Bourdieu has argued, individuals and social groups engage in classificatory practices by using strategies of conversion of different forms of capital (cultural, political, and economic) in order to preserve their relative social standing and capacities for upward mobility (Bourdieu 1984). For example, Li Zhang (2010) examines how middle class in urban China is cultivated and performed through class practices under a new regime of property and living. While housing reform produced a new social group of homeowners in urban areas, this material condition did not automatically lead to form a class. Rather, everyday consumption practices and exclusionary practices toward migrant workers formed a sort of solidarity among middle-class residents in gated communities. Similarly, Fernandes (2006) explores how the politics of spatial purification based on middle-class urban residents produced a sanitized middle class civic culture targeting the urban poor. The politics of distinction of the middle class reproduces the sociospatial distance between the middle class and the urban poor or the working class. This symbolic process of a middleclass making is more fragmented and localized rather than structured. Mark Liechty (2003) examines the cultural practices of the middle class in Kathmandu to be fully intertwined with both transnational processes through satellite television, music videos and magazines, fashion, and mass tourism, and local cultural narratives. Negotiating between the transnational and local, and traditional and modern, people in Kathmandu s social middle strive to produce middle-class culture in Nepal. These two dominant Weberian and Bourdieusian approaches have contributed to elucidating the political, economic, and cultural nature of the middle class by closely 44

59 looking at the bottom-up processes of class-making. Such studies, however, overlook the role of state bureaucracy in shaping the middle class. Although recent case studies of India and China consider the role of state bureaucracy in class-making (e.g. Fernandes 2006; Zhang 2010), most studies have not considered how institutional factors affect class-making. In the context of developing countries, in particular East Asia where states power is strong and autonomous, the role of state bureaucracy was critical in shaping middle class formation in two ways. First, the state retained strong power to allocate and redistribute resources and to restructure class relations. Second, the state also retained ideological power to produce cultural norms and dominant discourses by disseminating particular images of a social group. In this sense, adding institutional and bureaucratic practices to middle-class formation process will be helpful to see how the state affects the making of the middle class in East Asian countries and how the rise of the middle class in turn shapes the developmental trajectory. Developmental Discourse and Subject Formation The developmental process of industrialization and modernization in Korea and China can be seen as a process through which both institutional and discursive power were implemented and expanded. While capitalist development and transition to a market economy required more capable state-bureaucratic systems to promote economic growth and implement policies efficiently, it also entailed professional discipline and selfgovernance. Though there is no doubt that the transition to modernity was a violent process to exploit the dominated (Moore 1966), at the same time, it was an expansion of capitalist discipline and techniques imposed on the social subjects by legitimatizing 45

60 unequal social relations. In fact, the operations of power through state institutions and professional discipline/self-governance are intertwined: while the state bureaucratic system sets up and regulates the rules of the game, the particular social norms and ethos are internalized and reproduced through the social body; the techniques of the gaze in assembly lines monitor the body of factory workers and produce the docile body to adapt itself to the organized system (Pun 2005; Yan 2008), but the operation of capitalist discipline is backed up by state bureaucracy including law and the judicial system. During the time periods of economic development, the state needs specific rhetoric or discourses to empower and justify particular institutional practices. Dominant discourses legitimatize state activities, strengthen social and cultural norms, and help people share and internalize those norms. By disseminating particular developmental discourses, the state tries to mobilize the entire population to achieve national modernization as soon as possible. Both Escobar (1995) and Scott (1998) analyze development through which (state) power made the social subjects the other and controlled them to promote efficiency. In their works, power/knowledge regimes play a critical role in turning the poor and backward social body into the object of government and management. Scott s (1998) seminal work links Foucault s insights with statecraft: how rationalization and standardization enhanced state capacity to more easily control society, but focusing on more tragic aspects. The state s increasing concern with productivity, health, sanitation, education, transportation, mineral resources, grain production, and investment was less an abandonment of the older objectives of statecraft than a broadening and deepening of what those objectives entailed in the modern world (Scott 1998: 52). That is, the state 46

61 attempts to reorganize and manage society more efficiently and thoroughly in the name of science and modernity. In Foucault s words, all these strategies and techniques of the state are based on the goal of better domination, not less domination. Many modern state projects, according to Scott, usually combine with an authoritarian state that is willing and able to use the full weight of its coercive power to bring a high-modernist design into being (Scott 1998: 5), and were also promoted by the hierarchical knowledge regime of the hegemonic imperium of scientific knowledge (Scott ibid). While science, modernity, and development have successfully structured the dominant discourse, local and traditional knowledge is regarded as backward, inferior, and static subjugated knowledge (Scott 1998: 331). High modernism has needed the other which is identified with backwardness and inefficiency, in order to remove any obstacles to achieving its goals. By combining the universalist pretensions of epistemic knowledge and authoritarian social engineering, there is no room for mutuality and practice (Scott 1998: 349). Escobar (1995) would also agree that development is a political process based on hierarchical and binary knowledge regimes that is, a belief that archaic traditions and underdevelopment should be replaced by efficiency, progressiveness, and modernity. He argues that the systems of relations established between institutions, socioeconomic process, forms of knowledge, technological factors, and so on govern the poor countries and decide what is to be done (41). Development in the Third World proceeded by creating abnormalities (such as the illiterate, the underdeveloped, and the malnourished ), which it would later treat and reform (Ibid). 47

62 Both Scott and Escobar consider development to be a process through which power is imposed on the social body through professional knowledge and policy implementation of certain institutions. In exploring discursive practices, however, it is necessary to consider through whom or which social subjects particular discourses and disciplinary power were imposed, circulated, and diffused upon. Through practices of creating particular categories and identifying the categories with certain characteristics, the states naturalize those distinctions, which Bourdieu would call a form of misrecognition and the operation of symbolic violence. As the developmental apparatuses and their discursive practices have made industrialized nations of North America and Europe appropriate models that the Third World countries should follow in Escobar s case, same mechanisms also work at the national and local level. By creating a category of the urban middle class and identifying it with desirable social subjects embodying discipline and self-help, the states educated and administered this ideal to the others who did not embody the social virtues. Discourses of national modernization and civilization in both Korea and China identified the difference between modern citizens and feudal subjects. While feudal subjects represented the backward past to be overcome, modern citizens with selfdiscipline and social responsibility were the ones leading to the bright future of the nation by contributing to economic prosperity and social order. More specifically, peasant bodies, the majority of the population in both countries, were the objects of enlightenment and discipline efforts because their backwardness and unruliness were considered a hindrance to national development. By contrast, the rise of the upwardly mobile and educated urban middle class reflected the heightened value of the nation. 48

63 State-directed developmental projects identified the other who impeded economic development and thus produced a hierarchical and normal knowledge regime. The hierarchical and exclusionary process of development could be politically justified in the name of national development and modernization by promising people various kinds of benefits. In this sense, development is not only limited in the arena of economic policies; instead, it embraces the arena of a knowledge regime. State, Class, and Development in East Asia Recent scholarship has investigated the relationship between class and state in shaping developmental trajectories in developing countries (Chibber 2003; Koo 2001; Lee 2007; Tsai 2007). However, these existing studies have tended to focus on the relationship between either state and business or state and labor, mostly neglecting the role of the middle class in development. For states, the burgeoning of the middle class not only provides strong evidence of successful industrialization, but is also used to ensure that the majority of the population believes in the promise of access to socioeconomic mobility and future benefits (Fernandes 2006: xix). The creation of hegemonic aspirations through economic modernization produces societal support for economic reform (Fernandes and Heller 2006). Therefore, the absence of the middle classes in these studies not only leaves an empowering social force politically and economically invisible, but misses the role of an important social actor that can influence political configurations. Diane Davis (2004) in her seminal work successfully bridges the gap between the middle-class and developmental state literature by looking at how rural middle-class discipline promotes state-directed economic development. Adopting a political-economic 49

64 approach, she seeks to find a particular political configuration between the state and the middle class in East Asia and Latin America. She argues that the rural middle class s cultural embrace of and political support for austerity measures helped sustain the state s capacity to discipline capitalists and laborers. Not only does she provide a fresh perspective by adding a class-embedded developmental pattern to existing state-centered studies, she also brings in cultural aspects specifically, the self-discipline of the middle class as important to sustaining and supporting particular developmental patterns. In another piece, Davis (2010) also emphasizes the link between the state and middle-class formation: the state as the source of employment, as the institutional regulator of social and economic policy, and as the site for expressing political preferences and channeling political conflicts (253). In many countries of the global south, she points out that states and political institutions play a critical role in organizing interests or identities and representing the middle classes vis-à-vis other classes (254). Despite her new perspective and theoretical contributions, Davis s work has some limitations. First, she focuses solely on rural middle classes. However, most developing countries had experienced rapid industrialization and seen the flow of the population from rural to urban areas. Without considering changes of the urban sector and population, it is difficult to grasp a complete picture of middle-class formation. Second, by employing an institutionalist, political-economic approach, Davis underestimates the role of cultural/discursive practices of both class and state. For example, though she implies that certain middle-class values produced positive outcomes in East Asia, her emphasis on material conditions ignores the fact that the middle class could be a carrier of specific symbols or ethos that served to state goals. As Fernands (2006) points out, 50

65 the rise of the new middle class is a cultural and normative political project because it helps shape the terms of development and national identity (xxvii). By embracing particular cultural norms, the middle class could in fact shape the substantive content of development. Recent studies on the Chinese middle class complement with a predominant political-economic approach in development. China anthropologists have drawn their works from a Foucauldian perspective and highlighted how new forms of discourses form a particular social subject and how they in turn serve to Chinese economic development (Anagnost 2004, 2008; Ren 2010; Tomba 2009). All these works pay attention to the role of suzhi (literally meaning quality) discourse and examine how suzhi became the key to produce middle-classness vis-à-vis migrant factory workers and rural population. Anagnost (2004) argues that the politics of suzhi produced and legitimated a hierarchical social order along a division between mental and manual labor, that is, educated middle class and uncivilized rural migrants (193). The emergence of the middle class body embodying economic and cultural capital is distinguished from the other backward subjects not having those values, while naturalizing and sustaining unequal relations between the two. From a similar perspective, Tomba (2009) looks at how the rhetoric and practices of the urban middle class contributed to strengthening the Chinese governmental discourse of building a harmonious society. He argues that the middle class embodying the values of autonomy and self-improvement becomes an exemplary yardstick for social mobility, which, as a result, contributed to maintaining social order. While Tomba focuses on how middle-class values serve to the maintenance of a harmonious society, Ren (2010) focuses on the governing strategy of the neoliberal 51

66 Chinese state based on the middle class. Ren claims that the project of middle-class formation is critical for the neoliberal Chinese state: self-governing middle-class consumers-citizens help the state manage risks by making individuals take responsibility of their own life-building. These case studies illuminate how governmental discourses in China were successfully circulated through a particular social subject, the urban middle class. Though it is obvious that the Chinese state is repressive, these studies demonstrate another dimension of the Chinese state in addition to repressive or physical state power: how the state employs different techniques of government. Through the urban middle class, a responsible and autonomous social subject that reflects on the vision of the state, the postsocialist Chinese state could enjoy remarkable social stability. Studies on the relationship between the state and middle class in shaping a development trajectory in Korea and China illustrate an interesting gap. While Korean case studies adopt an institutional approach, Chinese studies heavily draw from Foucault s governmentality. In this dissertation, I will reconcile both the political economic approach and cultural-anthropological approach. The mainstream study of political economy has much to gain from a cultural approach that analyzes the social construction of a group and political discourses which served to consolidate political legitimacy in a time of social transformation. In similar vein, a cultural analysis will also benefit from a discussion of socioeconomic conditions and institutional practices. The making of a social class lies in the arena where objective socioeconomic factors and subjective discursive practices are intersected. Furthermore, when considering both socioeconomic conditions and discursive practices, middle class formation from above and its reproduction from below can be fully explained. Specifically, I will focus on three 52

67 major factors shaping the rise of the urban middle class: institutional practices of the state, dissemination of dominant discourses about the middle class, and the politics of social distinction practiced by the middle class. Middle Class Formation: A Top-Down Process Institutional practices of the state Any given nation state has important repercussions on the contours of class formation: through implementation of specific state policies, the state might reinforce or undermine specific economic conditions of particular occupational groups. Of course, the developmental state literature has clearly made this point, though the policies they analyzed were mostly limited to industrial policies. One of the most crucial areas in which state intervention affects middle class formation is the state s role in educational provision (Savage et al. 1992:29). Educational attainments and credentials are the key to get better jobs and to attain social status. In contrast to Western countries where social-class background is the main determinant of higher educational attainments, meritocracy was more dominant in both Korea and China and thereby increased more opportunities for social mobility, which paved a path for becoming middle class. In the early stage of development, many children of poor peasants, who got high school or college education, could attain middle-class status with the help of the expansion of primary education that the state provided. The state can nurture the middle class by being an employer. Generally, in the developing world, the state has historically functioned as the employer of first resort for many, in part because it has played such a large role in building both markets and 53

68 institutions in newly independent countries (Davis 2010:254). State employment usually comes with job security and pension benefits, even if it does not usually have higher income compared with the private sector. Because of this, government employees usually enjoy middle-class lifestyles. For example, China as a socialist country has a large number of government employees despite the recent massive privatization. Though the wages of state sector employees lower than those in the same rank of the private sector, the perks of government employees make them enjoy lifestyles as comfortable as those in the private sector. Wage policy in the labor market also affects economic conditions of each social group: the state has the ability to increase or decrease the differentials between the professional middle class and other social groups. For example, heavy industrialization in Korea promoted the rise of engineers and scientists through the provision of economic rewards, while leaving most rank-and-file workers in miserable conditions. Similarly, China witnessed the rise of professional workers in finance or the IT industry since economic reform. Though market mechanisms influence wage differentials among different occupational groups according to demand/supply principles, the state also plays a vital role in shaping the wage structures (Logan and Bian 1996). Another noteworthy state policy relates to the housing market. In China, housing reform (privatization and sales of public housing) and the reform of neighborhood institutions have contributed to the zoning of urban populations based on census counts and consumption ability, which is different from the earlier cell-structured spatial pattern organized around the work-unit (Tomba 2009). This change moved away from the utopia of a democratic urban space divided into self-reliant work-units, to one where different 54

69 social groups concentrate in different parts of town. In Korea as well, urban redevelopment plans initiated by the government produced a progrowth coalition of local government, real estate developers, and homeowners in those areas. As a result of this collective effort under the slogan of urban modernization, residential spaces and the traditional social arrangement of cities have been radically transformed. These processes will be explained in greater detail in chapter 5 and 6. As Tomba (2009) points out, the creation of a new subject, the middle class does not just happen spontaneously (p. 4). Instead, they are being engineered, stimulated and rewarded, cuddled in the arms of economic opportunities provided by the state. This is why we should pay attention to particular institutional practices of the state, which paved the path to social mobility for particular groups of people. Discursive production of the middle class Though social classes are based on similar structural, material conditions, class identity is not only from this material condition; it also comes from sharing similar experience, ideas, dispositions, and attitudes. Historian D. S. Parker (1998) argues that classes are products of the mind and a class identity requires a vision of what classes are and what one s own class looks like (9). He writes: These ideas of class are invented constructs that serve ideological ends: they place people in an imaginary hierarchy, exalting some and stigmatizing others, and they negotiate the rule by which some people deem themselves better than the rest. Ideas of class must compete for acceptance; they must appeal to those whom they would unite by explaining reality in a convincing way. Like all ideas, ideas of class have their producers and consumers. They may be created by intellectuals, by opinion makers in the media, or by potential leaders hoping to build a base of support (Parker 1998:9-10; emphasis in original). 55

70 As he points out, language and discourse about the class is as important as material conditions in shaping a class identity. The questions arise are who is at stake in this game? Who has the ability to constitute class identity? In developing countries, the state and other kinds of authorities have the capacity to define, to debate, to name, and to disseminate class. By producing and appropriating official discourses about the middle class, the states attempted to cultivate particular values of self-discipline and autonomy that would eventually serve to modernity and national progress. In Korea, frugal and self-disciplined middle class lifestyles were believed to break vicious cycles of destitution and achieve national modernization. In China, the socially responsible and smartly consuming middle class symbolized global competitiveness and Chinese civilization. By circulating these specific ideal images of the middle class in mass media, including advertisements, newspapers, magazines, and even academic debates, the state could successfully created the middle class as a national representation. The middle class was discussed, touted, imagined, and aspired throughout society. The middle class as an ideal social subject in the time of social transformation denounces traditional social bodies, such as factory workers in the Mao era and peasants before the Park regime. While educated and cultured middle class citizens were believed to be the yardstick to elevate the nation s standing in the global economy, workers dependent on the state in state-owned firms in China or uneducated and traditional peasants were looked down on by the society as the target of being enlightened (Anagnost 1997; Hsu 2007). These dominant discourses were circulated in society, shared by ordinary people, thereby producing widespread aspirations for upward mobility. 56

71 Middle Class Formation: A Bottom-Up Process Politics of social distinction practiced by the middle class As E. P. Thompson (1966) puts it, collective experiences on a daily basis among individuals lead to the formation of a class. While institutional practice and developmental discourses make the social class from above, daily practices of the middle class reproduce a social class from below. Once economic rewards and privileges are endowed to specific social groups, the given social groups try to reproduce their own benefits, refuse to include other social groups, and maintain the boundaries between themselves and others through practicing social distinctions in daily life (Bourdieu 1984). In this sense, the middle class formation arises from the process through which particular groups of people form and articulate the identity among themselves, trying to exclude other groups of people from their boundaries. Human capital, rather than property, has long been the asset specific to the middle class in Korea and China. The acquisition of a college degree or higher education represented a primary means for entry to the middle class, a new elite social group that was emerging distinct from traditional elites and other less privileged social groups. As a vanguard of the new economy representing global competitiveness and innovation, the middle class continues to secure its position through the strategic deployment of social and cultural capital. Particularly, the urban spatial politics is the arena where we can see the exclusionary class practice of the middle class. Local spatial practices are an instance of a broader range of strategies, associational activities, and everyday politics that shape middle class civic culture (Fernandes and Heller 2006:516). Middle-class homeowners are concerned with keeping the real estate prices of their homes as valuable economic 57

72 assets and making their neighborhood segregated from bustle urban environments and all kinds of urban crimes. Middle-class communities build high walls and mobilize security systems (Caldeira 2001; Zhang 2010). These gate-keeping practices of the middle class confront with the interests of migrant workers, the urban poor, or street vendors. A politics of spatial purification (Sibley 1995) is based on middle class vision over public spaces through building a cultured and beautified social space. In the name of public order and civic culture, informal housing and urban squatters are demolished and the urban poor, street vendors, and migrant workers are relocated. Alliance by social actors with different, but corresponding interests produces the middle class-based vision of a beautified, globalizing urban development: both the state and local government trying to build a modern, globalized cityscape, developers gentrifying old neighborhoods and making profit from constructing new buildings, and middle-class residents wanting to live in aesthetic space without any signs of poverty and disorder. State and middle class practices create the underpinnings of exclusionary models of urban development targeting the marginalized groups such as the urban poor. Through daily class practices at the local level, the middle class reproduces sociospatial distance from the urban poor and working classes. 58

73 CHAPTER 3. THE MAKING OF THE URBAN MIDDLE CLASS IN SOUTH KOREA ( ): NATION-BUILDING, DISCIPLINE, AND THE BIRTH OF THE IDEAL NATIONAL SUBJECTS Introduction In a 1966 press conference, the Korean government for the first time addressed the importance of the middle class. This press conference was followed by heated debate among intellectuals, politicians, and state officials about which members of society should be considered middle class. They also debated how the middle class should behave, what characteristics they possessed, and whether they should play a critical role in Korean national modernization. Ironically, 1966 was long before Korean society witnessed the rise of the middle class; the majority of the Korean population was destitute and focused on rising out of poverty. One might ask, then, why did the state tackle this issue at this time? How did the state recognize, just at the beginning of Korean industrialization, that the middle class could and should become an important social group? How did the state create middle-class discourse prior to the existence of the middle class? This chapter explores how the authoritarian Park Chung Hee regime ( ) created the urban middle class as the foundation of its hegemonic nation-building project during the early stages of industrialization in Korea. The making of a middle class was equated with the making of a nation strong and modern. The making of a middle class in a relatively classless society did not imply the appearance of social conflicts or 59

74 differentiations, as among other social classes. Instead, it meant ultimate social homogenization: improving the overall standard of living of the entire nation. By contrast with the backward and humiliated national past, the comfortable lifestyles and mass consumption of the urban middle class represented the prosperous and modern nation. This chapter argues that urban middle-class formation was a political-ideological project of the authoritarian state to reconstruct the nation and strengthen the regime s political legitimacy. In this chapter, I am interested in illuminating the process through which a specific class category of the middle class was formulated by the state: how the middle class was framed by different groups of people, including the state, political parties, intellectuals, and mass media; what kinds of discourses the state formed around the middle class; what meanings and implications this class category carried; and how middle-class discourse served to promote national modernization. This chapter draws attention to the formation of the urban middle class as a cultural and ideological basis for the state s national vision of development and as an important source of societal support. In the name of development and nation-building, the state could translate the ethos and culture of the urban middle class, characterized by modernity and urbanity, into the entire population so as to enhance state power. New Nation Building for Realizing a National Dream The historical legacy of Japanese colonialism and the Korean War was actually advantageous for the Park regime in promoting new nation-building because it endowed the state with considerable capacity to penetrate and control society. The American military, which occupied the southern part of the Korean Peninsula in 1945 after Japanese 60

75 colonialism, made full use of the repressive state apparatuses of the colonial era in order to counteract potential uprisings from communist organizations (Cumings 1981). Since the Korean War, the confrontation between North and South Korea provided the latter with a justification for enlarging its repressive apparatuses and armed forces. The threat of a war in the Korean Peninsula allowed the state to mobilize all necessary human and material resources from society in the name of national security. Furthermore, there were absolutely no social groups who could challenge or resist the state s industrial policy since the land reform and the war had completely destroyed the landed upper class who might have opposed capitalist industrialization (Choi 1996). These factors combined provided a favorable climate for the Park regime, which did not encounter any resistance and could implement policy autonomously. 5 The Rhee Syngman regime fell by April Student Uprising in 1960, one of the most turbulent political events in Korea, which began with protests against Rhee s scheme to prolong his rule through rigged elections. Rhee s ouster was followed by the Chang Myon government, the nine months short interregnum, which was eventually replaced by General Park Chung Hee s military coup in Though the military coup was not legitimate, it was relatively welcome by intellectuals, students, and ordinary citizens. Both the Rhee and Chang government made ordinary people upset and frustrated with politics, since corrupt and incapable politicians only focused on factional strife and did not care about people s livelihood. Particularly, the new Chang government was not much different from the previous Rhee regime overthrown by student protests. Thus, this 5 These conditions might explain why Korea could be more successful in promoting industrialization than its Latin American counterparts. There was a minimal degree of social conflict and the entire population was roughly of the same social class. Because of this, the Korean government faced relatively little social backlash in the course of industrialization. 61

76 made people distrust the government and politicians in general. What was worse was economic situation around Inflation was serious: the price of rice had increased by 60 percent for four months from December 1960 to April 1961; the price of oil and coal by 23 percent for the same period; GDP had decreased by 12 percent from November to February (Hanguk Ilbo ). Moreover, the unemployment rate had reached 23.4 percent in 1959 and 23.7 percent in 1960, respectively (ibid.). Peasants suffered from extreme poverty. While people wanted to see radical reform, the political leaders did not correspond with the political demand from below. General Park Chung Hee came to power in 1961 through a military coup. Park justified the coup as necessary to save the nation: it would eradicate corruption and social evils and establish new and sound social morals (Supreme Council for National Reconstruction 1961, title page). In the midst of economic crisis and political disorder, Park emphasized that national survival required widespread and thorough social reform. He compared his military revolution to an essential surgery to remove diseased flesh. Park identified Korean history as one of reliance on and exploitation by others (Park 1962: 166). He believed that, because Korea had been a weak country, it had always been vulnerable to military attacks and political intervention from other countries. Thirty-six years Japanese colonialism, the Korean War, and the national division into two Koreas had caused national humiliation. Park recognized that only strong leadership could fix the prevailing problems, rebuild the state, and lead to national unification. To survive in the midst of world powers like Japan, China, the U.S., and the Soviet Union, Park believed it urgent to build a strong and modernized nation-state. This recognition appealed widely to 62

77 the entire population, including even liberal progressive students and intellectuals (Kim Bohyun 2006; Kim Hyung-A 2004). 6 The construction of the new nation, including economic development and national modernization, entailed two different but complementary projects: institutional reform and spiritual revolution. The Park regime condemned the previous Rhee and Chang regimes as incompetent and corrupt governments that took care of their own factional interests and failed to improve people s livelihood. The Park regime maintained that the most imperative task was to build a social system resistant to corruption and inefficiency that would lead to political stability, a new social order, economic development, and ultimate victory against Communism (Park 1962: 164). In the beginning of Park s rule, he implemented a populist anti-corruption policy by imprisoning corrupt politicians, army officers, and businessmen and regulating smuggling, the black market, dance clubs, and prostitution (Park 1962: 92-95). Furthermore, prioritizing economic development, the Park regime began in the early 1960s to spearhead export-oriented industrialization. Instituting the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and Economic Planning Board composed of a number of technocrats, the Park regime tried to implement economic policies efficiently (see Amsden 1989; Chibber 2003; Kohli 2004; Waldner 1999; Woo- Cumings ed. 1999). In parallel with this institutional reform, the Park regime also encouraged people to change their mind-sets and attitudes, what Park called spiritual revolution. Park 6 What was interesting was that liberal, progressive intellectuals, even if they did not necessarily agree on the military rule in Korea, viewed the current situation in a way similar to the military group. For example, Ham Suk Hun, a respected public intellectual, recognized that factionalism and toadyism were the biggest problems that made Korea fall behind and argued that revolution was necessary to break through the prevailing problems. Though both liberal intellectuals and military force had contrasting political orientations, they adopted the same language. 63

78 insisted that Korean history was nothing but a repetition of retrogression and depression and that, because of this history, Koreans were lethargic and felt inferior to Western countries (Shin 1970: 287). In order to overcome the sufferings of the backward and shameful past, the Park regime aimed to create a new social body that was disciplined, compliant, and enthusiastic about building a new nation-state. Park argued that the people s active engagement in state-promoted economic development would hasten prosperity. Though reshuffling the institutional political system was important, even more important was revamping the whole social structure, including people s attitudes, in what Park called the revolution. He believed that the ups and downs of a nation depended completely on the mentality and willingness of the citizens trying to begin a new era. In this logic, the new material wealth could be produced only after transforming society s value system and individuals thinking (Kim, Bohyun 2006: 130). Park called upon people to undergo a spiritual revolution and develop the spirit of self-government and self-determination, while avoiding melancholy, depression, and pessimism (Shin ibid: ). Through slogans such as Foundation of advanced Korea, Creating Korea in the world, Pioneers who create tomorrow, and New vigor for modernization of the fatherland, the Park regime tried to disseminate hopeful messages and confidence (Baek 2004: 215-6). And through the National Reconstruction Movement (gukmin jaegŏn undong) to mobilize youth groups, women s associations, and other semiofficial organizations, the Park regime also promoted a self-help spirit, the elimination of empty courtesies and rituals, rice saving, and the rationalization of living (Garon 2006: 172). In this sense, Park s national development project was a disciplinary 64

79 revolution since the state tried to impose new societal values and create new social subjects to overcome the traditional and backward past. As Gorski (2003) points out, the social discipline imposed by the Protestant Reformation strongly influenced the formation of the European state. The same logic can be applied to the Korean case. By creating more obedient and industrious subjects, the state could manage its population with less coercion and violence. This is not to say that the state was not repressive. Rather, through employing specific discourses, the state tried to achieve its goals in a better and more efficient way. It exemplified not less domination but better domination, borrowing Foucault s term (Foucault 1977: 82). The problem was how the state could effectively impose discipline on society. While the state targeted the entire population, a particular carrier group in this case, the middle class helped discipline extend more efficiently and deeply into the population (Gorski 1993, 270-1). In Korea s case, the state and intellectuals paid attention to the role of the middle class in promoting national modernization as a disciplined and productive citizenry, an alternative to backward and traditional peasants. Discovery of the Middle Class In the early 1960s, Korea was a completely agricultural country with more than half its population living as farmers in rural areas. For the state, which saw industrialization as the path to national modernization, this largely agrarian economic structure had to be transformed. Traditional peasants, who made up the majority of the population and symbolized traditional society, could not be the future of the Korean industrial nation. The state needed a new and progressive social body to represent a new, 65

80 modern nation-state. Many intellectuals participated in this modernization project by producing discourses on development and modernization. Though some liberal intellectuals were critical of the Park regime s dictatorship, they did not disagree with its overall image of national modernization (Kim, Bohyun 2006). Instead, a number of intellectuals, including university professors and journalists, actively engaged in discourse about national modernization and modern citizenship in the new Korea. 7 In the mid-1960s, progressive intellectuals were concerned that Koreans own culture was subordinate to the strong influence of Japanese culture (Sasanggye, May 1965). Both the state and the intellectual circle agreed that the colonial mentality had to be overcome through national modernization and economic development. Intellectuals believed that the rise of the middle class would enlighten the rest of society and develop Korea s own culture in opposition to commercial and foreign concerns (Sasanggye, May 1965). In 1966, the state and political parties began seriously to address the issues around the middle class. The opposition party first paid attention to the middle class (jungsanchŭng) in a speech in early 1966 by arguing that the growth of the middle class was an urgent issue. Through this speech, the leader of People s Party (Minjungdang) asserted that, since the middle class was the driving force for democracy and national unification, protecting and serving the economic interests of the middle class should be of primary concern (Joongang Ilbo, Jan. 21, 1966). The middle class they referred to meant small-scale merchants, mid-scale farmers, salary men and intellectuals. 7 Eun Heo (2007) argues that two different groups of intellectuals were engaged in molding the discourse of national modernization supported by the state: traditional-conservative and liberalpro-american intellectuals. The former group, a strong supporter of the Park regime, emphasized national identity and patriotism. The latter group, most of whom studied abroad, emphasized moral and modern citizenship in nation-building. Despite the different ideological-political orientations of these two groups, they both supported anti-communism. 66

81 Similarly, the ruling Democratic Republican Party (Minjugonghwadang) also tried to embrace the interests of the middle class. By promoting a social welfare system and supporting small- and mid-sized firms, the DRP argued that it had nurtured the middle class (Chosun Ilbo, Jan. 28, 1966). This middle-class debate between the ruling and opposition parties grew into debates among social scientists in newspapers and intellectual magazines dealing with such issues as how to restructure industries to foster the growth of the middle class, the role of the middle class in modernization, and the definition of the middle class itself (Chosun Ilbo 1966; Joongang Ilbo 1966; Chŏngmaek 1966; Jŏngkyŏng Yŏngu 1966). The definitions proposed by intellectuals varied widely, as did the strategies put forward for development of the middle class. Despite the different ideological and political orientations of each scholar, consensus was reached that the middle class needed to grow and should be expanded in order to promote modernization and social stability. Many scholars emphasized the role of the middle class as central in reconstructing and building the new Korea. Both the upper and lower classes, by their very nature, were dangerous candidates as carriers of nationalism and national identity: the upper class could potentially ally with foreign powers in promoting market expansion to serve its self-interest, while the uneducated and poor lower class might easily be agitated by communist rhetoric (Chosun Ilbo, Oct. 27, 1966; Go, Y. 1966). Instead, the middle class was perceived as capable of unwavering nationalism, avoiding both communism and economic colonialism (Cha 1965). According to these scholars, the middle class was an ideal social body to build a new nation with moderate political orientation and rational thinking: 67

82 In our society, which social group is the one that can promote national independence and unification, pursue both freedom and equality, and negotiate between tradition and reform? The upper class would prefer freedom to equality, whereas the lower class would appreciate equality more than freedom. Given that the upper class in Korea depends on or is allied with foreign powers, nationalism supported by the upper class might easily lead to toadyism. On the other hand, nationalism supported by the lower classes might be too radical: since they are ignorant and not socially mature, they might sympathize with communism. From these facts, we can conclude that the carrier of Korean nationalism should be the middle class. Facing an urgent situation under which we must increase productive power and build a welfare state as fast as we can, we should recognize that neither upper nor lower class can promote national modernization. As the group that can represent the majority of the Korean population, the middle class can contribute to creation of nationalism by which every member of society can be unified (Go, Y. 1966, ). Furthermore, the middle class could lead a quiet revolution that would reduce social inequality and build a wealthy nation by strengthening social stability: The middle class has the potential to be hard-working and high-quality citizens. They are not bound by short-term self-interest, like the ruling elites, and they can foresee given situations with rational reasoning better than the working class does. We should disseminate these characteristics of good citizenship through our entire society. Through the nurture and growth of middle-class values and improvement of their socioeconomic conditions, we will reach national modernization. The middle class, which is increasing through the creation of enormous corporations and the expansion of government activities, is a product of modernization, and at the same time it is the promoter of modernization as well (Kim, Chaeyoon. Chosun Ilbo, Jan. 28, 1966). The middle class, a good citizenry (as many intellectuals pointed out), could also serve the interests of the authoritarian state. This good citizenry would serve the state s aims of national modernization through their everyday industriousness. More importantly, they were politically docile, willing to endure sacrifice and hardship for the sake of national gain without challenging the authoritarian order. 8 Intellectuals and the state believed that 8 This meant a certain work ethic where workers were required to work hard without any complaints about low wages and long work hours. Workers demands for higher wages or shorter working hours were interpreted as obstacles that delayed modernization of the fatherland. 68

83 the middle class, with rational reasoning, would have little incentive to advocate communism or radical social reform. Thus the middle class would stably maintain the existing social order. In sum, the middle class was interpellated by the state and intellectuals as a new social body that would contribute to the nation-building project. The socially responsible and politically compliant middle class was an ideal partner for the authoritarian state, which wanted to spearhead rapid economic growth without disrupting social stability. By defining the middle class as possessing such characteristics as self-discipline and civility, the state attempted to facilitate its national vision of development and modernization through its middle-class subjects. In fact, this characterization of the middle class as a mainstream force was far from the objective case in 1960s Korea. Not only was the creation of occupational groups like professionals, managers, and white-collar workers in its infancy, but most people were struggling just to meet the basic necessities of daily life. United Nations reports classified South Korea as among the world s poorest countries, and the average percapita annual income was less than U.S. $150 (United Nations 1962). In this sense, discussions of the growth of the middle class reflected wishful thinking by the state and intellectuals. However, the payoff of the 1960s middle-class debate was the popularization of the term middle class and the conveyance of hopeful messages of economic development and modernization. The term middle class embodied images of the modern and affluent nation. It also delivered new images of comfortable lifestyles as the national standard for all Koreans in the near future. Therefore, labor disputes or political demonstrations were branded as unpatriotic and even procommunist. The government claimed that such actions could lead to social instability and make the country vulnerable to military attack from North Korea. 69

84 Heavy and Chemical Industrialization (HCI) Drive and the Rise of Salary Men While official discourses about the middle class created abstract visions of what this class should be, state industrial policies led directly to the actual growth of a new urban middle class. In particular, the formation of the middle class in Korea paralleled the 1970s HCI drive and the expansion of chaebols, large family-owned business conglomerates. The transformation of economic policy from light toward heavy industry created an alliance between the state and chaebols that led to the employment of a large number of white-collar workers with high incomes and substantial benefits. Though Korea s 1960s success in exports was based on light industries such as textiles and wigs, Park Chung Hee did not want to be known as the leader of a nation that flourished by exporting wigs, plywood, cotton fabrics, and knitwear (Clifford 1998: 58). Instead, he believed that economic development should be based on heavy industries like steel and machinery. For Park, promoting heavy industry was synonymous with building a selfsufficient economy, modernization of the fatherland, and national revival, and this led to his emphasis on HCI as a developmental model. The nurturance of engineers and technicians, the leaders of modernization of the fatherland, was an important policy of the Park regime. Thus, the regime s promotion of HCI led to the expansion of the science and technology sectors and the rise of armies of engineers and high-skilled workers. In the 1970s, Park Chung Hee s Heavy Industrialization Plan paralleled the growth of chaebols. In this period, Park favored key business groups, particularly Hyundai and Daewoo, because of their willingness to invest in heavy industry (Clifford 1998: 113; Kim, E. 1997). Since heavy industry was capital-intensive by nature, small- or medium-sized firms found it difficult to compete against the larger chaebols. Chaebols 70

85 also benefited from aggressive state policies of corporate growth using the investment license, which granted corporations monopolies over particular commodities (Lie 1998: 92). Furthermore, chaebols enjoyed better access to capital at subsidized interest rates and benefited from tax and trade policies. This chaebol-favoring state policy boosted big businesses share of the national economy. In 1974, sales of the ten biggest business groups were equivalent to 15 percent of the GNP. By 1980, however, this share had increased to nearly half, and by 1984 it grew to more than two-thirds (Lie 1998: 91). The rapid growth of chaebols also affected the Korean labor market as the corporations launched massive recruiting drives. In the 1960s, the educational elites had entered government service, but by the 1970s business attracted increasing numbers of top-flight graduates (Clifford 1998: 124). development: In 1968, Park emphasized the role of engineers and technicians in economic In the late 20 th century, the nation whose scientific technology develops will dominate the world. It is a common sense that the relationship between economic development and technological innovation is indivisible. Particularly, highlyskilled workers are the driving force of economic development. Without technological development, we also cannot defend our country. Engineers and technicians are the arms and the shields of the country. From this perspective, we should spur science and technology development (Park Chung Hee 1968 conference speech, quoted from Oh 1999: 90). This state vision of development also transformed a traditional view about occupations. While farmers were respected and craftsmen or artisans were despised in the past, farmers were not respected any longer. Engineers and technicians were the new groups that the state started to appreciate. In fact, the government provided a number of 71

86 incentives with scientists and engineers as it thought they were the driving force of national modernization. Clifford explains: Park also helped engineer an extremely unusual reverse brain drain. Thousands of Koreans had emigrated to the United States, or had gone for graduate training and simply not returned. A master list let Park know where they all were. When he decided that most scientists were needed, he lured them back to the motherland with attractive packages. They wanted housing, cars, schools, and salaries competitive with what they were making overseas. Park saw that they got all of what they asked for. This is how the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) was built in the 1970s and how Postech (Pohang University of Science and Technology) was built in the 1980s. The top ranks of South Korean industry are filled with men who studied and often worked abroad, at some of the best universities and biggest corporations in the United States. (Clifford 1998: 110) Not only did the state nurture higher education in science and engineering, but it also established a number of technical high schools to produce a huge group of technical experts (Oh, Woncheol 1999). These people majoring in science and engineering could easily get good jobs and salaries in big firms. Some statistics prove this fact. For example, among Seoul National University s graduates in 1967, the rates of employment in science and engineering were much higher than others. The employment rate among people majoring in engineering was 100 percent (Yeowon 1968, Mar.). Their salaries were won higher than those of humanities and social sciences. For this reason, scientists and engineers were the most popular occupations of potential husbands among female college students (Yeowon 1968, Mar.). Along with professionals and mid-level managers, engineers as economic warriors had become the occupation in the limelight with the departure of Heavy Industry Promotion. Many scholars have confirmed that Korea s state-directed industrial development brought about a significant rise of salaried managers and engineers (Amsden 1989; Koo 1991). In contrast to other developing countries, the increase of white-collar workers in Korea resulted from the growth of the private sector. During the two decades between 72

87 1963 and 1983, there was a rapid increase in the numbers of professional, managerial, and clerical workers (not including sales employees), from 6.7 percent to 16.6 percent of the entire workforce (Koo ibid., 485). During the same period, the number of engineers increased tenfold and that of managers doubled (Amsden ibid., 171). Table Managerial Resources in the Manufacturing Sector, Employment Category Increase 1980/1960 Engineers 4,425 16,252 44, Managers 31,350 47,166 69, Sales 5,025 27,778 68, Service 13,660 22,740 49, Clerical 17, , , Production 404,735 1,188,406 2,206, Total 479,735 1,447,520 2,797, Administrative a /Production Administrative, clerical/production a includes engineers, managers, sales, and service workers. Source: Korean Institute for Educational Development (1983), as cited in Amsden (1989). And as the number of managers and engineers grew, so did their economic rewards. On average, between 1972 and 1980, managers (including engineers) earned about four times more than production workers (Ministry of Labor, various years). Moreover, white-collar workers wages were twice as much as production workers. While production workers occupied more than 70 percent of total employment in manufacturing, their wages were at the bottom along with service workers. This wage gap is stunning when compared with other advanced countries such the US and Japan. The wage gap between managers and production workers in the US is not as wide as that of Korea (on average, the wages of manager were 1.79 times higher than those of production workers). 73

88 Table Relative Monthly Earnings by Occupation, Earnings (won/month) Year Technicians Managers Clerical Service Production Salesmen Workers Men Workers Source: Ministry of Labor, Yearbook of Labor Statistics, While national social welfare spending was less than one percent of GNP in Korea, the social welfare benefits that white-collar workers and government employees received through their employers were substantial. Since state provision of universal social welfare benefits did not exist in the 1970s, all benefits were employer-provided. The benefits received by white-collar workers included housing loans, retirement benefits, and subsidies for their children s tuition as well as health insurance. Though governmentemployee incomes were not as high as in the private-sector, they had relatively good welfare benefits, resulting from state initiatives to transfer the burden of welfare provision to enterprises. However, small- or mid-sized firms were unable to provide these extensive benefits to their employees; only big enterprises could do so. Thus not only did chaebols employ many high-skilled workers, including managers and engineers, but they provided employees with income and security both. The actual increase of educated middle-class employees, including engineers and technicians, symbolized national development. Not only did they increase domestic production through their hard work and dedication, but they earned foreign currencies abroad by building infrastructures in Middle East and North Africa. By showcasing their 74

89 technological excellence and disciplined workforce, these high-skill workers served as industrial warriors who enhanced Korea s global position. Enforced Social Disciplines as Embodied in Middle-Class Women While the middle-class workers, mostly engineers and white-collar employees, promoted industrialization in the sphere of paid work, housewives had to support their hard-working husbands in the domestic sphere by practicing frugal lifestyles and managing household finance. A high-skilled worker contributing to the national economy paired with a housewife practicing thrift and austerity at home epitomized an ideal national subjectivity as a middle-class family. This economically efficient and productive social body would allow the national economy to prosper. Throughout the course of industrialization, the state emphasized discipline in everyday life. By frequently citing Germany s rehabilitation as an exemplar, 9 Park claimed that Koreans should also endure long years of diligence, economy, patience, and unity for national glory, just as the Germans had done (Shin 1970: 20): They did not eat or dress well through a solemn determination to rebuild Germany again. Housewives saved cloth by cutting another inch from their skirts. To save matches, only when three met together did they light a match. Workers once resolved not to strike until the day of the rehabilitation of the German economy, and not to raise their own salaries until their factory became healthy. Germans ate very frugal food even after economic rehabilitation, and invested their savings for production and construction. (Shin ibid: 25) Thus discipline, both economic and political, was regarded as a patriotic act that could contribute to national reconstruction. Frugality was essential for the welfare of the nation 9 Instead of citing Meiji Japan as a model of development, the former Manchurian military general Park used Germany as the official example that Korea should follow. This was due to the anti- Japanese feelings that ordinary people shared as a result of Japanese colonialism. 75

90 as well as of each household. Park emphasized that frugality as a proper manner of living was not so much an end in itself as a strategy for achieving abundance (Nelson 2000: 150). Austerity and frugality in everyday life were portrayed as precious values that would lead to rapid economic development; extravagance and luxury were regarded as social evils to be abolished. Though it was true that the majority of the population struggled to meet daily necessities, the Park regime always condemned conspicuous consumption as if it were a serious social problem. Excessive consumption was consistently linked with moral decay and unpatriotic acts and became in itself an object of blame. In fact, most of Koreans lives were distant from luxury and rather they lived extremely austere lives. Ordinary products such as color TVs, imported autos, chocolates, and cigarettes, which eased life for the ruling elites in other countries, were even not easily available in Korea (Clifford 1998:130). Clifford introduces one banker s remark about disciplinary Korean lifestyles in his book: There wasn t any neon. [It was illegal.] There were black cars, no shop lights, very dingy street lights and traffic lights. The midnight curfew really ordered people s lives. If you lived in the suburbs of Seoul and you hadn t caught a cab by 10:30 you wouldn t get home. The whole scale was quite different. You didn t see many vehicles. To drive your own car was an extremely exotic thing to do. (Clifford 1998:130) Through political campaigns and propaganda, the state extolled the values of thrift, austerity, and discipline. In 1969, President Park created within the Bank of Korea the Central Council of Savings Promotion, which sought to promote a voluntary savings movement and the people s enlightenment in the spirit of thrift (Garon 2006: 173). These national campaigns were strongly gender-based, chiefly targeting women in charge 76

91 of household finance, i.e. middle-class women. By contrast, extravagant upper-class women and traditional rural women were the targets of state discipline. In the state s logic, these two social groups, which had not undergone spiritual revolution, were the ones delaying national modernization. Upper-class women, the consumers of foreign cosmetics, luxurious furniture, and high-end clothing, were criticized by the state and intellectuals as self-indulgent and extravagant, damaging to the Korean economy. Women who preferred Japanese products were criticized for their lack of austerity and patriotism. Consumption of foreign cosmetics was an immoral and unpatriotic act that would make the Korean economy vulnerable to Japanese or Western infiltration (Yŏwon, September, 1965). And extravagance was viewed as not merely an upper-class problem: the Park regime also portrayed consumption habits in rural areas as unnecessarily extravagant, claiming that most rural households wasted money on unnecessary traditional customs such as wedding ceremonies, funerals, and ancestor worship. The government actively suppressed what it viewed as excessive consumption by implementing in 1969 the Family and Ritual Code (Nelson 2000), for example, banning wedding invitations and also encouraging the simplification of other ceremonies. Moreover, large families were regarded as a barrier to sustaining economic growth. Through fertility control and family planning programs, these undisciplined and uncivilized women with many children were a prime target for disciplinary apparatus. Only when these unproductive and inefficient behaviors were eradicated, Park believed, would economic development finally be achieved. Ultimately, the state and mass media identified middle-class housewives as the agents who would introduce the disciplined lifestyle into their households and society as 77

92 a whole. Middle-class housewives were to play both economic and moral roles. First, the frugal and intelligent middle-class housewives, in contrast with extravagant upper-class women and unenlightened rural women, were believed to manage the household economy rationally, which was the key to national economic development. The role of a wise and rational housewife in managing her household to save money and accumulate wealth was considered critical in constructing a self-sustaining national economy. By practicing this exacting economic life, housewives became advocates of state-sponsored economic development. Popular women s magazines often featured articles promoting economical and wise middle-class housewives as desirable modern women (Yŏsŏng Donga, Yŏwon, various years). Leading magazines published housewives stories about how they achieved frugal lifestyles. Educated middle-class housewives knew how to save money and to manage the household finances rationally. By paying attention to small, almost negligible things, such as electricity and water costs, they could cut unnecessary expenses. Many articles in these magazines also described how ordinary housewives could purchase their own homes by living frugally and saving money. A number of articles in popular women s magazines wrote of frugal middle-class housewives who became homeowners after pinching pennies for a few years. Except for basic living expenses, young wives of white-collar workers or engineers usually put aside most of their husband s income in savings accounts or gye (rotating credit associations). 10 Step by step, 10 Usually translated as rotating credit associations, gye generally involved members making contributions to a common fund and then each taking a turn in using the funds. Although most people would claim that the primary reason they belonged to a gye was social, there were usually economic benefits as well. People would participate in various gye in order to receive a lump sum of money for a special event, such as a child s wedding, buying a home, taking a trip, or starting a 78

93 they approached their long-held goal of home ownership. Women s wisdom in running a household on a meager income was considered vital in creating household wealth. The most common money-saving strategy that exemplary housewives recommended was to keep a daily written record in a household account book. In 1967, state officials formed the Women s Central Council for Savings Life (Yŏsŏng Jŏchuksaenghwal Junganghoi), incorporating some twenty women s associations (Garon 2006: 174), and launched a campaign encouraging housewives to keep a household account book (gagyebu) on a regular basis. By fastidiously tracking all household expenses, a housewife could carefully analyze her consumption patterns and trim unnecessary expense. The household account book was a crucial tool in motivating households to contain consumption and increase savings. With government support, some women s magazines held an annual competition for women s household account books and even published the best one. These officially recognized good housewives not only meticulously recorded everything they spent in the household account books, but they also put aside almost 30 percent of their monthly income in savings (Yŏwon, various years). Printing and publicizing these private household account books made these good housewives into leading examples for other women. As a result of political campaigns urging Koreans to save money and adopt frugal lifestyles, the saving rate in Korea became extremely high compared with other developing countries (Kohli 2009). Personal saving rates steadily increased in the 1960s and by1979 reached 22.2 percent (Korean National Statistical Office 1998), showing the considerable success of the state s campaign to normalize the practice of saving. business. These gye tended to dissolve after one or two years when everyone had had his or her turn at receiving a lump sum (Lett 1998: 71). 79

94 Middle-class housewives also epitomized moral modern women. While the husband worked abroad as an engineer or technician to earn foreign currency, a middleclass housewife had to save as well as take care of housework without wasting money or cheating on her husband (Kim Yerim 2007: 361-2). In doing this, the middle-class housewife could practice patriotism: her domestic commitment allowed her husband to dedicate himself to work without any worries. As a strong advocate of sweet homes, the middle-class housewife was distinct from debauched women who abandoned their families. Given that the divorce rates were particularly increasing among couples whose male partners worked abroad, it was the normal middle-class housewives who sacrificed themselves in order to maintain happy families. These images were also differentiated from uneducated and poor factory or domestic workers, who were seen as ignorant and sexually depraved. Often in the movies, housemaids were portrayed as dangerous and wicked, as home wreckers who seduced their landlords (e.g. The Housemaid 1960). By contrast, the middle-class landlady (wife) was represented as a good housewife and wise mother trying to protect her family; suffering the loss of her husband, she was an innocent victim of the wicked housemaid. In sum, the state and mass media imposed social discipline on middle-class women and reproduced it through the body of middle-class women. On the one hand, educated middle-class housewives had to manage the household economy wisely through rational consumption and savings that would ultimately contribute to the national economy. Writing household account books, saving money, and living frugally were described as waging a war in the domestic sphere. While middle-class housewives were called upon by the state to actively engage in economic activities, they also had to be 80

95 traditional women in their domestic lives, loyal wives and wise mothers who did not disrupt family life. By circulating images of middle-class women as frugal and moral housewives, the state successfully turned middle-class women into ideal social subjects embodying the virtues of discipline and austerity that would lead to national wealth and prosperity. Living a Modern and Cultured Life The middle class represented not only idealized productive, ascetic lifestyles, both at home and work, but also symbolized improved living standards and national affluence through images of home electric appliances and leisure activities. In fact, from the time that the government implemented the Five-Year Plan of Economic Development in 1962, Korea saw remarkable economic growth. Per-capita GNP per capita rose from $82 in 1961 to $266 in 1970, an average annual growth rate of 12.6 percent (Economic Planning Board 1978). The most remarkable growth was in exports, which grew from $10 million in 1964 to $10 billion in 1978 (ibid.) This rapid economic growth also transformed the urban landscape into high-rise buildings and apartment complexes, further visual symbols of the modern middle-class lifestyle. From the 1960s onward, the government supported apartment construction in order to relieve the lack of housing. Though the government also encouraged apartment construction for the lower classes, housing for them was mostly shoddy buildings. By contrast, middle-class apartments with better facilities located in better neighborhoods were built with the support of the city government of Seoul. The mayor of Seoul announced in 1966 that the city government would build 40,000 apartment buildings for 81

96 the middle class (Joongang Ilbo, May 25, 1966). Residents in these new apartments were mostly young, educated white-collar families. According to the statistics, more than half were college educated and working at business firms, government, and schools. 11 Even if not rich, they had stable incomes (Kim, Ok-seok. 1967). Because the urban middle class made up the majority of apartment residents, apartments and apartment living were automatically linked with images of the middle class and its cultured modern lifestyle. These modern apartments replaced old kitchens and dirty toilets with convenient, sanitary ones. They were also located in environments equipped with supermarkets, parking lots, and children s parks. While conventional Korean-style houses (hanok) represented a traditional way of life with an outdoor kitchen and toilet, the newly built apartments guaranteed the privacy of each family member. New apartments incorporated indoor kitchens and bathrooms with the convenience of electricity, cooking gas, and running water. New apartment complexes became a symbol of modernity and the new culture of the middle class: Compared with our traditional and old houses, the apartment seemed much more cultured and even romantic. Whereas our traditional houses did not guarantee any privacy for big families, apartments meant freedom and modernity. Residents are usually so-called intellectuals, not factory workers or the poor. In contrast to maintaining a traditional lifestyle in a house that has not been improved since the premodern period, apartments with gas, hot water, electricity, phones, and mannered neighbors symbolize culture and civilization (Kim, Jinman. 1963: 61, emphasis added). As factories symbolized industrial development, apartment buildings embodied urbanity and modernity. Moreover, living in an apartment also represented a revolution in lifestyle 11 According to a survey conducted by the Korean Housing Corporation (Kim, Ok-seok. 1967), 73 percent of apartment residents were college educated. In occupation, 35 percent were ordinary white-collar workers, 11 percent were government employees, and 11 percent were teachers or staff at schools. 82

97 that improved the quality of life by heightening energy efficiency and liberating housewives from unnecessary labor. After moving into a new apartment, one housewife reported: [s]leeping in the bed is much more comfortable than on the floor. Since the inside temperature is always around 22 C, we do not need to wear a lot of clothes in the apartment. It is also possible to use hot water whenever I want. Furthermore, the heating system runs on oil instead of briquettes, so I do not need to worry about coal poisoning. I do not need to hire housemaids to help do chores around the house, and going out is really convenient as the apartment is watched by a guard (Chosun Ilbo, Dec. 11, 1970). As pointed out by many apartment-dwelling housewives, the biggest advantage of apartment living was the convenient lifestyle. They did not need to worry about the security of their homes or coal poisoning and, because they could get on without hired help, they actually cut household expenses. Furthermore, apartments were much easier to keep clean than other kinds of housing. As modern apartments were not heated by coal briquettes, they did not have the same storage and dust problems (Lett 1998: 116). In contrast to other kinds of housing, which were dark and dingy, middle-class modern apartments were bright and clean (Lett ibid.). The convenience and cleanliness of living in apartments rather than traditional housing became associated with modernity and became more popular among the well-to-do. In 1964, when construction of the Mapo apartment complex was completed, Park gave a speech asserting that modern apartments were instruments of national modernization, an alternative to the old feudal system and rural backwardness (Gelézeau 2007: 130). Living in modern apartments also meant using modern household goods, such as refrigerators, stoves, and televisions. The washing machine, the refrigerator, and the 83

98 black-and-white TV, called the three sacred treasures (samsin gi), 12 symbolized from the late 1960s the revolutionized daily lifestyles of domestic electrification and mass consumption. This expression became a symbol for validating the identity of the individual household as a modern family (Yoshimi 2006: 77). Although these electric appliances were quite expensive for an ordinary family at that time, they rapidly entered Korean homes, especially those of urban middle-class families. According to a 1978 newspaper survey whose respondents were long-term (more than 10 years) employees in government, banks, and business firms, every respondent had television sets at home; 96 percent of respondents owned refrigerators; 64 percent owned washing machines; 42.7 percent owned pianos; and 2.7 percent owned cars (Kyunghyang Shinmun, Nov. 17, 1978). And what were luxury items in the 1960s, such as televisions, refrigerators, and washing machines, became more common among urban middle-class families throughout the 1970s. For example, while in the 1960s television sets were yet the luxury among urban households, they became more universal in the 1970s and 1980s. As seen in the Table 3.3 below, in 1970, less than 5 percent of urban households had refrigerators, a proportion that jumped to roughly 50 percent by There were no washing machines in 1970, less than 2 percent owned them in 1975, and by 1985 about 33 percent of the households owned washing machines. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, having these consumer goods became more universal and common, and this phenomenon became national. 12 This phrase was originally introduced in Japan in the 1950s. Inspired by high economic growth and rapid increase in ownership of home electric appliances in Japan during the post-war period, Korean intellectuals used this phrase frequently (see Lee, Jongsu. 1967). 84

99 Table Ownership Rates of Major Household Goods (by household) TV TELEPHONE REFRIGERATOR WASHING MACHINE Year Whole Whole Whole Cities Cities Whole Country Cities Country Country Country Cities % 14.5% 4.8% 8.9% 2.2% 4.6% % 44.4% 9.6% 13.5% 6.5% 11.7% 1.0% 1.9% % 90.9% 24.1% 30.3% 37.8% 51.5% 10.4% 16.1% % 99.5% 48.7% 56.3% 71.1% 78.7% 26.0% 33.7% Sources: National Statistical Office, Population and Housing Census, citied from Nelson 2000 (87). The increasing availability of these household durables provided strong evidence that not only was consumerism emerging as a way of life, but also that the extreme poverty of the early 1960s had dramatically decreased. Remarks in the mass media about the increasing use of modern household goods demonstrated both the social and cultural prominence of the urban middle class and the prevalence of consumer culture. While in the official discourse of the 1960s the urban middle class contributed to national modernization by its frugality and discipline, in the 1970s it again became the nation s savior through its consumerism and adoption of the cultured, modern lifestyle. Aspirations to the Middle Class Although the image of the urban middle-class and its comfortable lifestyle signified a bright side of high economic growth in Korea, the majority of factory workers still suffered from low wages and long working hours under miserable conditions. Industrialization led to expansion of the whole economy over these two decades, but the benefits of economic expansion were far from equally distributed. It is well known that Korean workers were subject to extreme capitalist exploitation, forced to work long hours and paid low wages. Korean workers worked the longest hours in the world: 52.3 hours a 85

100 week in 1970, up from 50.3 hours a week in However, wages did not keep pace with the increase in hours. In 1970, average monthly wages had grown to only $45.16 from $35.85 in 1960 (Kim, E. 1997: 122-3). Though the government trumpeted the rapid increase in real wages during these two decades around a 10 percent increase in annual real wages in the 1970s alone (Choi 1997: 332) the wage increase of production workers resulting from rapid economic growth was extremely small. Nonetheless, throughout the Park regime, there were no signs of massive worker resistance (Choi 1997). 13 While the repressive regime had tight control over labor, this authoritarian state promised such ordinary workers upward mobility and improved living standards after they suffered pain and sacrifice in the short term. By emphasizing the trickle-down effect, the state and intellectuals argued that the growth of national wealth would in the end benefit the entire population evenly (Lim 1973: 60). The slim hope of upward mobility and exit from miserable work conditions sustained factory workers living in poverty. 14 Despite rising social inequality, the increased consumption of leisure and new household commodities by the small but growing middle class symbolized what modern life could be for those not yet a part of it. The rapid increase in real wages during the two decades of industrialization seemed to promise them middle-class lifestyles in the near future. 13 Hagen Koo argues that educational ideology has been a powerful tool to justify the mistreatment of workers: lack of education was associated with being inferior and thus undeserving of decent treatment. Even workers who struggled with social discrimination were always self-conscious about their lower educational attainments. Most factory workers expressed a strong desire to exit their current situations by talking about their factory employment as a temporary phase in their lives (Koo 2001: 134). The strong association of images of dirty or lowstatus work with factory workers prevented these workers from developing a working-class identity; instead, they invested in individual improvement, attending night school to acquire cultural skills in order to dissociate themselves from the stereotypical images of factory workers. 14 Borrowing Hirschman (1970) s concept, Koo argues that, while exit options were prevalent among workers in the 1960s and 1970s, workers started to voice their rights only later in the 1970s. Supported by church organizations and student movement groups, workers were able to form a class identity and challenge the injustice and discrimination they had experienced. 86

101 Images of the urban middle class played a dual role in accomplishing state aims. On the one hand, the urban middle class served to disseminate official state ideology through images of the frugal, disciplined, and self-reliant middle-class lifestyle. On the other hand, this middle class also created consumerist dreams through its use of consumer and leisure goods, which showcased the improved living standards and bolstered the regime s political legitimacy. Although the state and some intellectuals were concerned with excessive middle-class consumption, widespread consumption of the latest scientific gadgets and modern leisure goods by the middle class led the Korean nation into the new modern world. The urban middle class was in the vanguard in introducing and disseminating cultured, rationalized lifestyles. It was ironic that the state promoted extensive mass consumption as the goal of enduring a life of discipline and austerity. In this respect, the images of the middle class were contradictory since they were both frugal and consumerist. However, the message was clear: If you work hard and live frugally, you will become middle class and enjoy a cultured and comfortable lifestyle. The descriptions of Korea s future presented in official state discourse consistently featured middle-class lifestyles, even when they were not explicitly talking about the middle class. In a 1967 speech, President Park declared that in the 1970s, people will enjoy leisure time with their families, just as housewives will frugally manage their households in modern houses with up-to-date kitchens (Park 1968: 47). In another speech, he also argued, By the end of the Third Economic Development Plan, the typical Korean lifestyle will allow salary men to buy their own cars and go to suburbs during the weekends (Park 1972: 240). Furthermore, the DRP (the ruling party) described Korea s future as follows: 87

102 As economic growth accelerates and industrialization matures, the basic necessities of life will be fulfilled. Beyond simply meeting the basic necessities, everyone will enjoy a higher quality of life. We expect that by 1991, not only will the housing problem be totally resolved, but all citizens will also enjoy decent lives in cultured houses (Munhwa Jutaek). In the 1980s, our lives will be closer to the level of advanced civilization with a ready supply of various durable consumer goods, including color TVs, washing machines, refrigerators, electric ovens, and air conditioners (Minjugonghwadang 1978: ). Though the state did not adopt the language of class, its idealized images of the future nation were equated with a society where the majority of the population could enjoy middle-class lifestyles; they would own homes and modern household goods and enjoy leisure activities. Around the end of the 1970s, many newspaper articles also reported on the transformed social landscape, focusing on the weekend leisure boom and car ownership in particular. Commonly, these articles celebrated the improvement in the living standards of ordinary people, detailing how they escaped from poverty and obtained better lives. My car and my home were the most common phrases appearing in newspapers or magazines around the late 1970s and people dreamed of having their own cars and apartments soon. News articles about the increasing number of people taking driving tests and the increasing number of private cars on the streets showed how soon the age of my car was approaching (Dong-A Ilbo, May 4, 1978; Maeil Kyungje, Dec. 17, 1979). There was a genuine widespread excitement about Korea s newly visible domestic opulence: Since ten years ago, when the phrase the age of my car appeared, the term has been immensely popular. If you go to the DMV in Gangnam, you will be shocked at the number of people taking driving tests. Well, there are 10,000 people per day taking the driving test this year. (...) Salary man Mr. K, who came to pick up his driver s license, told me, Think about three years from now. People with my cars will not be symbols of high class. It is going to be the same as purchasing TV sets when they first came out. If in ten years you cannot drive, people will take you for a fool. (Dong-A Ilbo, May 4, 1978) 88

103 In the 1970s, having my car was not common at all. Although production expanded greatly in the second half of the 1970s, from 9,069 cars in 1974 to 112,314 in 1979, throughout the 1970s ownership of private automobiles remained very low (Nelson 2000: 94). 15 Nonetheless, a lot of news coverage dealt with my car fever, making laudatory remarks about the rapid increase of car owners and drivers. It was important for the state to present my car aspirations as a national project, since my car was a concrete symbol of an advanced economy. It was said that the popularization of my car and the development of the automobile industry were emblematic of the maturity of modernization, as in advanced nations such as the United States (Kim Hyung-guk 1989a: 125). Though not many at the time could enjoy the privilege of purchasing cars and apartments, the dominant discourse of my car and my home reinforced the fantasy of being middle class. While income inequality had increased from the start of industrialization, continued economic growth and visible economic prosperity generated an image of mass culture and mass consumption. Urban landscapes peppered with highrise buildings and apartments with streets full of cars symbolized Korean prosperity and modernity. A poll conducted by the Ministry of Culture and Public Information (Munhwagongbobu) with 2000 households in the end of 1977 showed that rapid economic growth led people to identify their current situations optimistically and fostered self-identification as the middle class (Dong-A Ilbo, Feb. 8, 1978; Kyunghyang Shinmun, Feb. 8, 1978). According to the poll, the overwhelming majority of Koreans (86.8 percent) 15 Compared to other countries with generally similar levels of income and industrial development, Korea was unusually short of cars. While there was only one car for every 100 people in Korea in 1985, Taiwan had one per every 50 people, Malaysia one per 20 people, Mexico one per 17, and Brazil one per 13 (Nelson 2000: 95). 89

104 thought that their living standards were compatible with being in the middle class. 16 Using relatively objective measures of class like occupation or homeownership, social scientists estimated that the middle class made up a maximum of 30 percent of the Korean population (Kim, Kyung-Dong. 1993). The disparity between these two estimates shows that people were optimistic about their current and future situations. Judging from this prevalence of middle-class identification, it seems plausible that national economic progress from the 1960s to the 1980s created an increasing middle-class identity. Although it would have been difficult to believe at the beginning of the 1960s, the Park regime succeeded in establishing the national identity of an economically modernizing Korea as a middle-class one. Public perceptions of comfortable lifestyles shifted from unobtainable to within everyone s reach. The cars, apartments, and summer vacation trips, viewed as specifically middle class, identified increased purchasing power and standard of living as points of national pride. The poll mentioned above also found that rapid economic growth led to increasing national pride among the public: the majority (88.8 percent) agreed that Korean economy would be self-sufficient soon, and half (52.4 percent) expected that Korean economy would be comparable to advanced economies. At the same time, there was an increasing positive perception of the government s performance: the majority (80.4 percent) believed that corruption had become less common than 4-5 years before. 17 The promise 16 This is because a number of production workers identified them as the middle class instead of as the working class. This was due to influential anti-communist rhetoric in Korea. Since the language of social classes, in particular the working class, was always connected with that of communism, it made people avoid identifying production workers with the working class. 17 Given that the authoritarian state strongly restricted the freedom of expression and censored all news articles published at the time, it is difficult completely to trust the contents of newspapers. Unfortunately, these are the only in-depth data available in that time period. 90

105 of a better future allowed ordinary people to aspire to the middle class and thus overlook increasing social inequality. While some radical student groups and intellectuals criticized state policies for this uneven economic development and advocated redistribution for greater social equality, their claims did not effectively combat the state goals of high economic growth and modernization. Anti-regime struggles and resistance in the 1970s remained at the local level and were unable to mobilize people on a larger scale. 18 With the help of intellectuals and the mass media, the authoritarian state created and disseminated a specific vision of national development embedded in middle-class discourses about comfortable and modern lifestyles. By doing this, the state successfully generated widespread societal support for its developmental projects. Instead of social division and conflict, the collectively shared middle-class identity embraced social homogenization and national identity. Conclusion I have investigated how the Korean state created the middle class as a hegemonic social class through both economic and ideological projects. The Park regime implemented economic developmental planning programs throughout the 1960s and 1970s to mobilize the whole population in the name of national development and nation-building (Castells 1998; Kohli 2004). By looking at the state-fostered formation of the middle class, this chapter adds to existing literature an exploration of how a state 18 Some might argue that this was due to the high level of repression. Although this might be true, the situation in the 1980s provides a good point of comparison. Given the similar levels of political repression during the 1970s and 80s, anti-regime groups could mobilize ordinary people more successfully in the 80s (leading to political democratization in 1987) than in the 70s. This implies that repression by itself cannot explain the results of anti-regime protests. 91

106 that had economic development goals and objectives also needed to strengthen and legitimize itself culturally and politically. In addition to economic policies that fostered chaebols as the driving force for rapid economic growth, the authoritarian state utilized symbols and discourse that were channeled through the urban middle class and appealed to the rest of the population that had not reached middle-class status. In the state s discourse, the middle class represented a new social group who had obtained college educations and got better jobs with higher incomes that allowed them to enjoy comfortable lifestyles. As a carrier of modernity and civility, the growing middle class was able to strengthen national identity and the political legitimacy of the state. In this respect, the rise of the middle class was not merely a natural outcome of industrialization, but also a conscious product of state policy. Through the top-down state policy of the HCI drive, the Park Chung Hee regime allied itself with chaebols hungry for white-collar workers, managers and engineers, to staff the growing heavy chemical industry. It was these workers who formed the core of the growing middle class and allowed the discourse of the 1960s to become reality. In addition, state discourses portrayed the ideal middle class as frugal and civilized, identifying these as the new values of modern Korea. As the vanguard of the new Korea, the middle class not only supported values that would help overcome the suffering of the past, but displayed their new affluence by the consumption of advanced consumer goods. The rise of middle-class identity and the inexorable spread of consumer culture in the 1970s suggested that Korea was recovering from the tragedy of the Korean War and moving toward peace and prosperity. Increasing middle-class identity did not mean increasing class tensions or conflicts; rather, it strengthened social homogenization and 92

107 national identity because of its open membership. Because other social segments could potentially join the middle class through social mobility, the boundaries of the middle class were fluid (Fernandes 2006: xix). The visibility of the middle class and the promise of entry to it helped the state smooth the process of development and modernization. 93

108 CHAPTER 4. CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE CHINESE MIDDLE CLASS: ECONOMIC REFORM, URBAN CONSUMER CULTURE, AND THE NATIONAL DESIRE Whenever I told some of my Chinese friends that my dissertation topic was the Chinese middle class, they responded, half-jokingly, Oh, you are studying something that does not exist in China. The word middle class 19 is ubiquitous in China, in newspapers, books, magazines, speeches, and academic articles. The Chinese middle class is also a core interest of many multinational corporations and consulting firms that hope the Chinese middle class will increase their spending and thus the firms profits. Yet, many Chinese people believe that the Chinese middle class is still an illusion or a myth. This chapter investigates how the idea of the Chinese middle class is being constructed by the state and mass media and how it has become a buzzword in contemporary China. When Chairman Deng Xiaoping said, after Mao s death in 1978, that China should achieve a xiaokang (well-to-do) society, China entered a new stage of economic reform and opening-up. China s new experiment in moving from a planned to a market economy brought about rapid economic development, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) celebrates this newly created wealth. Material wealth in China symbolizes not the object of condemnation, but rather something that everyone aspires to. In the post-mao 19 The term middle class in Chinese appears in a variety of Chinese words, for example, zhongchan jieji (middle class), zhongchan jieceng (middle stratum), bailing (white-collar workers), zhongchanzhe (middle-class people), and xiaozi (petty bourgeoisie). These various terms all refer to middle-class individuals. In Chinese, zhong means middle and chan means wealth; hence, zhongchan implies middle-level income, or wealth. 94

109 era, the CCP emphasized the role of the middle class in leading China s future. Since the early 1990s, when former General Secretary Jiang Zemin announced that the Party would recruit its members from all social strata but particularly from such new social strata as private entrepreneurs and mid-level managers, the middle class has been recognized as an important social force in China. Political leaders, academic researchers, and journalists passionately address middle-class issues: Who belongs to the middle class? What is the average income of the middle class? What are its consumption patterns? How large is the middle class in China? Measuring the size of the middle class has been extremely popular among Chinese scholars (Li 2009). Since the working class is officially the dominant social force in China, the flourishing discourses on the middle class are quite puzzling. How do the government and the Party, which once supported the Marxist ideal of a classless society, now form a new class? How did the middle class, a term designating an anti-revolutionary privileged group during the Cultural Revolution, reverse itself to become a leading progressive force in the New China? This chapter argues that the dominant middle-class discourse was manufactured by the Chinese government, mass media, and academic circles in an effort to create a strong ally for economic reform and to strengthen the image of a civilized and modern country emerging from long-term poverty. Though the CCP has officially supported an idea that the working class as a whole represents China, the new marketized China needed a new social subject to replace the inefficient and unproductive old socialist system, and instead represent modern and affluent China. The formation of the middle class has been critical in both economic and political endeavors in post-socialist China: economically, boosting urban consumption at the core of the middle class has been 95

110 important in sustaining economic growth; politically, the government needed a social body to rationalize the increasing social inequality and to showcase its successful economic performance. The urban middle class represented the opportunities for social mobility in the newly merit-based system and had the potential to be an exemplary social group by epitomizing globalized China. The New Revolution: Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics? On the eve of economic reform, socialist China was suffering from a stagnant economy and still feeling the traumatic effects of the Cultural Revolution. At that time, nobody expected the remarkable economic growth that China is now achieving. In 1979, the per-capita GDP (constant 2000 US $) was only $175 (WDI 1979) and the singleminded pursuit of (heavy) industrial development in the prior three decades neglected consumption. Given the slow income growth and high prices for luxuries, rationing was imposed to limit demand and distribute goods in scarce supply. From 1955 until well into the 1980s, ration coupons were required to purchase grain and cotton cloth (Naughton 2007:81). After the defeat of the Gang of Four, Deng Xiaoping returned to power, having survived the Cultural Revolution. Rather than embracing the political doctrines of collectivism and a classless future, Deng chose a non-ideological and practical approach to economic reform. In order to restore the legitimacy of the Communist party, weakened by the disastrous impact of the Cultural Revolution, political leaders had to generate economic prosperity in order to show that socialism was still a superior system (Castells 1998:305). Deng thought that the intense political and ideological struggles of the Mao 96

111 era had hindered Chinese development, and that instead, socialism should develop productive power and improve people s living standards (Wang and Xuan 2004:40). This was the context in which Deng first introduced the concept of xiaokang (well-to-do, relatively comfortable) as a new direction for Chinese development and modernization. By repudiating the centrally planned, autarkic, and capital-intensive economic patterns of the period, China s reformers promoted an export-driven, labor-intensive, consumer-oriented development model close to that of neighboring East Asian societies (Whyte 2007:28). 20 As a first step, reformers lowered barriers and gradually opened up the system, giving individuals and groups the opportunity to act as entrepreneurs in order to fill market demands. Early reformers created pockets of unregulated and lightly taxed activity within the system, allowing such pockets to come into being because they were seen as contributing to developmental objectives. For instance, rural communities were allowed to run township and village enterprises outside the plan because doing so would contribute to local investment and economic growth. Foreign businesses were allowed to operate freely in Special Economic Zones (SEZs), which would increase investment in China and might also convince foreign corporations to transfer technology to China. Such policies were seen as contributing to growth while not initially threatening the overall ability of the government to manage and direct the economy (Naughton 2007:87). In January and February of 1992, Deng Xiaoping made an important trip to the Shenzhen SEZs in Guangdong province. Deng had approved the establishment of Shenzhen and other economic zones in 1979, and in 1984 he had traveled to Shenzhen to 20 The reformers paid particular attention to the Singaporean model of economic development because it was an exemplary case of promoting rapid economic growth while sustaining an authoritarian regime (Castells 1998). 97

112 declare the SEZs success. Then, nearly a decade later, he returned to Shenzhen to revitalize the economic reform program. He called for faster economic growth and urged Guangdong province to catch up to the four small dragons within twenty years. At the Fourteenth Party Congress in Beijing in October 1992, the CCP adopted its most reformoriented platform in history. The goal of reform, the party declared, was to build a socialist market economy, a system whose scope far exceeded that of the commodity economy pursued by the leadership in In addition to its conscious and cautious state policies, some favorable structural conditions also explain China s recent economic success. First, China s neighboring East Asian tigers, which had enjoyed economic successes from labor-intensive industries, were suffering from the rising labor costs associated with producing consumer goods cheaply for Western markets. As the World Systems approach argues, when Japan was moving to high value-added industries from labor-intensive consumer-goods industries, the East Asian tigers exploited this open niche with their own cheap labor (Deyo ed. 1987; Silver 2003). Likewise, China took advantage of her cheap labor. Second, investments from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korean business operators played a key role in successful Chinese economic development as well (Castells 1998; Whyte 2007). This partly explains why China still had capacity and bargaining power vis-à-vis multinational firms despite depending heavily on FDI (foreign direct investment). Between one half and two thirds of the total foreign investment now entering China originates in Hong Kong and Taiwan (Kohli 2009:399). From a macroeconomic perspective, the Chinese pursuit of a market economy has been a great success. Average annual GDP growth accelerated from 6 percent in the pre- 98

113 1978 period to 9.6 percent in the period (Naughton 2007:140). Learning a lesson from the Soviet case, Chinese leaders knew that radical reform would bring about political disorder, so instead they implemented gradual reform while preserving the Communist order. China s modernization and economic reform was a deliberate state policy, designed and controlled by the leadership of the CCP (Castells 1998). As previous developmental state literature has argued, state autonomy and capacity were also important in China s success. Once in power, the nationalistically inclined Chinese communists minimized Western economic and political influence in China, eliminated China s capitalist classes, and created a well-organized state that permeated Chinese society (Johnson 1962; Kohli 2009). Despite the serious costs of state repression and state-led upheavals, there is no denying that state consolidation laid the foundation for a nationalist model of Chinese development (Kohli 2009). In line with market reform, the CCP had to adopt new ideological language to support its state policies. Most notably, since 1978 the CCP has permanently jettisoned the Maoist language of class struggle and has denounced the privileged position of the Chinese working class (Lee 2007; Pun and Chan 2008; Rofel 1994). Maoist ideology enhanced the position of workers with respect to the intelligentsia and managerial cadres. 21 The working class enjoyed great advantages in political status, wages, welfare, and employment security (Lee 2007:38). While physical labor was highly valued, mental labor was not. The intelligentsia was required periodically to engage in productive labor during the Mao era, sometimes being sent to the countryside for this purpose. At the time, 21 On the eve of the establishment of the People s Republic, Mao wrote an essay, On the People s Democratic Dictatorship, in which he outlined two fundamental principles of the new socialist state: (1) it was organized under the leadership of the working class ; and (2) it would ally itself with the world proletariat of socialist countries (Mao 1971). 99

114 political virtue and loyalty to the party were more valuable than skills or knowledge (Shirk 1984). Mao argued that social practice and experience were vastly more important than academic curricula; years of service were equated with ability. Politically committed, loyal people who served the party and Communism were the desirable socialist men that the party tried to create during the Mao era. Before the reform, China was an egalitarian system because of the bureaucratic redistribution system. In the 1970s, the resources of the workplace (danwei), as well as the wages earned by the head of the household, determined a family s standard of living (Bian 1994). Whether a household was headed by a professional or a blue-collar production worker, their family members lived in comparable homes, took the same buses to work, confronted similar food shortages, and faced an equally limited choice of leisurely activities and selection of clothing (Davis 2000:3). Although material inequalities existed between high-level cadres and ordinary workers, overall, living standards were remarkably homogeneous within enterprises. Until 1990, most urban adults worked in state-owned enterprises and enjoyed the iron rice bowl of lifetime employment, egalitarian wages, and generous welfare benefits (Davis 1992). However, market reform eroded the socialist principle emphasizing egalitarianism and class leveling. During the initial phases of labor reform, political leaders criticized the old iron rice bowl and eating from one big pot (egalitarian wage system) as serious obstacles to economic growth (Lee 2007:62). Reformers also believed that this system fostered a lack of competitive mentality and self-motivation, a reliance on the state, and worker laziness (Lee 2007; Won 2005). Departing from the socialist past characterized by anti-competitive, collectivist, and undisciplined cast of mind, the CCP 100

115 emphasized self-reliance and individual responsibility, which were believed to promote economic growth and global competitiveness. This ideological shift from socialist egalitarianism to market mechanisms resulted in growing levels of social stratification and increasing gaps between rich and poor. As Riskin et al. write, One of the world s most egalitarian societies in the 1970s, China in the 1980s and 1990s became one of the more unequal countries in its region and among developing countries generally (2001:3). The Era of Professionals and Human Capital In China s embracing of market mechanisms and competitiveness, human capital and individual abilities became key determinants of individual economic successes since economic reform (Goodman and Zang 2008; Hsu 2007). This recalls Nee (1989) s market transition theory, which sees increasing returns from human capital, such as education and skills, as the Chinese market economy became more established. However, it is difficult to say that the winners of economic reform such as private entrepreneurs are completely due to the market mechanism Nee suggests. Instead, these market mechanisms were backed up by government policies emphasizing individual responsibility and efficiency by rewarding human capital and educational credentials. From the very beginning of economic reform, Deng Xiaoping emphasized knowledge and technical expertise as the driving force in modernization, as much as physical labor of the working class. Though China was able to take advantage of laborintensive industries due to her cheap labor, Chinese leaders have emphasized technological development in strengthening the country. Deng pointed out that science 101

116 and technology were key to modernization, and that China would fall behind if it did not develop them adequately: Even though we have a dictatorship of the proletariat, unless we modernize our country, raise our scientific and technological level, develop our productive forces and thus strengthen our country and improve the material and cultural life of our people unless we do all this, our socialist political and economic system cannot be fully consolidated, and there can be no sure guarantee for the country s security (Deng 1984:41). In 2002, General Secretary Jiang Zemin followed Deng s argument by stressing the importance of innovation and progress in a country s prosperity: Innovation sustains the progress of a nation. It is an inexhaustible motive force for the prosperity of a country and the source of the eternal vitality of a political party. We must conscientiously free our minds from the shackles of the outdated notions, practices and systems, from the erroneous and dogmatic interpretations of Marxism and from the fetters of subjectivism and metaphysics. We must respect work, knowledge, competent people and creation. This should be an important policy of the Party and state to be conscientiously implemented in society at large. The aim is to raise the quality of the population and thereby serving socialism (emphasis added). 22 These speeches have two common themes. First, innovation, knowledge, and competence are critical not only in improving population quality, but also in bringing about national affluence and modernization. Second, a dogmatic interpretation of Marxism, including the respecting of physical labor only, is completely abandoned. Whatever contributes to increasing productive forces or improving a country should be respected, regardless of ideological inclination. The leaders had practical approaches to reform and also demanded a flexible mindset toward society. This also implies that the CCP did not stick to its old policy in which the working class was the only respected social class, but now 22 Jiang Zemin, Report to the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on November 8, Available at 102

117 believed that other social groups should be respected as well if they contribute to economic development and socialist modernization. The national emphasis on education and professional skills strengthened the merit-based hiring system, which extended from elite recruitment at the national level down to local levels throughout the country (Lee 1991; Walder 1995). Employment is now education-driven, and employees in public administration are recruited today on the basis of examinations and educational credentials (Tomba 2004:10-11). This trend contrasts dramatically with the Mao period. During the Cultural Revolution, the CCP systematically discriminated against members of the old educated classes, eliminated entrance examinations, filled university classrooms with villagers who had not attended high school, denigrated the value of abstract knowledge, sent intellectuals to live in villages to be reeducated by peasants, and strived to level educational differences (Andreas 2009: 3). However, the post-mao era saw the dominance of cultural capital and those who have knowledge and expertise became better off. Nowadays, most people believe that educational credentials and individual capabilities are more important in young people s success than membership in the Communist Party (Zang 2008). In terms of material rewards, professionals with specific knowledge and expertise enjoyed marked salary increases in the 1990s. Public employees in Beijing tertiary education and scientific institutions, for example, saw their salaries rise by 158 percent between 1995 and 2000, and their average salaries were 31 percent above the Chinese average (Beijing Statistical Yearbook 1996 and 2001). The most well-paid groups in urban entities were people in finance, culture, health, and the IT industry, where employees could use their specific skills: for example, in 2006, computer engineers 103

118 (81851 yuan/year), financial analysts ( yuan/year), and scientists (54231 yuan/year) (Beijing Statistical Yearbook 2008). According to Lu and his project team, the income disparity between workers and managers has been increasing since 1979 (Lu ed. 2002). While the income disparity between workers and managers was small between 1979 and 1991 (the monthly wage of managers was respectively 1.18 and 1.13 times that of workers), it has increased since 1992 (the monthly wage of managers was respectively 1.26 and 1.48 times that of workers in 1992 and 2000). Due to these educational and income policies that the party-state adopted, post- Mao Chinese society witnessed the rise of a distinctive social group enjoying higher income and greater social respect: the educated middle class, mostly comprised of professionals, managers, and white-collar workers. Surveys on occupational prestige conducted in 1987, 1993 and 1999 showed that professionals such as lawyers, professors, doctors, and scientists were highly rated in the prestige hierarchy (Zang 2008:57). Likewise, respondents in a 1999 survey believed that professional technicians or educated people should get higher incomes (Lu ed. 2002:97). These results reveal that the rewards for education and expertise are believed justified by the general population. This statistical evidence indicates that the middle class, including professionals, managers, and white-collar workers, was winning out due to economic reform as the status of ordinary workers declined. What is noteworthy here is that, in addition to educated people employed in jointventure and foreign-owned enterprises, white-collar workers in state-owned work units who enjoyed many fringe benefits comprise another group in the urban middle class (Li 104

119 and Niu 2003) 23. Various fringe benefits provided by the government include cheap housing, free health care and pension plans. Through the housing reforms of recent years, many employees in the state-owned sectors became property owners. They could purchase housing at a discounted price, whereas employees in non-state owned enterprises had to pay full market price (Wang and Murie 2000). 24 With the support of the state, they could join the ranks of the middle class. A lawyer employed in the government sector recounts: My annual wage is 48,000 yuan but it is equal to 100,000 yuan for an employee outside the system. This 100-square-metre apartment cost me 100,000 yuan. They have to spend 800,000 yuan to buy it, or 60,000 yuan for one-year s rent. The company gives me the use of a company car and also pays all the expenses for it, worth roughly 30,000 yuan a year. This car has become my own personal asset. The company pays me 10,000 yuan a year for telecommunications costs. Every year, I travel overseas several times because my company has a lot of international business. As you know, these are partly business trips and partly tourism at the public expense. If a private enterprise owner goes overseas for business, he has to travel at his own expense. If we count all of this income, my annual income is at least 100,000 yuan (quoted from Li and Niu 2003). Though the wages of government employees were relatively low compared with employees in the non-government sectors, the extensive welfare and benefits provided by 23 Li and Niu suggest that Beijing has two kinds of middle class, one outside the system and the other within the system. While the first group of white-collar workers has higher wages in jointventure firms or foreign-owned enterprises, the latter group enjoys extensive social welfare provided by the government despite its relatively low wages. 24 The massive selling-off of public housing stock at below-market prices gave well-placed employees a low-cost entry ticket to the real estate market. People currently living in goodquality housing can easily obtain use rights to their houses through subsidized purchase and can become homeowners. Especially in the public sector, those who have benefited most from the housing reform are cadres and professionals (Li 2005). Not only were these high-status workers better informed of market opportunities, but higher income and various in-kind subsidies let them purchase housing more easily than others. According to Li and Niu s study, no matter the location or quality of apartment buildings, high-status workers generally only pay 1,480 yuan per square meter, whereas non-government employees must pay five times as much. Most residential buildings for Party and government departments, state-owned companies, banks and institutions in Peking are within the fourth ring road or in the areas where housing prices have a strong tendency to increase, such as the Zhongguancun area, popularly known as China s Silicon Valley. 105

120 government work units allowed their employees to enjoy comfortable, stable lifestyles. White-collar workers in government and non-government work units have different kinds of benefits. However, there is no doubt that both groups were made better off by state policies that widened the gap between peasants and blue-collar workers generally. In fact, changes in the composition of the CCP reflect the rise of the middle class as an important social group. Whereas during the Mao era most party members were peasants and army men, since economic reform the proportion of professionals and intellectuals has been increasing (see Table 4.1). Table Occupations of Party Members ( ) Year Total Workers Peasants Intellectuals Army Other Unit: totals in millions, other indicators in percent Source: Suh 2009, p. 213 Given that peasants still make up the majority of the Chinese population, the proportion of peasants in the CCP is relatively low, whereas intellectuals are overrepresented. Only 4.4 percent of peasants had party membership, while in percent of professionals and 68 percent of administrative bureaucrats had membership (see Table 4.2) (Lee, Hong Yung 1991). Table Education of Party Members Year College High School Middle Primary Illiterate School School

121 Unit: percent Source: Suh 2009, p. 215 Similarly, what is notable in Table 4.2. is that party members with higher education have been rapidly increasing since economic reform. Before the reform, the CCP represented disadvantaged and revolutionary peasants; after reform, it was drastically transformed into a professionalized and elitist party. This change reveals a tension or contradiction between the official ideology of the CCP and the reality: on the one hand, the party had to maintain its identity as representing a working-class country; on the other hand, however, the leaders recognized that China could not become an affluent and modernized country with old and dogmatic rhetoric that emphasized only class struggles and the importance of physical labor. While the Party maintained the idea of the working class as the fundamental pillar of socialism, since Jiang Zemin s 2002 speech to the Party Congress it has also appealed to the rising middle class, including technical and managerial elites. In a 2005 speech, President Hu Jintao redefined the working class in China by claiming that this class includes not only physical laborers but also mental laborers such as intellectuals and managerial cadres. Moreover, by adopting a concept of harmonious society (hexie shehui), Hu addressed the importance of closing the income gaps between the rich and the poor and between urban and rural areas. Hu s approach differed from that of former leaders such as Deng and Jiang who had emphasized getting rich first and uneven development plans, in that he paid attention to the increasing social inequality and focused on social justice. However, his goal of building a harmonious society could be read as a political strategy to prevent social unrest and conflict. The rationale behind this new rhetoric appears to be that incremental development would take place under the 107

122 condition of social stability and orderly process (Tomba 2009:14). Through the rhetoric of social harmony, Chinese leaders tried to legitimize the increasingly large gap between the middle and the working class. The Making of Middle-Class Discourse The newly emerging middle-class discourse in China can be understood as the state s efforts to build a strong nation and to upgrade its status in the global hierarchy. While the CCP still recognized workers and peasants as the basic force in China, they remained a symbol of old socialist China whose economy was backward and stagnant. The once model citizens now became disadvantaged groups (ruoshi qunti) who cannot take responsibility for their own livelihood, need help from the state, and therefore might be a potential threat to social stability (Ren 2010). In the eyes of government officials, policy experts, and scholars, a middle class made up of self-reliant and responsible social subjects could be the social group that would represent the brand-new China and enhance social stability. In the 1980s and early 1990s, most researchers in China criticized the theory of the middle class as being contradictory to Marxist theory and socialism (Li, Chunling 2009). Since the late 1990s, however, scholars have recognized the middle class as not contradicting socialism, but rather as symbolizing socialism s victory by showcasing a xiaokang society. Although social discourse on the middle class seemed a natural and spontaneous accompaniment to economic transformation, the formation of the middle class was in fact a normative and political project. This explains why leading social scientists at the top academic institutions passionately addressed middle-class issues and 108

123 considered the role of the middle class. As scholars come to discuss the term middle class, the category of the middle class becomes more visible and important. As Anagnost (1997: 8) pointed out, these studies on the middle class were proleptic: they represented something that has not yet come into view as if it already existed in fact. Though the middle class was still small, it was believed to be an important social force for social stability (Li Qiang 2001), one that might change the social structure from a pyramid-shape to an olive-shape (Li Peilin 2004; Lu Xueyi ed. 2002). In order to make the middle class intelligible in Chinese society, systematic reports had to be based on tables, figures, charts, and equations what Susan Greenhalgh calls numerical inscriptions (2005: 357). Social scientists, demographers, policy makers, and government bureaucrats were involved in this project. For example, China s leading sociologists at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) 25 released in 2002 The Report on Social Stratification Research in Contemporary China (Dangdai zhongguo shehui yanjiu baogao) based on a two-year nationwide survey. With the full support of the central government, they surveyed over 12 provinces and 72 cities, counties, and districts, and their findings ran to more than 400 pages. In this ambitious project, Lu Xueyi and CASS researchers found that contemporary Chinese society was divided into ten major social strata state and political elites (guojia, shehui guanlizhe 25 The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS, Zhongguo Shehui Kexueyuan) is a premier academic research organization in the fields of philosophy and social sciences in the People s Republic of China that is directly under the State Council. CASS was established in May 1977, growing out of the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and now consists of 32 research institutes, three research centers and a graduate school. The research areas cover as many as 300 disciplines, among which 120 are key. One of the basic missions of this institution is to provide important research papers and policy suggestions to the CPC Central Committee and the State Council. For more details, see Since it is a state organization, its research directions cannot but reflect the government s general policies and guidelines. 109

124 jieceng), mid-level managers (jingli jieceng), private entrepreneurs (shiyingqiyezhu jieceng), professionals and technicians (zhuanmenjishuzhe jieceng), white-collar workers (shiwu jieceng), the self-employed (ziyingyezhe jieceng), salespeople and service workers (shangye jieceng), industrial workers (chanyelaodongzhe jieceng), agricultural laborers (nongyelaodongzhe jieceng), and the unemployed and under-employed. They argued that China was moving toward an olive-shaped modern structure of social strata in which most people belong to the middle and upper-middle positions, with only a few in either upper or lower positions (Lu ed. 2002:124). Although these scholars agree that Chinese society has not yet achieved a prototype middle-class society, they believe that, with the growth rate of the middle-class at one percent per year, the middle class would be a mainstream force by occupying the biggest total work force within twenty years (Lu 2005). Hai Ren points out that the research by the CASS sociologists is a highly important and systematic effort by policy-oriented scholars to conceptualize the middle class (Ren 2010: 116). The CASS report elaborates on the middle class as follows: a group of people who are engaged in knowledge or mental labor, are salaried employees, and possess not only the capacity to get a relatively well-paying job with good working conditions, but also the capacity to enjoy leisure; who have some extent of control over their work; and who possess a consciousness of citizenship and public morality as well as a cultured manner (Lu ed. 2002: ). Of the ten social strata identified by Lu and the CASS researchers, six groups can be classified as middle class (excluding salespeople and service workers, industrial workers, agricultural laborers, and the unemployed). Though the middle class was still small in size (although the majority of the population), 110

125 this classification of social strata in which the middle class encompassed six different categories can be seen as an effort to put the middle class in the social mainstream. Most Chinese scholars reject Marxist class analysis, replacing it with a Weberian analysis of social status and strata (Pun and Chan 2008). Chinese scholars have jettisoned the Marxist term class (jieji) as too reminiscent of the severe social conflicts and backlash of the Cultural Revolution. Instead, they adopted the Weberian concept of stratum (jieceng), emphasizing social disparities, mobility and social harmony, rather than a confrontational relationship between the exploiting and exploited. In line with this perspective, other social scientists addressed middle-class issues. For example, Li Qiang, a leading sociologist in China, argues that the middle class (or stratum) is an important social group for three reasons. In politics, they mediate between the upper and lower classes; in philosophy, they represent moderate and conservative thoughts and also decrease social conflicts; within the economy, they increase mass consumption. Therefore, the middle class is the mainstream of society and maintains social stability (Li Qiang 2001). Although Li Qiang (2001) believes that Chinese society is still pyramidshaped and the middle class does not exist in large numbers, he agrees on the urgency of nurturing this class in order to resolve social tensions and to achieve economic growth. Despite different emphases among different researchers, they all agree that the middle class is an alternative social group that represents successful economic reform and symbolizes a wealthy China. Scholars agree that the middle class, particularly intellectuals and technical elites, is the class that has benefited the most from economic reform (Li Qiang 2000). Their technical skills and knowledge are highly appreciated by the state and society. Researchers have measured the size of the middle class, taking it as 111

126 an indicator of a successful transition to modern society and national prosperity. Depending on their definition of the middle class, the percentage of the middle class is found to range from 3.1 percent to 25 percent nationwide and from 8 percent to 48.5 percent in urban areas (Li Chunling 2009:53-54). According to a 300,000-person survey by the National Bureau of Statistics, the middle stratum currently represents only 5 percent of the total population, but is expected to reach 45 percent in 2020 (C hina Daily January 20). Although these figures vary, they point to an inevitable trend: the fast economic growth and increasing affluence of the world s most populous country over the past two decades (C hina Daily 2004.October 27). Most mass media and researchers are optimistic about the growth of this new social group and celebrate the material progress that it symbolizes. Thus, through scientific research on social stratification and classes, active academic discussions of and research on the middle class have confirmed the importance of the middle class in China, and major newspapers disseminate this fact within the society by frequently citing these results. By providing knowledge about the middle class, these academic reports construct the Chinese middle class as an empirical reality that is actualized by people s thinking and discourse. Urban Imagination: the Rise of Consumer Culture Along with academic discourses on the growth of the middle class, the Chinese mass media have helped to create stereotypical images of the urban middle class by reporting their consumption practices. The Chinese mass media has dealt passionately with the nationwide consumerist movement. In this way, as Jing Wang (2001:85) points 112

127 out, cultural entrepreneurship is definitely a new hegemonic project in which three players are complicit: the state, the market, and the media. Similarly, Pun Ngai (2003:473) argues that consumption has suddenly become a target of national mobilization in the 1990s in the same way as Mao launched mass mobilization to raise production in the 1950s and 1960s. In particular, widespread advertisements and reports about advanced consumer products and leisure activities targeting the middle class projected a new, modern, and affluent social landscape. Just as a robust, productive working class was a symbol of socialist China in leading socialist modernization, now the consuming urban middle class is a vivid image of global China getting on track with the world (yu quanqiu jiegui). While academic discussions discuss the middle class in statistical ways, news articles and advertisements in the media describe the middle-class lifestyle more visually. Living in a high-rise apartment in a gated community, the middle-class consumer could afford a large HDTV screen, a car, and brand-name clothing. She enjoys sipping coffee and cares about her child s English education. Once in a while, she goes on holiday travel with her family to famous tourist sites. She is the target of the high-end goods market. She is not necessarily rich. However, she or her husband, who is educated and professional, earns enough money to enjoy modern advanced consumer commodities. This enticing image circulates on the covers of numerous magazines, TV advertisements, and popular books. These typical images of the urban middle class represent the new China, a China that has escaped many years of poverty and backwardness and leapt forward to a promising future in the globalized world. 113

128 Many marketing research firms have been alert to the purchasing power of this new group in China, since it has the potential to be a major customer of luxury goods. Some marketing research has reported that the size of the luxury market in China has been rapidly increasing, and it has been predicted that China will soon catch up with Europe or the U.S. (KOTRA 2005). Louis Vuitton, Prada, BMW, and Fendi all regard China as the center of turbo-growth (Wang, J. 2008:180). Though the urban middle class does not necessarily consume luxury goods, urban households rapid increase in disposable income shows a high probability that the urban middle class will be consumers of those products. In urban areas at the national level, the per-capita annual disposable income of an urban household in 2006 has increased almost seven times over 1978, as indicated in Table While before 1978 people did not have enough funds to purchase more than their daily necessities, now they have money to spend on items above and beyond these necessities, including leisure and high-quality goods. TABLE Per-Capita Annual Disposable Income of Urban Households Year Value (yuan) Growth rate (%) Source: The Yearbook of Life and Prices in Chinese Cities Zhongguo Chengshi Shenghuoyujiage Nianjian 2008, p. 3 The figures for Beijing in Table 4.4 support the general national trend that percapita total and disposable income has increased exponentially over the last 30 years. In 2006, per-capita disposable income in Beijing was well above the average national level. While through the early 1990s people in Beijing made more than half of their expenditures on food, currently only thirty percent of their total income goes to food. In 114

129 addition, urbanites can enjoy a far larger environment than before nearly twice as spacious as twenty years ago. TABLE Life in Beijing ( ) Year Per Capita Total Income (yuan) Per Capita Disposable Income (Yuan) Real Growth Rate of Per Capita (%) Per Capita Living Expenditures (yuan) Engel Coefficient of Urban Households (%) Per Capita Usable Space of Houses in Urban Areas (sq.m) Note: Statistics on per-capita usable space of houses in urban areas covers the urban area. Source: Beijing Statistical Yearbook [Beijing Tongji Nianjian] 2008, p. 173 The increase in disposable income among urban households translates into increased possession of durable consumer goods. Table confirms that many consumer goods regarded as luxury goods before reform are now considered necessities. Washing machines or refrigerators, which only one out of 100 households owned in 1980, have now become a must-have item for urban households. 115

130 TABLE Annual Possession (Per 100 Households) of Main Durable Consumer Goods in 3000 Urban Households ( ) Year Air- Shower Washing Color Refriger Computer Cell Cameras Conditio Heaters Machines TV -ators -s Phones -ners Source: Beijing Statistical Yearbook [Beijing Tongji Nianjian] 2008, p. 183 The modern, comfortable lifestyle of the urban middle class is epitomized in advertisements, particularly for housing, and it is through such advertisements that the dreams, tastes, aspirations, and social identities of the urban middle class are circulated. Although Li Zhang (2008), citing the diverse occupational and educational backgrounds of residents in upscale neighborhoods, argues that their only commonality is wealth, more widespread housing advertisements manufacture and disseminate images of educated urbanites and actively associate potential residents with the urban elite and higher social status. The advertisements usually adopted the concept of the middle class by using terms such as city elites, CEO elites, the city backbone, the new middle class, and successful figures (Tan Jia 2005). These terms imply that, since such people are the elites and the backbone of society, they deserve to live in better residential environments. Real estate developers usually embrace high-end living environments, convenience, and 116

131 security by calling their apartments names such as garden or villa, 26 invoking the affluent and cultured lifestyle of the middle class by reminding typical suburban lifestyles of the Western middle class. The names towns and cities, too, portray the modern lifestyles of young professionals: Wankexingyuan The new middle class, the new life I talk about dignity, comfort Wankexingyuan is aware of your expectations for your life and will completely satisfy your expectations! 2600 households have already moved in happily. If you hurry, you can savor Wankexingyuan s glamorous atmosphere earlier than others. The beautiful landscape is before your eyes, and the opportunity is yours. Enjoy your life: why are you delaying it? (Beijing Youth Daily 9/3/2001) Fenglin Oasis One class, three styles. Establish an exemplar of an elegant residential area. Our CLD Fenglinluzhou, a residential area of spacious, elegant, and wholesome lifestyles. Perfectly located in the Olympic Village between CLD (near Zhongguancun) and CBD (Central Business District), convenient and relaxing living environment, superb quality, trendy architecture style in Chaoyang, homogenous urban middle class residents. This is the capital s highest-quality residential area (Beijing Youth Daily 9/2/2000). These advertisements provide models of consumption and potential configurations of social identity, lifestyle visions (Fraser 2000:32). The exclusivity, security, convenience, and recreation that these advertisements promote appeal directly to elitism via social function and economic status. By advertising new ways of life and selling a distinctive atmosphere, the advertisements make a specific link between the urban middle class and modern, affluent, and comfortable lifestyles in apartment complexes. As historian Louise Young (1999) argues, the rise of consumer culture through department stores in interwar Japan was intertwined with the growth of the new middle 26 The names of middle- or high-end apartments mostly include jiayuan or huayuan, meaning garden. By using this term, the apartment ads conjure up private space in a bustling urban milieu. 117

132 class, burgeoning modern commodities and consumption reflected in the middle-class lifestyles. Similarly, the rise of consumer culture in its core market of middle-class professionals and salaried workers, shown in tourism, the entertainment industry, durable consumer goods, and department stores, has shaped the ethos, identity, and image of the new urban middle class in China. This not only showcased China s development in the modern age, but also served to legitimize the rising social and political importance of the new middle class. The urban middle class, who can afford to spend money and enjoy elegant lifestyles, is no longer the target of political condemnation, branded as bourgeois. Instead, it is they who embody the slogan being rich is glorious. Contrary to Mao s belief, overproduction and insufficient consumer demand became an impediment to China s incorporation into the global economy, while making consumption a motivating force for further globalization (Pun 2003:474). Urbanites are seen as ideal citizen-consumers and active participants in this hegemonic project of globalizing China by stimulating economic growth. Deborah Davis (2000; 2005) argues that the affluence and new consumerism of the 1990s have weakened the state monopoly and the hegemonic sureties that defined urban life throughout the 1960s and 1970s by emphasizing increasing consumers agency and autonomy. However, the urban consumerism reflected in the glamorous middle class produces widespread aspirations and desires even among the poor, thus obscuring the increasing social inequality and legitimatizing the reform. 27 This is not the retreat of the 27 Through highlighting the experiences of female migrant workers from rural areas, Pun (2003) and Yan (2003) point out how the efforts of the migrant workers to be consumers are frustrated by encountering exclusion and discrimination in urban contexts. Both of them disagree with Davis that consumption can be democratic terrain in the post-mao context. 118

133 authoritarian state from private lives; rather, it is another iteration of governance disciplining a social subject in a different way. While creating a space for people to exercise a multitude of private choices, the socialist state did not allow political liberalization by letting privatization coexist with political authoritarianism (Ong and Zhang 2008:2). In this sense, urban consumerism demonstrated that the middle-class lifestyle was another kind of political mobilization implemented by the socialist state. The Civilizing Process: Cultivating Suzhi, 28 Cultivating Middle-Classness While the urban middle class is usually identified with the modern and affluent images displayed by their consumption practices, they also convey particular social values emphasized by the Chinese government. The Chinese party-state attempted to bring about socialist modernization and civilization through an economic reform that included not only economic prosperity but also the spiritual civilization of the Chinese nation. The high quality embodied in the highly mobile, educated and professional middle class makes up an important element of China s contemporary governmental discourses (Tomba 2009). Though the mainstream interpretation paid less attention to this aspect by focusing on defining the middle class and the objective material conditions that identify it, one can clearly see why government, mass media, and the academics in socialist China care about the middle class. 28 Suzhi is the physical, psychological, intellectual, moral, and ideological qualities, both innate and learned, of human bodies and their conduct. Its contemporary usage has become widespread only since the 1980s (Jacka 2009). Anagnost argues that suzhi is a sign that transects all different domains: the evaluation of embodied labor; the goal of educational reform (suzhi jiaoyu or quality education ); the specter of social disorder; the criterion of cosmopolitan citizenship (through consumer taste); and the child s psychological health (xinli suzhi) (1997:192). 119

134 The government, whose ultimate goal was to build Chinese modernization and civilization, emphasized the importance of population quality in realizing this goal. Since the beginning of economic reform, the Chinese government has called for highquality (gao suzhi) subjects who were autonomous and adapted to life in a competitive global environment, and would thus serve to strengthen the nation (Anagnost 2004; Sigley 2009; Tomba 2009). National survival and revival were seen as depending on the citizenry s physical, mental, and moral attributes, and national development was believed possible only through improving a backward and uncivilized population quality. The rise of the urban middle class with high quality was believed to raise the population quality, and the emphasis on middle-class values beyond its objective material conditions should be understood in this context. Suzhi was first officially designated a political keyword through a resolution passed in 1986 by the sixth plenum of the Twelfth Party Congress that stressed the moral, scientific and cultural suzhi of the Chinese nation for achieving Socialist Spiritual Modernization (Yan 2008:112). Later, it was more centrally comprehensively linked with the modernization project in the Fifteenth Party Congress report presented in 1997 by President Jiang Zemin. The most prominent party newspaper, People s Daily, also supported this official view by underscoring the significance of improving the population quality as a way to long-term development (Yan ibid: 113). The widespread discourse about suzhi in China is normative, hierarchical and class-embedded by dichotomizing low and high suzhi. High suzhi, indicating cultured, civilized, and modern citizens, is considered to be something desirable, whereas low suzhi indicates something undesirable to be improved. Suzhi is a keyword linked with civility, self-discipline, and modernity. 120

135 For example, migrant workers from rural regions were the symbols of a lack of suzhi and were characterized as unruly, undisciplined, and uncivilized (Lei Guang 2003; Yan 2003; Zhang 2001). By contrast, the educated urban middle class was believed to retain high suzhi, a desirable social subject to speed Chinese modernization. Though some scholars have investigated suzhi as a governing discourse that legitimizes increasing social inequality by linking it primarily with migrant laborers (Schein 1996; Yan 2008; Zhang 2001), the differentials between low and high suzhi become much clearer by comparing it with the high suzhi of the urban middle class. Presenting an ideal subject with high suzhi can heighten the distinctions. The images of the urban middle class, described in popular magazines and reports as disciplined and law-abiding, were contrasted with unruly and uncouth migrant workers. Typical members of the middle class are portrayed in popular magazines and reports as modern, educated, and civilized through a description of their lifestyles and consumption patterns, as discussed in the previous section: David Wang pops into a Starbucks near his office in Beijing s central business district. Wearing a neat dark blue suit with a gold-colored tie, he picks up a cup of cappuccino in his roughened hand, and sips. [ ] Born into a rural family in east China s Jiangsu province, Wang says his parents are traditional farmers who earn a living by planting rice and fishing in the Taihu Lake. Wang studied hard in school and was finally admitted to the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. Fascinated by the capital s skyscrapers, Wang knew he would not return to the two-story wooden home where he was born. Now 29, he earns more than 200,000 yuan ($29,291) a year by working on initial public offerings for companies looking to list on the stock exchange (China Daily/Xinhua 11/17/2008). Despite varied descriptions of middle-class people, typical stories in popular magazines and newspapers celebrate upward social mobility: how poor people become successful through good education and hard work. These stories commonly convey the 121

136 message that moving out of poverty and backwardness is dependent on individual efforts and will. While these reports emphasize the economic lives and consumption patterns of the urban middle class, the fruits this class enjoys were due to self-development and selfreliance in improving their lives: those who have some knowledge and put in great effort can change their own destinies, no matter how disadvantaged their beginnings are. Self-reliance and self-development are new ethics that have emerged in the post- Mao period with the embrace of the capitalist spirit. Self-reliant people are proactive subjects who do not depend on the state or work units, and instead actively seek their own opportunities for success. Those with the opposite, socialist mentality during the Mao era were no longer believed to have a place in the contemporary competitive global era. In the post-mao era, adaptability and risk-taking behaviors in the competitive market can lead to success. These state gestures introduced the new self-developing subject into the symbolic-economic order of postsocialist development (Yan 2008:193). Welleducated, disciplined, and self-motivated white-collar workers (bailing) are a symbol of good suzhi and epitomize the archetype of the modern subject desired by the state and contrast sharply with the socialist subject symbolized by laid-off workers in state-owned firms, once recognized as heroes of socialist progress but now seen as lacking suzhi and potentially hindering Chinese modernization (Rofel 1999; Lee 2007). While self-developing, self-reliant white-collar workers are distinct from passive migrant or laid-off workers, they are also distinguished from the new rich (nouveau riche, baofahu) who have economic capital but not cultural capital, including cultural taste, a civilized manner, and appropriate etiquette. These baofahu are usually uneducated rural entrepreneurs and are thus seen in a disparaging light by ordinary Chinese people, despite 122

137 their economic wealth. Indeed, their economic wealth is not appreciated either, since it is believed to be a result of corruption and bribery of local officials. One of my Beijing informants, a young white-collar female worker in a Korean firm, told me: Though economic reform brought them economic wealth, their intelligent and cultural levels are really low. Though they can enjoy good lifestyles and can purchase luxurious products, they do not care about morals. Their suzhi is not high at all. For example, they go to a five-star hotel wearing flip-flop sandals and an undershirt. Their behavior is not at all appropriate. Though ordinary people aspire to material wealth, they look down on the rich. People are usually ambivalent about the legitimacy of rich people s claims to wealth, considering them ill-gotten gains achieved by improper, unjust, or even illegal means. Many people are completely convinced that the new rich had amassed wealth at the expense of ordinary people and had no sense of social responsibility and citizenship (Jones 2007). This common belief has led to public anger against the new rich (Wang Jing 2008; Zang 2008). Unlike baofahu who happened upon accidental fortunes and suddenly became rich, middle-class people were believed have achieved a certain level of economic and social status legitimately, through incessant individual effort. Their self-discipline and social consciousness are respected and considered exemplary: The middle class should have good lifestyles, including relatively big housing in a good condition and a good income. However, I do not think these conditions are sufficient to identify the middle class. There are countless numbers of rich people these days. Even though some of them may have reached a middle-class level of wealth, they may not belong to a real middle class in terms of mentality. They may have been born or grown up in rural areas and do not pursue any important values. In my mind, the middle class not only has a good education and stable and satisfactory jobs, but they should also have healthy lifestyles. Their lifestyles and values should match the goal of the country and mainstream culture (emphasis added). 123

138 As seen above, many of my informants pointed to the possession of values and culture as one of the necessary attributes of the middle class. Articles in popular magazines and newspapers also support this view of the middle class as a social mainstream and vanguard of socialist spiritual civilization: In the beginning of this year and in May, when we were suffering from a snowstorm in the South or earthquake in Sichuan, we could observe that the Chinese middle class followed some values: In the south, car owners put a green ribbon on the back mirror and gave rides to people who had lost their housing; in Sichuan, thousands of [middle-class] people brought their own machines and helped rescue their neighbors. Actually, middle-class people have done many social activities for socially disadvantaged groups and peasants (Zhongguo Xinwenzhoukan ). The cover story, The middle class (zhongchanzhe): power of beliefs, in a famous Chinese weekly magazine, described middle-class citizens who care about society and the socially disadvantaged. This article showcased socially conscious people in the middle class: a researcher supporting social rights for the lower classes, a young English teacher volunteering at the Sichuan earthquake site, a female manager supporting children in Sichuan, and a retired worker at a Beijing health center who has worked for AIDS patients, among others. Although these people have few troubles in their daily lives, they pursue social responsibility in their communities. Similarly, some news articles strive to link the typical middle class with volunteerism. Introducing a medical doctor who volunteers at a hotline center to help victims of domestic violence, a news article described the creation of a new spirit of volunteerism among young professionals (China Business Weekly ). Volunteering for NGOs became extremely popular among white-collar workers and professionals, and their socially responsible acts are seen as setting new moral standards for society (Nanfangzhoumo 2002). 124

139 Thus in the Chinese mass media, the middle class is not merely a social group that enjoys comfortable lifestyles and advanced consumption patterns. In addition, they are the responsible citizens who can help socially vulnerable and marginalized groups, thereby contributing to social harmony. This socially conscientious group can be seen as an embodiment of Chinese modernization and civilization. The middle class that the state and mass media attempt to cultivate is not just an economic animal embracing a capitalist spirit, but is also in the vanguard in realizing modernized Chinese civilization and harmonious society. An Imaginary Middle Class in China? Although Chinese mass media, and even the Communist Party, celebrate the existence and growth of the middle class in China, few people believe that they belong to the middle class, even if their incomes and occupations would be so categorized in the definitions of Chinese academics. This became obvious when I tried to recruit interviewees for my research. Even if they were in safely in the range that would objectively identify them as middle class, 29 they denied being middle-class citizens. When asked if they would say that they belonged to the middle class, most replied that they were rather ordinary wage earners (gongxin jieceng). They usually told me they had a long way to go to reach the middle-class level. One of my informants, who is a midlevel manager in his 30s at a state-owned bank: I think that, in order to be the middle class, you should own a good house and a relatively good car and have some money in your bank account. I have all of these, but I haven t reached the level yet. My house is relatively small, my car is 29 For example, they earn annual incomes of more than 200,000 yuan, well beyond the minimum middle-class requirement of 60,000 yuan used by the CASS. 125

140 almost broken, and there is not enough money in my account. To be eligible for being the middle class, for instance, you should have a house of 100 square meters and a car worth more than 200,000 yuan, which I don t have yet. If you consider that the middle class is simply people who own homes and cars, then there are many middle-class people in Beijing. However, we cannot say all of them belong to the middle class as I am not. In an abstract sense, they seemed to believe that to be a member of the middle class, one should not worry or have any trouble in meeting daily necessities. However, the level at which they think they could meet basic necessities without worry was well above that in academic reports. One of my informants, a young journalist, told me: We [our magazine] have also dealt with the issue of the middle class as a cover story and I have interviewed some people, whom I considered typically middle class. One of them had seven or eight apartments in Beijing, each of which cost at least 1-2 million yuan. He also had millions in stocks. I asked him, Do you think you are the middle class?, but he answered, I don t think so, I am still poor. He thought he would become a member of the middle class if he had more money. I think that one of the most important qualities of the middle class is having a sense of security. At that time, the economic situation was not that great and the values of his stocks were decreasing, which made him nervous. This kind of uncertainty and insecurity led him to think that he did not belong to the middle class. In ordinary people s minds, there are some specific numbers that indicate the middle class for example, a total net worth of 5 million yuan. In a 2008 survey conducted in Chinese cities, half the respondents replied that they would have stable lives and feel secure if they had this amount of money (Beijing Zhengquanbao ). This response coincided with those in another survey conducted by Yahoo China. When 110,000 Internet users were asked what Chinese middle-class lifestyles looked like, the respondents answered: They drove Peugeot 307s or Audi A42.4s, earned at least $1,200 a month, lived in fancy high-rises like Toronto Forest, used Sony notebooks at work, enjoyed the restaurants in five-star hotels, and vacationed in Paris and East Africa (Yahoo 2005). The optimistic findings of this survey, however, actually pertained only to the 126

141 gold collar residents of China, not the white collar (Wang Jing 2008:193), and explained why most Chinese white-collar people do not consider themselves middle class. This is in striking contrast to a Korean counterpart: while most of the Korean population identified themselves with the middle class in the early 1980s due to their increased wealth, the Chinese still do not think that they belong to the middle class, despite the visible improvement in their lives. Interestingly, people admit that there is a rapid growth in the Chinese middle class, but they do not think that they belong to it themselves. There is a definite gap between the official discourses celebrating the rapid growth of the Chinese middle class and the popular discourses shared by ordinary Chinese people. Despite rapid economic growth and visible improvement of lives, why does the Chinese middle class, as defined by government and academics, not believe they are the middle class? A simple interpretation might point to the socialist, egalitarian legacy. Since most people identified themselves as the working class or wage earners (gongxin jieceng) under the socialist regime, they still consider themselves ordinary workers unless they run their own business. 30 During the Cultural Revolution, only two classes existed (workers and peasants) and one stratum (intellectuals); bourgeoisie or the middle class (petit bourgeoisie, xiaozichan) were the objects of condemnation. The strong homogeneity in the past of the ordinary people prevented them from asserting a distinctive identity or mindset in an officially socialist country. Furthermore, as indicated above, people often times equate the middle class with what is actually the new rich or the upper class, a different concept. In China, people 30 In Marxist terms, these people, who own means of production, should be categorized as capitalists. However, in China, even businessmen in my interviews often said that they were ordinary workers or wuchanjieji (proletariat or non-propertied class). 127

142 share an image of the middle class, such as affluent suburban upper-middle class in Western countries. Though pursuing this kind of lifestyle, ordinary white-collar workers understand that to be middle class, they should have a sense of security and safety that they do not actually have. Although only a few in contemporary China who can afford to live that way, people strongly believe that it is the standard to be met. Economic reform since 1978 has brought about a polarized social structure in which the gap between the rich and the poor is increasing drastically. Observing the rich and elite lifestyles portrayed in the mass media, ordinary white-collar workers feel anxious and insecure because they have not reached the level. Surprisingly, the highest-income group in China is the younger generation, between 25 and 44, while in other countries it is usually the middle-aged group, between 45 and 54, who have the highest incomes (Farrell et al. 2006). This younger generation feels that they have a long way to go to achieve their goals. While work-units provided all social welfare benefits, including housing, for their parents generation, young people must now put more effort into getting these things. They usually have vast housing debt to pay off and hesitate to take time off work for leisure or entertainment. Intense workplace competition induces much pressure and anxiety. All these situations they face prevent them from identifying as middle class. However, most of my interviewees in their 30s were usually optimistic that, if they worked hard, they would reach the level of the middle class within 5-10: they believed that their efforts and discipline would pay off fairly soon. Though the official discourses of the government and the mass media celebrate the rise of the middle class, people defined as middle class in the official discourse (or 128

143 statistics) did not feel that it was their own story. Rather, in order to get to the middleclass level, they believed they needed more money and assets. Whereas the official discourses failed to produce a middle- class identity that was shared by the people, they were successful in engendering aspirations that people could achieve middle-class status if they worked hard and lived a disciplined life. By publicizing the existence of the middle class, becoming middle class came to be an important goal of ordinary people. Conclusion Throughout this chapter, I have argued that the formation of the middle class in China was a hegemonic project in which the party-state attempted to establish a wealthy, strong, and civilized nation-state in the competitive globalized world in order to overcome the poverty and backwardness of the past. The urban middle class was an alternative to the working class in representing the modern, brand-new China that achieved economic reform. In order to promote economic growth, the state implemented uneven economic development plans that replaced the old and inefficient egalitarian system and thereby disrupted the social standing of ordinary workers. Instead, state policies emphasizing competitiveness and efficiency nurtured the urban middle class by rewarding educational credentials and specific expertise. Both academics and the mass media participated in this project by assessing the size of the middle class and disseminating typical middle-class images. The middle class was invoked by intellectuals and social scientists as an important social force in transitional China by contributing to social stability and sustaining economic growth. The mass media, on the other hand, focused on the lifestyles of the middle class. In their view, 129

144 the middle class was a desirable and newly emerging social group, one that enjoyed comfortable lifestyles through advanced modern consumption practices but was distinct from the new rich. It was a disciplined and high-quality subject that contributed to harmonious society and socialist spiritual civilization. The urban middle class thus gained the position of a mainstream force in the new China. The efforts of the state, market, and mass media in the making of the middle class in China produced an image of a middle class shared by ordinary people. Because of the luxury consumption patterns of the middle class shown in the mass media, people defined as middle class in the official discourses did not actually identify themselves as members of the middle class. However, official discourses successfully created middle-class aspirations and strong beliefs in social mobility by incessantly disseminating typical images of the urban middle class. The official discourse of the urban middle class provided the model for a Chinese identity defined by harmony and prosperity. The middle-class images associated with xiaokang and urban consumer culture produced a desire among ordinary people to become middle class. The imagined lifestyles and urban consumer culture mediated by the middle class in official discourse defined the vision of modern life in contemporary China, and became an instrument for strengthening the political legitimacy of economic reform. Comparative Conclusion In Chapters 3 and 4, I have investigated how the Korean and Chinese states actively engaged in middle-class projects: in the face of economic stagnation and political disorder, political elites in both states realized that the creation of self-disciplined, productive social subjects was critical to new nation-building that would overcome 130

145 national backwardness and achieve high economic growth in the global world. Before both societies saw the rise of the middle class as an actual social entity, each state passionately addressed middle-class issues. Along with institutional reforms in order to boost economies, both states produced middle-class norms civilized, socially responsible citizens of comfortable lifestyles. These images promoted by the states and mass media specified the middle class as economically productive, yet politically docile, which strengthened the state goals of achieving economic development within social stability. As Parker emphasized, the idea of the middle class is by no means determined simply by the objective structures of occupation, income, or status (Parker 1998:16). Distinct images of class in each society are embedded in any given society. While both states disseminated middle-class norms and values, how specific images conveyed middle-class norms and values were different between the states: while the Korean state emphasized the disciplined, saving middle class, the Chinese state highlighted the consuming, civilized (high-quality) middle class. These state efforts to create a middleclass produced contrasting outcomes in both countries: most citizens identified themselves as middle class by the end of 1970 s in Korea, whereas very few identified themselves as the middle class in China, even though their objective conditions could be classified as middle class. In other words, the hegemonic discourse disseminated by the Korean state successfully penetrated the society, while there was a gap between hegemonic discourses and popular discourses in China. The popular understanding of the middle class in China is almost the same as the bourgeoisie or big entrepreneurs in the objective sense. Although Chinese self-identification of the middle class is relatively 131

146 uncommon, this does not mean that the state project of middle-class making was not successful. Rather, the word middle class is ubiquitous in people s thinking and conversation; citizens universally aspired to be middle class. Despite the variation in selfidentification of the middle class in these two countries, both countries successfully promoted the idea of the urban middle class as modern, cultured, and exemplary citizens, and incited desire for upward mobility toward the middle class. 132

147 CHAPTER 5. MY HOME, MY CAR: PURSUING THE MIDDLE CLASS DREAM IN SOUTH KOREA, In the 1960s, the Korean authoritarian state created specific images of the urban middle class long before the rise of the urban middle class as a tangible entity. For most people at that time, the middle class was mainly an imaginary and abstract concept far distant from their own lifestyles. It symbolized urbanity and modernity as an ideal to be reached soon, but most of the population had a long way to go to reach that ideal. With the continued economic growth and increased income of the 1970s, however, the middle class was no longer just a dream. The expansion of industrialization and the growth of big business firms increased the size of the economic pie and made people feel that their standard of living had improved. While increased incomes allowed better lifestyles and improved standards of living, housing was key to creating individual wealth and shaping class identity. In this chapter, I examine how the Korean authoritarian state promoted homeownership, a vehicle through which employees in chaebols and government could achieve upward social mobility and become middle class. The real estate boom beginning in the late 1970s provided new opportunities for some with stable jobs and incomes to become homeowners, although most people remained non-homeowners. What did it mean to be a homeowner, in particular an apartment-owner, in booming Korea? How did this feel to ordinary citizens? How did it affect the broad political landscape for the authoritarian state? 133

148 In contemporary Korea, the urban middle class is usually taken as synonymous with people living in Gangnam 31 and residing in high-rise apartment complexes, in addition to any specific social scientific indicators such as income, occupation, and consumption patterns. While social scientists identify this particular class by specific numbers and abstract concepts, people endow this class with more concrete, geographical meanings that date back to the late 1970s. At that time the state began to develop Gangnam for reasons having to do with national security, increasing population pressure, and lack of housing in the city. The authoritarian state provided a number of incentives to attract people to this area. With this urban redevelopment, deserted land was transformed into high-rise apartments and modern skyscrapers and became one of the most expensive areas in Korea. Gangnam was the very place where huge, expensive apartment complexes were born and popularized and typical middle-class neighborhoods were on the rise. The early adopters, lucky enough to buy their own houses in this area, had gotten the ticket to the middle class, and were the object of others envy. In this sense, the history of Gangnam development parallels that of the wider urban middle class in Korea. As Li Zhang pointed out in her ethnographic study of urban China, the process of class making is shaped by spatial production that not only reorganizes urban space into a hierarchical and segregated form but also defines particular modes of living and social identification (Zhang 2010: 14). The contested urban politics in the Gangnam area formed stratified residential space and cultivated distinctive lifestyles. Through the lens of urban redevelopment plans in South Korea, I 31 The term Gangnam refers specifically to the area south of the Han River ( gang is river, nam is south). It has two broad connotations: one generally describing that southern part of Seoul, as opposed to Gangbuk (the northern part of the Han River). The other, more common connotation indicates Gangnam-gu and Seocho-gu, Seoul s two most affluent districts. 134

149 explore how particular state policies created open class mobility and enabled ordinary people to engage in exclusive practices of class distinctions. An apartment lottery system (bunyang system), controlled by the government, allowed those with stable jobs and incomes to purchase an apartment at below market value and thus achieve upward social mobility. Those who became apartment residents strived to assert their socioeconomic status through various gate-keeping practices aimed at the lower classes on a daily basis. Mega Project: The Birth of Gangnam, the New Middle-Class Town In the 1970s, Seoul, the capital of South Korea, was suffering from rapidly increasing population all over the nation, and an accompanying lack of housing. Between 1960 and 1970, the population of Seoul had doubled from 2.45 million to 5.5 million, and by 1990, the population had doubled again, reaching 10 million ( 3&SELITEM=1, accessed April 20, 2011). Because of state-driven industrialization, more and more people left their rural hometowns and migrated to big cities (particularly Seoul) for better opportunities. This explosive population increase in Seoul created a number of problems, including pressures in transportation, housing, and the environment. The housing problem, in particular, was serious. The housing supply rate 32 in 1960 was 84.2 percent and decreased steadily up to the 1990s. The housing problem in Seoul was much worse than in other cities, because Seoul was absorbing migrants from all over the country. The housing supply rate in Seoul has always been around 20 percent below that 32 The housing supply rate is the ratio of households to housing units. For example, if two families live in a detached house (dandok ju'aek), which is formally a single housing unit, the "housing supply rate" is 50%. 135

150 in other cities (Gelézeau 2007:88). Even in 1980, at the peak of economic growth, the housing supply rate in Seoul was only 53 percent. Table Population Change and Rate of Urbanization in Seoul Time Period Population of Seoul Urbanization Rate 18-19th century % % % ,450 28% ,530 41% ,370 59% ,926 70% ,620 80% Note: unit of population: thousand Urbanization rate is for South Korea overall. Source: Gelézeau 2007, p. 87 Figure The City of Seoul Source: (accessed April 20, 2011) 136

151 To resolve this problem, both central and city governments came up with the idea of developing and expanding Seoul s undeveloped areas, Gangnam. Four decades ago, this district was empty land containing some pear orchards and mulberry fields. The population in 1963 was 14,867 in what is now Gangnam-gu 33 and 12,069 in what is now Seocho-gu; currently, Gangnam-gu s population is 560,000 and Seocho-gu s 430,000 ( accessed November 17, 2010). While the north region of the Han River was badly overcrowded, the opposite side of Seoul was so empty as to seem uninhabitable. Figures and capture Gangnam s completely rural past. Figure is the 1970s landscape in Apgujŏng-dong, 34 now the heart of Gangnam. Figure is the early 1980s landscape of Jamwon-dong, clearly lacking an appropriate sewage system. Figure Apgujŏng-dong in the 1970 s Source: (accessed April 20 th, 2011). 33 A gu is an administrative unit of a city, usually comparable to a district. Seoul now has 25 gus but in 1960 had only nine. 34 A dong is an administrative unit belonging to a gu or city. 137

152 Figure Jamwon-dong in the early 1980 s Source: (accessed April 20, 2011). Nowadays, Gangnam symbolizes the wealth, social status, and prestige of the Korean upper-middle and middle classes (Figure 5. 4). As the center of finance, education, culture and information technology, Gangnam is the place in Seoul where everybody aspires to live. However, because of extremely high rents and housing prices, only the affluent can afford to live there. Living in Gangnam itself has become a status symbol: All Seoul s major department stores, restaurants, shoe stores and clothing shops have moved their main branches to the Gangam area in order to take advantage of the area s vast consumer appetite, and now we are witnessing a similar trend among the capital s educational and sports facilities, galleries, theaters, book stores, and even churches. While government restrictions on the construction of new buildings and facilities that might lure people to the Gangbuk area and administrative guidelines permitting the construction of larger homes south of the river certainly contribute to this mass exodus to Gangnam, a more significant cause is most certainly the fact that there is more money, more power and more educated people to be found in Gangnam (emphasis added; Hwang Keewon 1991:33). 138

153 Figure The current Gangnam landscape Source: (accessed April 20, 2011). How was this rapid transformation from deserted land to status symbol brought about? The development of Gangnam was a large government plan aimed at reducing population pressure in Gangbuk (satellite cities surrounding Seoul were also constructed to this end) and also at relocating the population to the more southerly part of Korea in the face of military attack from North Korea. Around 1966, Mayor Kim Hyun Ok implemented an aggressive pro-growth policy that involved developing areas near the Han River. Nicknamed Bulldozer and known for calling construction his religion, Mayor Kim started implementing a number of new projects for developing the city. His first project was to develop the island of Youido in The entire island was filled with high-rise apartment buildings for middle- and upper-middle-income families, supermarkets, schools, and a tall skyline of office and commercial buildings (Kim and Choe 1997: 66). Mayor Kim argued that development of land near the Han River and the construction of Youido were historic tasks and a national art for the fatherland (Son 139

154 2003). In a similar vein, the development of Gangnam began at the end of the 1960s. Construction of the Third Han River Bridge (what is usually called Hannam Bridge) and the Kyungbu (Seoul-Pusan) Highways triggered development of this then-desolate land. President Park Chung Hee announced in 1967 that the government would launch construction of the Kyungbu Highways between the capital, Seoul, and the second biggest city, Pusan. 35 In 1968, the government authorized land readjustment (LR) projects in the district of Gangnam in order to secure lands for the highway free of charge. LR is a method whereby landowners pool ownership of scattered and irregular plots of agricultural land, build roads and main infrastructure, and then sub-divide the land into urban plots (Sorensen 1999: 2333). Each landowner must contribute a portion of his previous land holdings (usually about 30 percent of the total) to provide space for roads, parks and other public space, and for reserve land. The reserve land is sold at the end of the project to pay the costs of planning, administration and construction. The attraction of the method to landowners is that it can induce substantial increases in land value thus enhancing the value of individual land holdings even though the remaining area is smaller. Its attraction for planning authorities is that these projects provide land for public facilities, build needed urban infrastructure, and are largely self-financing. While the secured land for the project was originally estimated to be about 3,130,000 pyung (1 pyung=3.3 m 2 ), after some expansion around 9 million pyung was ultimately secured (Son 2005: 228). While the government obtained extremely large areas for the project, the land price had to be increased to pay all the costs incurred. However, the government 35 According to some other sources, the government implemented development of Gangnam in order to appropriate political funds (Kang 2006; Kim, Hyung-guk. 2004). As the government raised funds relatively easily in case the land price increased, it had a strong interest in developing the areas and increasing the land value. 140

155 had difficulty reselling this land since most people were reluctant to move to what was at the time empty land. Around 1968, Gangnam was not connected to the center of the city at all, and was completely isolated because communication instruments such as public phones or post offices were lacking. In emergencies, residents would have to run to other neighborhoods to look for phones, and after curfew there was no way to communicate with others outside their residential areas (Chosun Ilbo, Aug. 15, 1968). Though the government procured the land of Gangnam after LR of area 11 times larger than Youido, it was difficult to build houses and relocate people in an area where no social infrastructure existed. The government had to devise incentives that could attract people to the new areas. Enacting the Particular District Development Promotion Law (Tŭkjŏngjigu gaebal chokjin), the government declared that the Gangnam district would be the center of the city, and curbed development of Gangbuk by vetoing construction of new department stores, schools, and bars there (Son 2005: 229). The government provided significant tax exemptions for projects that developed Gangnam (Chang, SH. 2004: 60). It also accelerated the area s growth by building social infrastructure such as transportation, administration, and education in this region. First, the government tried to make Gangnam the hub of transportation by moving the bus terminal from Gangbuk to Gangnam. The Minister of Construction and Transportation issued an administrative order in 1977 that all express buses must leave from and arrive at the Gangnam bus terminal; all other bus terminals in the Gangbuk area were closed (Son 2005: 230). The Gangnam bus terminal, in the middle of nowhere, of course had a number of problems. It was located far from the city center. Given that only two bridges connected the southern and northern areas at the time, the new bus terminal 141

156 could not connect the city centers in an effective way. Furthermore, it was located where there were no people. Thus, many newspapers criticized the inconvenient location of the bus terminal as the transportation center without transportation, and the gate of Seoul where the buses take people to empty fields. In the name of development of the Gangnam district, many people had a hard time just getting to the bus terminal to travel to other regions. Second, since the completion of the Third Han River Bridge in 1969, the government had constructed more bridges connecting Gangnam and Gangbuk and also designed a second and third subway line to penetrate the Gangnam region. Major government offices such as the Supreme Prosecutors Office and the Supreme Court were moved to Gangnam as well. This government effort incorporated the isolated Gangnam area into the center of the city. Third, the government also encouraged massive apartment construction in Gangnam to encourage a great number of people to move there. The city government designated about 25 percent of the land in the Gangnam district for building huge apartment complexes (Son 2005: 231). At that time, high-rise apartment living was alien to most Koreans. Until the late 1960s, there were only about 30 apartment buildings nationwide, accommodating approximately 1,000 households (Seoul Metropolis 1983). This is surprising, particularly considering how massive apartment complexes have come to dominate the current cityscape only three decades afterwards. Last, the government relocated elite public high schools from Gangbuk to Gangnam by offering the schools better land prices, so as to provide better educational 142

157 opportunities for Gangnam residents. Since 1976, several elite schools have moved to Gangnam (as discussed further in the following section). The state effort to develop a new area of Gangnam changed the cityscape rapidly. The institutional benefits promoted its development and attracted more and more people to this area. State-directed construction of massive apartment complexes also changed social norms about Korea s living environment. Triple Alliances for Building Apartment Complexes: The State, Chaebols, and the Middle Class In this section, I trace the process through which Gangnam development and massive apartment construction created a huge middle-class town and cultivated middleclass norms in Korea. I argue that three actors were critical in promoting apartment construction and changing the cityscape: the state, developers including chaebols, and ordinary middle-class citizens. Though each actor had different interests, they all had a stake in apartment construction. The state master plan of creating modern urban landscape and resolving housing problems was implemented through an alliance with chaebols interested in profiting from the construction business. The state enacted laws and deregulated the real estate market so as to encourage apartment construction for developers. Middle-class citizens were invited by the state to share this small piece of the pie and to enjoy increasing wealth. Facing Seoul s serious housing shortage and providing decent housing for all residents were important issues for the authoritarian state and were directly relevant to social and political stability. Building high-rise apartments was efficient for the 143

158 government since they could provide more housing to people in the limited space. Beginning with the enactment of The Housing Construction Promotion Law (Jutaek Gŏnsŏlchokjinbŏp) in 1972, the Ministry of Construction s policy had aimed at building and supplying housing on a larger scale (Gelézeau 2007: 91). By loosening the restrictions on constructing apartment buildings, this law encouraged developers to build huge, high-rise apartment complexes. The Ministry of Construction set the goal of building 500,000 houses for the Third Five-Year Economic Development Plan ( ) and the higher goal of 1.2 million houses for the Fourth Five-Year Economic Development Plan ( ). Seventy percent of housing constructed in the 1970s was apartment complexes, accommodating more than 2,000 households (Gelézeau ibid.). Through other institutional incentives, the government helped developers construct apartment buildings under fewer restrictions. For example, the government provided funds to developers when building small- sized housing (less than 24 pyung) through the Housing Bank established in Furthermore, in 1981, the government instituted the National Housing Fund (Gukmin Jutaek Gigŭm), unifying the funds from different sources and managing them through the Housing Bank (Dong-A Ilbo, July 17, 1981). Apartments, the dominant type of housing for the middle class, were not popular in the 1960s when they were introduced. Ordinary people viewed apartments negatively, identifying them as low-quality housing for low-income families. The type of housing that people preferred was a single house with its own yard (Gelézeau 2007; Park, Chulsoo 2006). The Wow Apartment collapse in 1970 epitomizes poor apartment construction at that time: three months after completion, this apartment building collapsed and 33 residents died. After this, the government changed the target of apartment buildings from 144

159 the lower classes to the middle class (Chun, Sang-in 2009:43). In the early 1970s, the Korean Housing Corporation (KHC, Daehan Jutaek Gongsa) 36 started building apartments for the middle- and upper-middle classes by constructing larger and highquality apartments. Apartments construction for lower classes decreased; instead, modern apartment buildings targeted the better-off. Some developers called their apartment buildings mansions, implying they were residences for the affluent (Gelézeau 2007:36). The connotation of apartment building changed from low-quality housing to become more and more attached to the middle-class. The KHC built Seoul s first mammoth middle-class apartment complexes, the Banpo and Jamsil apartment complexes (Son 2005). Both Banpo and Jamsil apartment complexes were revolutionary in some ways. First, they were the first tremendous, highrise apartment complexes and functioned as a standardized model for other apartment complexes. Second, the apartment complexes themselves worked as a self-sufficient neighborhood equipped with facilities such as schools, supermarkets, gyms, and children s parks for residents (Son ibid.). As its first mega project, the KHC constructed a mammoth apartment complex in the Banpo area between 1972 and Apartments ranged from 22 to 44 pyung in area and targeted middle-income families. While previous apartment complex was on a relatively small scale, for between 1,000 and 1,500 households, the Banpo apartment complex accommodated up to 4,000 households and 15,000 people (Son 2005). With the beginning of the Banpo apartments, other mammoth apartment complexes such as Jamsil began to be constructed as well. Called Jamsil new town, this new apartment complex 36 KHC, a government-invested organization founded in 1962, has played a major role in constructing huge apartment complexes and affordable housing in Seoul. 145

160 on east side of Gangnam was aimed at accommodating about 20,000 households and 100,000 residents (KHC 1992: ) and was started in 1975 and completed in Under the military rule at the time, construction of the huge apartment complexes was not different from a military campaign. In the name of 180 days strategy of housing construction, 280,000 construction workers were mobilized (Gelezeau 2007; KHC 1992; Son 2005). Though the KHC constructed all of Seoul s mammoth apartment complexes, most of the new housing supply was distributed by the private housing industry (Kim and Choe 1997: 115). 37 Both small and big private enterprises jumped into the business of constructing high-rise apartment complexes. In particular, chaebols became prominent in this business. While Korean chaebols are known as the promoters of Korean economic growth, it is less well known that they made significant profits from land speculation and the construction business. This lucrative business not only allowed small- and mid-sized chaebols to grow rapidly, but brought them enormous profits. Because of the incessant demand and escalating land prices, the apartment construction business was anything but profitable. Chaebols were leaders in the Gangnam real estate boom. In the economic development in the 1970s, chaebols depended on low-interest bank loans controlled by the state. Most chaebols spent this capital on real estate speculation, leading to exorbitant increases in metropolitan land prices. The companies usually got a loan from the bank, bought a huge amount of land in the city for speculation, and then reported to the authority that they would build factories. Even if they eventually did build the factories, 37 According to Kim and Choe (1997), 67 percent of housing was supplied by the private housing industry in 1975 and 79.9 in Although by 1988, this rate had decreased to 63.5 percent in 1988, private developers remained the biggest housing suppliers ( ). 146

161 they usually bought twice as much land as needed, expecting to profit from dramatically increasing land prices. They would then take out another loan from banks using the already purchased land as security. With this money, they would try another land purchase. If the firms did nothing and let the land sit idle, after a while, the land price would skyrocket (Jung 1978: 137). This was a very easy and common road to profit for Korean firms. After securing this expensive land, the chaebols got permission to construct apartment buildings. Before they started building, however, they ran ads in newspapers and magazines for those interested in buying apartments. In this period, all apartment buildings, particularly in the Gangnam district, were extremely popular because land values were increasing drastically and life in the apartment buildings was believed to be modern and trendy. No matter when the new apartment buildings were built, they all thrived; securing an apartment unit was extremely competitive and the odds of doing so were about one in ten. Not until the applicants put down their deposits did the developers started laying the foundation. With contracts with thousands of people who hoped to move in, the developers could take out huge bank loans. When the developers started erecting the buildings proper, apartment applicants had to start making installment payments, and the full purchase price had to paid off by the time construction was completed. The new apartment complexes in the Gangnam areas were pots of gold for both parties, developers and new residents. On the developer s side, the new apartment buildings attracted a number of people who were willing to invest money. Regardless of their financial situations, apartments were lucrative and would never fail. On the resident s side, buying an apartment in Gangnam was a completely worthwhile 147

162 investment. Even if they incurred debt to buy the apartment, after some years, its price would be well above what they bought it for. A number of chaebols took advantage of the Seoul real estate boom and made enormous profits from the construction business. Before the boom, for example, Woosung was a small brick-making company and Hansin made furnaces for houses (Shin, Jongsu 1976; Son 2005). These construction-supply companies thus became chaebols in the apartment boom. Similarly, companies such as Samho and Samik rapidly grew by building large apartments. Some famous chaebols like Hyundai, which managed to get large construction contracts in the Middle East, invested in real estate and provided large, modern apartments targeting the upper-middle class in The chaebols fierce apartment construction competition transformed Gangnam into a huge high-rise apartment town. 38 Ordinary people who aspired to be homeowners also participated in this apartment boom. The government authorized a housing lottery system (the Bunyang system) through the revision of the Housing Construction Promotion Law in 1977, which applied to apartment complexes of more than 20 households (Gelézeau 2007: 92). According to this law, someone wanting to buy an apartment had to open an account at the Housing Bank, the exclusive manager of the Korean apartment lottery system. There were different kinds of deposits. A national housing subscription deposit for nonhomeowners applying for small apartments (usually less than about 60 m 2 ) was subsidized by percent by National Housing Funds. The other two deposits were for 38 The apartment construction business is still lucrative and popular among chaebols. Since the 1980s, super chaebols such as Samsung, LG, and Hyundai have participated in and dominated this business, although some chaebols that grew in this business in the 1970s and 80s collapsed during the 1997 economic crisis due to bad finances. 148

163 private housing not supported by public funds, one was for relatively small apartments (less than 80 m 2 ) and the other for any apartment size. Both homeowners and nonhomeowners could deposit money. Once applicants deposited some amount of money and qualified for the lottery system, they would be assigned to one of three classes. To get in the first class usually took two years; for the second class, one year was spent; the third class took less than a year. When a construction project was announced, if certain criteria were met, anyone who had deposited money in the Housing Bank could apply to enter a lottery. The odds of winning were set and stated in the announcement; 20:1 was common. In such a case, if one hundred units were to be sold, up to two thousand applicants would be accepted for the lottery. Lottery winners made perhaps three or four installment payments over a period of one or two years while the apartments were being built. The apartment had to be paid in full before moving in, but the cost (set by the government) was below market value. After a short time, the owners could turn around and sell the apartment for a profit (Lett 1998: 69). All the construction companies in charge of building and providing apartments had to follow this Housing Bank lottery system and were not allowed to sell apartments in any other way. With the limited income of white-collar workers and escalating apartment prices, this system became the only channel through which ordinary white-collar households could become homeowners. However, this system created fictitious demands for apartments. In addition to ordinary non-homeowners who aspired to their own homes, many people applied to the lottery system simply to get an additional apartment. It was worthwhile investing a lot of money in an additional apartment unit because it would sooner or later boost their wealth. 149

164 Apartment prices were skyrocketing and many people wanted to get rich overnight. But this fictitious demand produced a vicious cycle in which the apartment prices kept increasing with constantly higher demand. Extremely high demands for apartments generated a high premium, often between 2.2 million and 17 million won (1 USD=approximately 400 won in 1978) per unit. Once an applicant won the lottery for an apartment, he could hand over occupancy rights to another person, sometimes for a premium of more than 10 million won. Thus he could earn 10 million won in an instant by doing nothing. And even a loser of the lottery, who was willing to pay up to 10 million won to the winner and could still purchase the occupancy rights. He would wait a few days to sell this right to another person and make another two million won out of it. It was thus an imaginary market where people bought and sold the invisible apartments even before they were built. In order to make easy money, more and more people took part in this gamble, beginning in the end of the 1970s. Those with funds and time to spend on apartment lotteries could make easy money. The apartment market was effectively created by the government and chaebols, and middle-class people with some cash to spend were invited to participate in this legal gambling. Though the primary goal of the apartment lottery system was to provide more housing for non-homeowners, it is obvious that the system favored people with financial resources. Furthermore, chaebols, which built bigger and more expensive apartments, catered to the interests of the upper-middle class. 150

165 Table Rates of Returns per Pyung (1 pyung=3.3m 2 ) Size Expenses (unit: 1,000 won) Selling price (unit: 1,000 won) Return Rate (%) Company (Developer) Sunkyung Samik Samik Woosung Woosung Jugong (Korean Housing Corporation) Source: Hyun 1978, p. 144 As seen in Table 5. 2, the larger the apartments, the higher the chaebols rates of return. The small apartments for the less affluent built by the Korean Housing Corporation were not as profitable as the larger ones. Because developers could make more profits from larger apartments, they preferred to build these; thus these larger apartments came to predominate in Gangnam. Gangnam was the place that originated fictitious demand and land speculation in Korea, which was rare before development of the Gangnam area. The speculation in land and apartments in Gangnam made the price of land there skyrocket. As seen in Table 5. 3, the price of land in Gangnam in 1979 was approximately 1000 times that in 1963, whereas that in other districts was only 25 times that in Over only seven years in the 1970s, the land values in Hak-dong, Apgujongdong, and Sinsa-dong in Gangnam had increased 20 times, 25 times, and 50 times respectively. Increasing land value transformed Gangnam from a place where nobody wanted to live to one where everybody wanted to live. Obsolete, empty sites had become objects of aspirations. 151

166 Table Land Values of Seoul ( ) (unit: won) Distance from the City Hall Less than 5 km 5 km-10 km Jung-gu Yongsangu Gangnam-gu Sindangdong Huamdong Hak-dong Apgujongdong Sinsadong 1963 Price 20,000 20, Rate of Increase 1964 Price 30,000 25,000 1,000 1,000 1,000 Rate of Increase 1965 Price 40,000 30,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 Rate of Increase 1967 Price 80,000 70,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 Rate of ,000 1, Increase 1968 Price 100,000 70,000 3,000 3,000 5,000 Rate of ,000 1,000 1,250 Increase 1969 Price 200, ,000 5,000 5,000 10,000 Rate of 1, ,666 1,250 2,500 Increase 1970 Price 200, ,000 6,000 10,000 20,000 Rate of 1, ,000 2,500 5,000 Increase 1971 Price 150, ,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 Rate of ,333 3,750 5,000 Increase 1972 Price 150, ,000 10,000 15,000 30,000 Rate of ,333 3,750 7,500 Increase 1973 Price 150, ,000 15,000 15,000 30,000 Rate of ,000 3,750 7,500 Increase 1974 Price 150, ,000 70,000 50,000 70,000 Rate of ,333 12,500 17,500 Increase 1975 Price 200, , ,000 70, ,000 Rate of ,333 17,500 25,000 Increase 1976 Price 250, , , , ,000 Rate of 1, ,000 25,000 37,

167 Increase 1977 Price 250, , , , ,000 Rate of 1,250 1,000 50,000 25,000 37,500 Increase 1978 Price 350, , , , ,000 Rate of 1,750 1,750 83,333 62,500 75,000 Increase 1979 Price 500, , , , ,000 Rate of Increase 2,500 2, ,333 87, ,000 Source: Son 2005: 236; quoted from Toji Gaebal June 1980 Data 2 One of the most important and effective incentives attracting people to the Gangnam district was its school system. In the 1980s, elite schools were the most important factor in promoting the development of the Gangnam area. Before 1973, the school system was completely stratified into top-tier, second-tier and third-tier schools. The competition to get into the elite top-tier schools was extremely fierce, and the phrase four hours sleep, pass an exam, five hours sleep, fail an exam was popular among students. Students aged 12 or13 had to go through intense exam competition to get into the top schools. Getting into elite schools meant getting a ticket to top universities in Korea, which also guaranteed getting good jobs and stable lives later. In 1973 the government announced the standardization of all high schools and abolished entrance by examination into the top schools (Kang 2006: 94). Instead, students were assigned to schools depending on where they lived. Most of the top schools at that time were located in the heart of the city. The government ordered the elite schools in Gangbuk to move to the newly developing area of Gangnam. Kyunggi High School moved to Samsung-dong in Gangnam in March 1976, and Huimun High School, Sukmyung Girls Middle and High Schools, and Seoul High School also moved to the new area in (Kang, ibid). Most alumni and students, who had strong pride in 153

168 their schools, did not want their schools to leave their original homes, but despite opposition, they were forced to do so. Some second-tier schools envisioned that relocation in Gangnam would strengthen their reputations and decided of their own accord to move to the area. The trend of school relocation to Gangnam gave Gangnam residents children an opportunity for high-quality education. Furthermore, the ban on private tutoring implemented in 1980 strengthened the importance of public education, and more people wanted to move to Gangnam where their children could get better educations at elite schools. The massive migration of schools from Gangbuk to Gangnam confirmed the prestigious status of Gangnam and thus accelerated the migration of people who had initially been reluctant to relocate there. Seoul has a particular school district system and the Gangnam district belongs to School District eight. Since a number of top schools have moved to Gangnam, School District eight has become symbolic of the shortcut to top universities. In fact, high schools in this district have higher student acceptance rates at top universities. The five high schools with the most students admitted in the top three universities in Korea, namely Seoul National, Yonsei, and Korea, were all in District Eight (Jung, Jaeyoung 1988: 548-9). This outcome made parents aspire all the more for their children to go to school in Gangnam and eventually get into the top universities. As of 1985, the number of people who had moved within the last five years was 30 percent of Seoul s total population but reached 89 percent in Gangnam. In the mid-1980s, the number of households and high school students in Seoul increased by 7.9 percent and 1.2 percent respectively, whereas in Gangnam they increased by 23.4 percent and 57.5 percent, respectively. The fact that the growth rate of high school students in Gangnam was

169 times that in Gangbuk shows that many people moved from Gangbuk to Gangnam for educational purposes (Kim, Hyungguk 2004: 19). The government policy of elite school relocation in Gangnam accelerated, generating higher demand for Gangnam apartments. Since getting into top colleges was extremely competitive in Korea, and children s education was the middle-class parents biggest concern, moving into Gangnam seemed a great investment. Figures and show the relation of apartment distribution and fervor for education. The darker the districts are, the more apartments and cram schools are located there. The number of cram schools is important in identifying spatial clusters of middleclass lifestyles because most middle-class parents are concerned with their children s education. Most Korean parents send their children to cram schools after the normal school day, and most parents spend a considerable amount of money on their children s education in order to send them to a good university. The Gangnam area, including both Gangnam-gu and Seocho-gu, has the highest rates of both apartment complexes and cram schools. 155

170 Figure Apartment Distribution in Seoul Source: Figure shows the apartment distribution in Seoul in 2009; darker colors indicate more apartment units. The top three districts were Nowon-gu, Gangnam-gu, and Songpa-gu, which respectively have 158,129, 113,884, and 109, 789 households residing in apartments. Though Nowon-gu has the most households in apartments, these apartments were built relatively recently. In terms of the apartment size, small apartments for lower middle-class people were predominant, whereas bigger apartments were more common in the Gangnam district. 156

171 Figure Distribution of Cram Schools in Seoul Source: Figure indicates the 2009 distribution of cram schools in Seoul. As many traditionally prestigious schools are located in Gangnam, that area has an overwhelming number of cram schools to prepare students for the college entrance exams. The Gangnam district has 1,608 cram schools, Songpa 1,118, and Seocho 802. Among the other 22 districts, only the Yangcheon district has number of cram schools (857) comparable to Seocho s. The Yangcheon district is another district where dense apartment buildings sprang up in the 1980s and where many middle-class people live. The educational fervor in Gangnam district can be seen in Figure And correlating Figures and 5.6. strongly suggests the correlation between the number of households living in apartments and educational aspirations. Apartment culture and educational aspirations for their children are the keys to identifying the Korean urban middle class. 157