Life in the Underside of Korean Society

I LOVE KOREA
A Summer Youth Event of the Council for World Mission
June 30-July 10, 2010
Seoul, Korea

Seminar Life 1: Life in the Underside of Society
Presenter/Facilitator: Frank J. Hernando
June 2, 2010
Time Allotment: 1 hour

Objectives:
At the session, participants are able to:
•familiarize with life from the underside of Korean society
•characterize life of the marginalized people in contemporary Korean society
•present the synthesis of life from the underside

1. TREND-SETTING
Processes: This part is good for 15 minutes. The facilitator will give a brief background on what he has set out to do together with the participants especially the time allotment for this topic and the expected output. The question that participants will answer is, “What do you know about life from the underside in Korea?” Participants will share their answers while the facilitator will write the answers on the board. Then the brief clarification and discussion will follow. The trend setting of the quality of life of people on the underside or underdogs of society will be used for the anchoring of ideas shared.

2. ANCHORING
Processes: This part is good for 25 minutes. The ideas shared in the trend setting will be included in this portion. The facilitator gives 25 minutes guided talk using a power point presentation and some video clips.

Presentation: “Life in the Underside of Korean society”

Introduction
There are many external manifestations of the kind of life people live in a particular society. These can be seen in the kind of outfit/clothes people wear, the things they own and use e.g. cell phones, computers, and other electronic gadgets, the houses where people live, the number of automobiles, buildings and transportation systems. South Korea is characteristically an economically well-off society in terms of the amount of income people earn, the extent and spectrum of social services afforded to people. The quality of life in this society is also measured in terms of longevity or life expectancy which in South Korea the overall is 78.8, for males 75 and females at 82.2 years. However, even with the given life expectancy, there is an uneven economic, social and political opportunities for the ordinary citizens of the country. This is brought about by the neo-liberal market driven economy and growth driven government political priorities, which forced segments or sectors of society to live at the fringes of society.

a) The neo-liberal capitalist globalization and its impact on the quality of life
Many people in South Korea brag about the rapid industrialization economic development in the country for less than three decades beginning in the late 80’s. It has been observed that rapid industrialization was prompted by the authoritarian regimes that encouraged every home a factory and the unwavering persistent prayers and unwavering faith of the Christians. These can be considered contributory factors, but not the only factors. Within context of neo-liberal market driven economy or known as economic globalization, highly industrialized capitalist countries had made possible the free-flow of capital to other countries, expansion of global clout of transnational banks and corporations and the geo-political and military influence in many parts of the world.

With all these combination of factors, the South Korean government carried out a currency reform, strengthened financial institutions, and introduced flexible economic planning. In the 1970s Korea began directing fiscal and financial policies toward promoting heavy and chemical industries, consumer electronics, and automobiles. Manufacturing continued to grow rapidly in the 1980s and early 1990s. In the late 1990s to early 2000s South Korea had consistently had huge foreign direct investments ranging from 6-8 billion dollars. The import-export driven economy depended on mostly US and Japan and later China as destinations of its export products.

During the 1997-98 financial downturn caused by International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies there was the slowing of global economy and falling exports slowed growth to 3.3% in 2001, prompting consumer stimulus measures that led to 7.0% growth in 2002. Consumer over-shopping and rising household debt, along with external factors, slowed growth to near 3% again in 2003. Economic performance in 2004 improved to 4.6% due to an increase in exports, and remained at or above 4% in 2005, 2006, and 2007. With the onset of the global financial and economic crisis in the third quarter of 2008, annual GDP growth slowed to 2.3% in 2008 and just 0.2% in 2009.

The basic contradictions in the neo-liberal market driven economy are mostly based on overproduction of goods but with constricting global markets, the stiff competition among industrialized countries for market of similar or the same finished products has affected many countries and their peoples. The main goal of the neo-liberal capitalist economic system is to gain super profits. Because of this many countries have to undergird their economic and political systems with the prescribed ethos and mechanisms used by countries under such system. In the early 1990s new vocabularies emerged like trade liberalization, deregulation, privatization and labour market flexibility which are characterized by people’s movements as the evils of the neo-liberal capitalist market economy.

Trade Liberalization is the removal of or reduction in the trade practices that thwart free flow of goods and services from one nation to another. It includes dismantling of tariff (such as duties, surcharges, and export subsidies) as well as non-tariff barriers (such as licensing regulations, quotas, and arbitrary standards). Deregulation is the removal or simplification of government rules and regulations that constrain the operation of market forces. Deregulation does not mean elimination of laws against fraud, but eliminating or reducing government control of how business is done, thereby moving toward a more free market. Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector (government) to the private sector ("business"). In a broader sense, privatization refers to transfer of any government function to the private sector - including governmental functions like revenue collection and law enforcement. The term "privatization" also has been used to describe two unrelated transactions. The first is a buyout, by the majority owner, of all shares of a public corporation or holding company's stock, privatizing a publicly traded stock, and often described as private equity. The second is a demutualization of a mutual organization or cooperative to form a joint stock company.

Labour market flexibility. In the past, the most common definition of labour market flexibility was the neo-liberal definition. This entailed the ease of labour market institutions in enabling labour markets to reach a continuous equilibrium determined by the intersection of the demand and supply curve. In the words of Siebert labour market institutions were seen to inhibit "the clearing functions of the market by weakening the demand for labor, making it less attractive to hire a worker by explicitly pushing up the wage costs or by introducing a negative shadow price for labor; by distorting the labor supply; and by impairing the equilibrating function of the market mechanism (for instance, by influencing bargaining behavior).”

These prescribed ethos and mechanism of the neo-liberal capitalist market driven economic system enable governments and national and transnational corporations to reduce tariffs on all imported products and in some cases governments offer tax holidays to investors. Labourers are losing job security and social security benefits, unionized labour lost their genuine bargaining power and many other adverse effects on the life of the people. The worst that can happen to labourers is to be unemployed or opt to become irregular/contractual workers. Although at the surface we can see manifestations of improved quality of life among South Koreans, but digging deeper into the social structure we can see glaring evidences of oppression, exploitation and misery especially of those at the bottom of the social structure.

b) Life of people at the margins of society and their resistance

Irregular workers
There are many ways to view quality of life in society, but what will be focused here is on job security or job tenure as a means of sustainable life; adequate social services like access to affordable housing facility and health care, affordable education for children and youth; respect for rights and equity of women, refugees and migrants and other marginalized sectors of society. To elucidate on these let me share some short stories of persons who were caught into different incidents situations that presents the tip of the social realities of people living in the fringes of society. Irregular employment has become a common situation for many people in the country. More than eight million (8,000,000+) Koreans are having irregular employment. Through this labor arrangement companies are allowed to hire people on a temporary basis for not less than two years. Thereafter workers can either be given regular or permanent jobs or are terminated. The irregular workers have suffered a lot due to low wages and lack of health and social security benefits.

The story of the workers of Kiryung Electronics in the district of Guru, Seoul showed that for 1,080 days had their hunger strike protesting against the illegal termination as irregular workers. There were 250 workers who first staged the strike against this company for more than three years (2005-2008) for the main reason that before their employment contract ended they were terminated, an act opted by both local and international companies of not making temporary workers become regular workers. In August 2008 there were only thirty five (35) remaining workers on strike and the two (2) remaining workers were on hunger strike for more than seventy days (70) and were in danger of losing their lives for the just cause they’ve been struggling for--- a regular job at Kiryung Electronics Company. The Kiryung labour union made representation to the mother company in the United States but nobody from Sirius Electronics Company ever tried to meet them.

Unemployed youth
The Korean youth employment rate was 27%, which was much lower in comparison to other OECD member countries in 2007. The average youth employment rate of OECD member countries was 46%, so the 19% difference in the employment rate of Korean youth is alarming. The number of Korean employees under 30 years old is also decreasing. Job seekers from 15 to 19 years old accounted for 48,000 in the unemployment statistics and ages 20 to 29 accounted for 133,000. These statistics in November 2008 shows that the youth unemployment rate for these ages is higher than any other age groups.

The National Statistical Office (NSO) in January 6, 2010 estimated that 810,000 people are counted as formally unemployed and the number of people who are “effectively unemployed” is being calculated at some 3.3 million. Furthermore the NSO claimed that the 819,000 people who are counted as unemployed as of Nov. 2009 represent an increase of 69,000 from the year before. In addition to the formally unemployed, there is another 2.474 million people who belong to the category of the effectively unemployed, including 561,000 students preparing for employment. With this data at hand, the government could not prioritize through legislation the employment of youth. The unreasonable demand of big corporations for appropriate skills for employment entrants has been too much for the youth to comply with. Even with the government’s youth internship program, many young people are doubly burdened with the cost of additional training they have to shoulder just to land a job. College graduates who would want immediate employment opted to get into irregular employment or get into internship program instead of waiting for regular jobs to come their way. The training aspect or the so called on-the-job training is getting unpopular in society. Less money is spent by employers for training the youth while holding regular jobs.

Dislocated residents and urban poor people
The rapid industrialization in South Korea has resulted in urbanization and redevelopment plan especially in Seoul Metropolitan City. For more than two decades now, the government had been aggressively relocating residential areas to give way to high rise apartment buildings, corporate offices, shopping malls, and others. Development aggression is a continuing experience to so many people especially among the low-income Seoul City residents. In a contested redevelopment project in Yongsan District, low income dwellers resisted demolition of their homes and fought hard to maintain their homes and livelihood in the area. But police power was used to stop their opposition.

Six lives were lost, five protesting residents of Yongsan District and a policeman in the height of fierce resistance against Seoul City’s redevelopment plan on January 20, 2009. On July 20, six months after, the residents of Yongsan commemorated the demise of the five residents. Their bodies were brought to a place near the Seoul City Hall for people to pay their last respects and to remind the Lee Myung-Bak government that justice has not been met out for the five demised Yongsan protesters. It can be recalled that in the early morning of January 20, 2009 an empty building in Yongsan area, central Seoul, was occupied by some 50 protesters who had been forcibly thrown out of their living places under yet one more redevelopment project. They occupied the building to bring their desperate situation to public’s attention and to oppose the brutal urban redevelopment projects of the large companies favored by the government. But three and a half hours after their initial occupation of the building, the government deployed 1,600 policemen, riot teams and even police commandos and positioned four water-cannon vehicles around the building for round-up arrest operation.

Without negotiation and without mercy, treating the protesters as outlaws the police began to violently disperse the protesters. In the course of the violent action by the police and the protesters’ fierce resistance, fire suddenly blazed in the building. In the end five protesters and a policeman died and a number of people were injured. Since the building was heavily guarded by hundreds of police, nobody could escape the building. Just nineteen days after the accident, the prosecution announced the result of the investigation, blaming the protesters for the tragic deaths; the prosecutor’s office indicted 20 protesters for causing the fire and hurting police officers. Soon after the prosecution’s decision was released, many civilians, NGOs and religious groups including the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK) and the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea (PROK) urged the government to re-investigate the case, reveal the truth, and heal the pain of the victim families. The remains of the victims were finally interred late last year but the scars of the fateful night of violent clash with the police operatives on the rooftop of that building left an indelible mark in the hearts and minds of the families of victims and the society.

Migrant workers
Another situation is the increasing number of foreign migrant workers from many countries in Asia such as China, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Mongolia and others. It is estimated that not less than 600,000 foreign workers are in the country out of the more than one million foreign population. Migrant workers came to the country in early 1990’s to seek employment in the 3D jobs (dirty, difficult, dangerous). The government’s labor ministry had introduced the trainee system that allowed small and medium scale factories to hire unskilled foreign workers and were considered trainees who should acquire particular skills.

Due to the exploitative scheme of the trainee system and it increased the number of undocumented migrant workers, the Employment Permit System (EPS) was introduced in 2004 to replace the trainee system. Most migrant workers work for long hours averaging from 10-12 hours a day. Their salaries are pegged at the minimum wage ranging from 800-900 thousand won per month, and there are those who do not have regular day-off, or vacation leave. The migrant workers human rights are often violated by their employers and supervisors and even by their Korean co-workers.

Churches and NGOs have established migrant workers center to provide social services and protect the rights of migrant workers. Recently the Ministry of Justice through the Bureau of Immigration issued a memo on voluntary departure of undocumented migrant workers enticing them for possible return to South Korea after 3 three years. In a similar vein, the National Police Agency also issued a memo on intensified clampdown on migrant workers for the purpose of eradicating crimes committed by foreigners and in view of the preparation for the hosting of G-20 Summit in November 2010. Several hundreds of migrant workers have already been deported since last month. The clampdown, criminalization and deportation scheme of the government has been meet consistently by various migrant workers organizations, trade unions and supporters with undulating protests actions such as demonstrations at immigration offices, signature campaigns, and other forms.

Marriage migrants
Anent this is the growing number of women marriage migrants who have come to the country and married Korean men. This is a phenomenon that came out of the depopulation of rural areas, the fast ageing population and the low birthrates for the last two decades. The claimed homogenous Korean ethnicity is becoming a thing of the past because children from inter-marriage of Korean men and women marriage migrant are increasing. Women marriage migrants rights have been violated and mostly by immediate family members. This group in society needs protection of their rights and access to social services.

Solidarity for justice and peace
The stories of people in the underside of Korean society are testimonies of the growing economic, political, social and cultural divisions in society. However, the unquenchable flame of hope for a better life will sustain various forms of resistance people living in the underside of society have initiated in their communities and organizations. There is a high level of political consciousness among the marginalized people and their critical analysis of society and the global community has empowered them to resist the government’s oppressive policies. We can forge our solidarity with the marginalized people through the understanding of their concerns, issues, participate in their struggles and firm up the hope for a just and peaceful society and world.

CLARIFYING AND SYNTHESIZING
Processes: This part is for good for 20 minutes. Participants may ask clarifications on the presentation and will assist in the coming up with a synthesis/summary through new insights and perspectives of the life of people in the underside of South Korean society.