Debt Restructuring and the Politics of Exclusion: A Case Study of the Daewoo Motor Bupyeong Plants in Incheon, South Korea

Abstract

This paper examines the politics of inclusion and exclusion in the debt restructuring of the South Korean motor vehicle industry and shows how the contested process of exclusion operates through the politics of forgetting. It focuses on the power relations among multiple actors involved in the debt restructuring of a bankrupt auto company, Daewoo Motor Company, in order to understand the politics of exclusion and forgetting as a series of complex multiscalar processes. In order to analyse power relations among multiple actors at different geographical scales, this study examines these actors' conflicting economic and political interests, ideologies, positions, strategies, resources and effectiveness of their power. The study shows that the politics of inclusion and exclusion derives not only as a result of global external forces but also from conscious policy choices made by multiple actors at different geographical scales. This paper offers an alternative angle to the binary view of the relationship among scales-global, national and local.