From Farm to Factory: Proletarianization in Korea

Abstract

Proletarianization in industrializing economies of East Asia differs significantly from theoretical models derivedfrom early industrialization in West or semiperipheral development in Latin America or Africa. Contrary to prediction of semiproletarianization thesis, dependent capitalist development in South Korea has been accompanied by a swifter, more abrupt, and more intense proletarianization than occurred in 19th and 20th century Europe. The compressed process involves a simultaneous increase in blue-collar and white-collar workers and a rapid feminization of white-collar occupations. Korean workers have not made strong collective responses to proletarianization, largely because of repressive state control of labor movement and absence of a strong artisan cultural tradition. But rapid proletarianization has facilitated development of working-class movement. The specific pattern of Korean industrial transformation and workers' reactions to it have been shaped more strongly by developmental role of state than autonomous activities of capital. Proletarianization is a pivotal process of capitalist development. In terms of its impact on society, proletarianization may be the single most far-reaching social change that has occurred in Western world over past few hundred years and that is going on in world as a whole (Tilly 1981, p. 179). The growth of wage work has a profound impact on all arenas of social life - it transforms ways people work and relate to one another; it alters structure of family and community; and it spawns new political demands and collective actions. If large-scale proletarianization was yesterday's experience in Europe, it is today's occurrence in industrializing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Nowhere today do we observe more dramatic proletarianization than in newly industrialized countries in East Asia, including South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The massive industrial transformation that occurred in Europe and America two centuries ago is now occurring in these countries, but in a dif