The Changing Faces of Inequality in South Korea in the Age of Globalization

Abstract

The social and cultural landscape of inequality in South Korea has changed significantly in the recent period. This article investigates the emerging pattern of social inequality in South Korea since the financial crisis in 1997–1998, focusing on changes in three major areas of social life: work, consumption, and education. The general trend of change has been increasing job insecurity for white-collar workers, the rise of consumption as a dominant basis of class distinction, and the intensification and globalization of educational pursuits. The study explores how these changes are connected to the glob alization process and how South Korea’s middle class is being transformed in this process. At the turn of a new century, a major public agenda in South Korea concerns social polarization—polarization of society along economic status, regional ties, political attitude toward North Korea and the United States, as well as along gender and generation. Probably the most significant among these social schisms is the polarizing trend of economic distribution. Economic inequality in South Korea has grown significantly over the past decade, and the growing disparity is manifested in every aspect of social life from consumption pattern and lifestyle to residential segregation and educational opportunities. This is a relatively new phenomenon in Korean society. Until recently, South Korea remained a relatively egalitarian society. Thanks to historic leveling conditions (including the Korean War, land reform, and the abolition of the old status system) and rapid economic growth in recent decades, people’s living standards continuously improved, and a large number of people moved into the expanding middle class. By the mid-1980s, as many as two-thirds of Korean families regarded themselves as middle class. 1 The dominant public discourse in the 1980s was about creating one large middle-class society, just