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Book Cover
E-book
Author Koo, Hagen, author

Title Korean workers : the culture and politics of class formation / Hagen Koo
Published Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]
©2001

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Description 1 online resource : 6 charts, 11 halftones, 1 map, 11 tables
Contents Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- 1. Introduction: The Making of the Korean Working Class -- 2. Industrial Transformation -- 3. Work and Authority in Korean Industry -- 4. A Martyr, Women Workers, and Churches -- 5. Workers and Students -- 6. Worker Identity and Consciousness -- 7. The Great Labor Offensive -- 8. The Working Class at the Crossroads -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary Forty years of rapid industrialization have transformed millions of South Korean peasants and their sons and daughters into urban factory workers. Hagen Koo explores the experiences of this first generation of industrial workers and describes its struggles to improve working conditions in the factory and to search for justice in society. The working class in South Korea was born in a cultural and political environment extremely hostile to its development, Koo says. Korean workers forged their collective identity much more rapidly, however, than did their counterparts in other newly industrialized countries in East Asia. This book investigates how South Korea's once-docile and submissive workers reinvented themselves so quickly into a class with a distinct identity and consciousness. Based on sources ranging from workers' personal writings to union reports to in-depth interviews, this book is a penetrating analysis of the South Korean working-class experience. Koo reveals how culture and politics simultaneously suppressed and facilitated class formation in South Korea. With chapters exploring the roles of women, students, and church organizations in the struggle, the book reflects Koo's broader interest in the social and cultural dimensions of industrial transformation
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (p. [219]-232) and index
Notes In English
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 25. Sep 2019)
Subject Industrial organization -- Korea
Labor disputes -- Korea
Labor movement -- Korea
Working class -- Korea
POLITICAL SCIENCE / Labor & Industrial Relations.
Industrial organization
Labor disputes
Labor movement
Working class
Korea
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781501731778
1501731777