Making Capitalism: The Social and Cultural Construction of a South Korean Conglomerate 9780804766357

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Making Capitalism

ROGER L. JANELLI with Dawnhee Yim

Making Capitalism The Social and Cultural Construction of a South Korean Conglomerate

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © I 9 9 3 by the Board ofTrustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America Original printing I993 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 02 OI 00

99 98 97 96 95 94

CIP data appear at the end of the book. Stanford University Press publications are distributed exclusively by Stanford University Press within the United States, Canada, and Mexico; they are distributed exclusively by Cambridge University Press throughout the rest of the world.

"There is not some glorious theoretical synthesis of capitalism that you can write down in a book and follow," said Robert M. Solow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Nobel laureate in economics. "You have to grope your way." (New York Times, Sept. 29, 1991, Sect. 4, p. I)

Acknowledgments

and political economy in South T Korea has not only beenof culture an unseemly long time in preparation HIS INTERPRETATION

but also draws upon discussions and other experiences that extend over two decades. During those years I have been fortunate to encounter several persons with fine minds and generous dispositions. I would like to acknowledge those whose help and encouragement have been especially invaluable without implicating them in my errors or misconceptions. Other acts of generosity are acknowledged in the footnotes. For any contributions that have been inadvertently slighted I beg indulgence. A key part of the interpretations presented here originated long ago during my brief career in accounting. I am indebted both intellectually and materially to Richard Woods, Samuel Sapienza, and David Solomons, my teachers in the accounting department of the Wharton School. They first alerted me to the problematic nature of representing financial claims and transactions and forced me to reconsider the "generally accepted principles of accounting" I had unreflectingly accepted as authoritative. They also kindly provided me with employment in teaching even after I went on to pursue graduate studies in anthropology and folklore. I am also obliged to Walter J. Diggles, then of the United States Army, for guiding a year of my accounting practice with frequent reminders that "figures don't lie, but liars figure," thereby further sensitizing me to the constructed and rhetorical nature of quantitative data. I am also thankful to several anthropologists and folklorists in the United States whose counsel and support have been so helpful over the years. Myron Cohen, Linda Degh, Laurel Kendall, Choong Soon Kim, Igor Kopytoff, John McDowell, Clark W. Sorensen, James L. Watson, and Arthur P. Wolf have all given much-appreciated advice and encouragement. Clark Sorensen also read the manuscript and offered many valuable comments. To students and other colleagues at

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Indiana University's Folklore Department, I am indebted for ongoing discussions over the past several years about the problematic nature of identifying traditions, for offering a congenial environment for research and teaching, and for tolerance of my many research leaves and forbearance of my unorthodox intellectual path. For my understanding of the South Korean political economy, I am especially obliged to Bruce Cumings and Paul Kuznets, each of whom allowed me to attend their respective courses on Korean politics and the Korean economy. Paul Kuznets further shared his expertise by reading Chapter 2 and providing very helpful suggestions. Two quarters I spent as a visiting faculty member at the Henry Jackson School of International Studies of the University of Washington also aided my understanding of issues in international political economy, and I am grateful to the faculty and students there as well. I am also indebted to several other scholars of Korea who work in adjacent disciplines. James B. Palais first prompted me to think about conducting anthropological research in a modern Korean institution, impressed on me the importance of historical context, and provided many beneficial conversations about South Korea and its political economy both past and present. Carter Eckert, Karl Moskowitz, and Michael Robinson shared a variety of important insights in several discussions, both while the fieldwork was in progress and in the following years. To scholars in Korea I have accumulated even more debts. Yoon Suk Bum and Jung Ku-Hyun of Yonsei University's School of Business and Economics made possible my fieldwork in one of South Korea's leading firms by kindly lending their support to my research. They also shared with me their understanding of South Korea's political economy and listened patiently to mine. Park Heung Soo provided a congenial institutional affiliation at Yonsei University's School of International Education during my fieldwork. Numerous Korean anthropologists and folklorists have generously encouraged my research and shared their original understandings of Korean culture and society. Even while their own work receives less international recognition than it truly deserves, their support of mine has been unstinting. As a token of my appreciation for their generosity, all royalties from this publication will be paid to the Korean Society for Cultural Anthropology. For countless personal acts of kindness over the years, I wish to express special thanks to Ch'oe Kilsong, Choi In-hak, Chun Kyung-Soo, Han Sang-bok, Kang Shin-pyo,

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

lX

Lee Du-Hyun, Lee Kwang-Kyu, and Wang Hahn-Sok. I owe even greater obligations to Yim Suk-jay and his daughter, Dawnhee Yim. Yim Suk-jay has served as my principal mentor in Korean studies for more than twenty years. I have benefited not only from the vast substantive knowledge he has accumulated during more than six decades of research but also from his vision of Korean society and its cultural practices. To Dawnhee Yim I am indebted for sharing her understanding and knowledge of Korean society and culture, for her skill in pressing an academic argument and responding to mine without shattering my ego, for saving me from numerous blunders, and especially for marrying me and thereby making possible our long-term experiment in multicultural living. She also read several versions of the manuscript and offered incisive comments and criticisms. I am additionally obligated to several people in South Korea outside academe who liberally provided me with information, tolerated my mistakes and cultural faux pas, answered some silly and sometimes unwittingly offensive questions, and agreed to serve as research subjects by talking about themselves and sharing their knowledge. To the villagers of Twisongdwi, and especially to Kwon Kunsik, I owe an unrepayable debt for allowing me into their lives and for instructing me about South Korea's rural ways. Without their help I would not have understood the cultural transformations I attempt to present here. The men and women at all levels of the organization where I conducted my more recent fieldwork exhibited uncommon charity in allowing me into their world and confiding in me, particularly during a period of rising anti-Americanism, knowing all the while that the results of my research would do little to advance their own careers. I hope that this book yields a greater awareness of their considerable accomplishments in the face of adversities imposed on them, but even that would hardly constitute adequate repayment. At Stanford University Press, Muriel Bell offered continual encouragement as interpretations went through several versions and the manuscript was delayed. I am very grateful for her wise counsel and considerable patience. Tom Lacey edited my prose with uncommon skill. And the production of this volume benefited in no small measure from the expert advice of John Feneron. Portions of this study were presented at the Jackson School of the University of Washington, the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies, the Korean Studies Seminar at Harvard University,

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

and Miami University of Ohio. Participants at each of these occasions provided helpful and constructive comments. The fieldwork for this research was made possible by a year of sabbatical leave from Indiana University. Reflecting on my experiences and writing the manuscript were assisted by a grant from the Joint Committee on Korean Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation.

Contents

Introduction I.

Representations of Korean Culture

I

19

2. Representations of South Korean Political Economy

53

3· The Bourgeoisie and Their Ideology

89

4· Control from the Top

124

5· Control at the Middle

rs6

6. Responses from Below I: International and South Kore'an Political Economy

179

7· Responses from Below II: Working Conditions

202

Conclusions

229

Bibliography

245

Romanizations

263

Index

269

Figures and Tables

FIGURES I.

Genealogical Relationships Among Taesong Owner-Managers

92

2. Seating Arrangement at a Weekly Managers' Meeting

157

3· Floor Plan of a Division

164

4· Alternative Arrangement of a Section

165

TABLES I.

Average Annual Growth Rates, 1965-88

2. Upper Managerial Appointments of Principal Family Members at Taesong Group

56 93

3· Titles at Taesong Company

144

4· Wages Reported by South Korean Conglomerates in January 1987

148

5· Relative Base Pay by Grade and Hobong at Taesong Company

1;49

Making Capitalism

Introduction The time now seems ripe for a thorough integration of an ethnographic practice that remains markedly interpretive and interested in problems of meaning with the political-economic and historical implications of any of its projects of research. Marcus and Fischer (r986: 85)

s examines South Korea's industrial elite and new T middle class as agents of their society's capitalist industrializaH 1

BooK

tion and concomitant cultural transformation. It looks particularly at the managerial and administrative practices of white-collar personnel in one of South Korea's largest enterprises, to which I have given the pseudonym Taesong. And it attempts to combine anthropological and political-economic perspectives by viewing these practices as contingent on culturally informed choices by which the locally privileged have sought to advance their own interests while spearheading the transition to capitalism. The cultural transformations entailed by the expansion of Western capitalism into the Third World became an established concern of anthropological research in recent years. Building upon concurrent developments in political economy and social theory (E. Thompson 1966; Bourdieu 1977; Wallerstein 1974, 1979; Giddens 1979, 1984; Scott 1985}, several anthropologists sought to examine the material motivations and consequences of symbolic practices. The responses of peasants and new proletarians to the spread of capitalism in their societies helped these researchers comprehend how capitalism has been humanly constructed through dialectical relationships between structure and agency on the one hand and local and international systems on the other (e.g., Taussig 1980; E. Wolf 1982; Mintz 1985; Comaroff 1985; Ong 1987; Roseberry 1988, 1989}.

INTRODUCTION

2

Local bourgeoisie and the new middle classes have not been at the center of this research, which has looked to the earlier stages of capitalist industrialization and viewed Western capitalists and local peasants or proletarians as the protagonists in this drama. 1 Difficulties conducting fieldwork among the privileged classes have further induced a primary focus on those who, having the least to gain from this transformation, influence it largely through resistance. This focus has · enriched our understanding of capitalist industrialization, but it has left local business magnates and white-collar managers almost silent and invisible, though they themselves are cultural beings (Hamabata 1990; Frykman and Lofgren 1987) also caught up in the contradictions accompanying the social transformation to capitalism.2 A major goal of this work is to shed some light on these local elites who have been cast into the shadowy periphery of anthropology. The practices of those at the forefront of capitalist transformations have received considerable attention in discourses on comparative management, corporate culture, and organization theory.3 This literature, however, has been motivated by its own concerns and articulates with older theoretical concepts in anthropology. It relies on Parsonian conceptions of cultures and social systems as traditional and stable rather than as contingent outcomes of a dialectical interplay between structure and agency (Bhaskar 1979; Giddens 1984; Archer 1988), essentialist dichotomizations into ideal and material causes or into cultural and economic behavior (Tayeb 1988), and the perception of capitalism as a natural system arising out of the congruity between managers' own interests and the maximization of their firms' profits (or "rate of return" 4 ). The problematic nature of these assumpAn exception is June Nash's (1979) study of American managers. I am indebted to Linda Degh for bringing Frykman and Lofgren's work to my attention. 3 Among the most seminal studies in this tradition are Crozier (1964), Pugh and Hickson (1976), Bendix (1956), Morgan (1986), Deal and Kennedy (1982); and some of the most useful works devoted to Japan are Abbeglen (1958), Yoshino (1968), Nakane (1970), Rohlen (1974), R. Clark (1979), Ouchi (1981), Morishima (1982), and R. Smith (1989). (I am grateful to Janet Near for providing me with an initial bibliography on Japanese management.) More recently a number of publications on South Korean management have appeared as well, including several articles in Kyi5ngyi5nghak yi5n'gu, the journal of the Korean Association of Business Administration. Other works on South Korean business are Shin Yoo Keun (1984), Lee,Jung, eta!. (1986),Jung (1987), Yi Kiiil (1988), Chung and Lee (1989), Kim and Kim (1989), Steers, Shin, and Ungson (1989), and Choong Soon Kim (1992). All of these studies do not suffer equally from my characterization here. Bendix, R. Clark, Morgan, Yoshino, and Jung, for example, give more consideration to the role of human agency and the pursuit of interests. 4 Rate of return is the ratio of profits or income to the amount of investment used 1

2

INTRODUCTION

3

tions has been recognized by more recent developments in anthropology and the other human sciences. Rational choice theory, for example, has raised fundamental questions about the congruity of individual and collective interests (Elster 1986; Arrow 1963; Callinicos 1988); postmodernism and related developments in philosophy have pointed to the deeply problematic nature of representing both the symbolic and material (Foucault 1971, 1978; Lyotard 1984; Rorty 1979; Clifford and Marcus 1986); and studies of international political economy have generated alternative and conflicting formulations of economic causality (Gilpin 1987; Gill and Law 1988). South Korea offers a few advantages for attempting to deal with these issues and as a site for examining local elites. The relative absence there of large, foreign-dominated multinationals after World War II, compared with many Latin American and Southeast Asian societies (Evans 1979; Ong 1987), enabled the indigenous grand bourgeoisie and the new middle class to play an especially important role in South Korea's capitalist transformation. Background publications with which to articulate anthropological fieldwork in a single enterprise are plentiful. A substantial ethnographic literature on rural Korea, an extremely voluminous body of writings on the South Korean political economy, and a small but growing literature on managerial practices, in both Korean and English, are now available. Economic growth there has been accompanied by many other changes that have been so rapid in the past few decades that the capitalist transformation is all the more salient. South Korea's new middle class is a new new middle class. Office workers who had spent the earliest years of their lives in rural villages without electricity later graduated universities, drove automobiles to and from work, and operated computers with ease. Affluent older managers spoke of poverty and hunger during their youth. Indeed, my own involvement with South Korea since 1968 has partly inscribed me with the oftenexpressed perception of South Koreans that the United States is a place where little changes. Methodological Dialectic This book emerged out of my grapplings with theoretical concepts and my experiences as a participant-observer in a South Korean orgafor generating that income. It derives its significance from the notion that individuals ought to invest their capital where it will bring the greatest advantage.

4

INTRODUCTION

nization. Few of the ideas presented here were envisioned by me at the outset of my research. Instead, new experiences led me to a new awareness and hence a questioning of assumptions, and fresh theoretical insights I gleaned from reading prompted my perception of alternative meanings in what I had seen and heard. I started out primarily to examine the role of "traditional" culture in the practices of white-collar workers at one of South Korea's modern companies. The initial appeal to me of such an examination was largely a product of my beholding the economic transformation of South Korea, my prior fieldwork in a South Korean village, and my earlier education in business administration. My major theoretical premise was that Korean culture could be viewed as a kind of intangible asset with which practical goals could be achieved. I had no intention of investigating political economy, wider cultural metamorphoses, domination and resistance, or the social construction of capitalism. A step-by-step recounting of my own transformation would make too long a story. Chapters 6 and 7, which are based primarily on fieldwork, describe how some specific encounters with the men of the enterprise that I call Taesong reformulated my understandings. Here I outline the path by which I came to experience those encounters and to reorient my research. One of the first difficulties I faced was finding a company that would allow me to conduct research. Though I had long ago earned an M.B.A. from the Wharton School and offered to work without salary in return for the opportunity to conduct fieldwork, none of South Korea's companies seemed willing to accept my offer. Almost in despair· I asked for the help of a few Korean scholars I knew. Thanks only to their contacts in the local business community and their willingness to lend credibility to my research, I soon began fieldwork in the headquarters of one of South Korea's largest and most well-known corporations, my presence sanctioned by its president. That firm, Taesong, turned out to be a principal company in one of South Korea's four largest chaebol, the conglomerates or business groups usually credited with much of its rapid economic growth over the past few decades. With sales of about (U.S.) $r5 billion and approximately 8o thousand employees during my fieldwork in 1986-87, Taesong was (and still is) a major player in international trade as well as within South Korea. Its combined sales are sizable enough to earn it a listing among the largest roo of Fortune magazine's Global 500,

INTRODUCTION

5

and its products are widely distributed in the United States and many other nations.5 Because the major chaebol were a frequent topic of public media reports and newspaper editorials, I began paying more attention to the media as alternative sources of information. They continually pointed to the conglomerates' interrelationships with the national and international political economy and thus led my inquiry beyond the company to the chaebol, the national economy, and the world system. A variety of motivations led to my acceptance into the company and some of its related firms. No evidence indicates that any executive allowed me into his firm or office because he regarded my business training or experience as having any practical value.6 At least one of the Taesong men who helped me hoped that I would write a book extolling his company's or South Korea's management methods that would resemble the many publications about Japanese companies written during the previous decade. It was a hope that my research goals at first implicitly but unintentionally encouraged. Other men seemed pleased with the prospect that I would produce a book that portrayed South Korea as a successfully industrialized society, a possibility tacitly invited by my more informal explanation of the reasons for my fieldwork: "My field is Korean studies; and just as rural villages were studied twenty years ago in order to understand Korean society, nowadays one should study a large and modern institution." Perhaps the owners and upper managers of the organization were glad that someone would be looking at Korean traditions, for they often represented their managerial practices as manifestations of Korean culture. The director who agreed to let me occupy a desk in his division, ostensibly in return for translation and editing services, acknowledged, however, an altogether different motive. He wanted 5 Until recently Fortune magazine compiled an annual International soc listing that excluded American enterprises. Beginning in 1990 the International soo was replaced by a Global soo, a more comprehensive listing of American and non-American companies. 6 The document that formally proposed my presence to the president did not mention my previous accounting experience with Price-Waterhouse or elsewhere but pointed out instead that I had taught accounting at the University of Pennsylvania. At the time, I did not appreciate the significance of this justification by academic legitimacy rather than external experience.

6

INTRODUCTION

his subordinates to get to know me as a person. Their contacts with Americans were largely limited to formal business transactions, he explained, and it would be helpful for them to have an opportunity to get a fuller understanding of what Americans are like, especially in their emotions and feelings. I relished the irony of becoming an "informant." After beginning fieldwork I was asked to conduct English-conversation classes at four divisions ofTaesong company, and occasionally personnel from other divisions or affiliated companies asked for help with editing or translation. Some of the men I came to know were later transferred to other divisions or companies within the conglomerate, expanding my network of contacts still further. Most of my translating and editing, however, involved interacting with men of lower ranks (sawon and section chiefs) of the headquarters staff, whose comments and actions often jarred with those of older and more senior managers I also met daily. As I struggled to keep my account of the company positive, the younger men kept pointing out the inadequacies of my understanding, and I found myself in the uncomfortable position of defending an ideology and practices that they sought to resist. Sometimes their efforts were as subtle as a choice of words or ambiguous hints, but at other times the disparities between their understandings and those of upper management were more explicit. Thus, despite my original intention to study a group unified by the profit motive, my attention was constantly drawn to domination, resistance, and the opposition of interests. During this early fieldwork, I tried to keep especially detailed notes, for Ward Goodenough had once taught me that impressions gained during early days of participant-observation can be particularly valuable. Though field-workers at this stage are likely to misunderstand what they see, their impressions are more vivid because they have not yet become inured to practices that differ from those they have encountered elsewhere. My early notes are rich with details about two phenomena, neither of which I encountered in the United States, in rural Korea, or during several years of residence in Seoul: the absence of any visible signs of conflict and the pervasiveness of ranking within the company. These eventually became some of the major themes pursued in the following chapters. Thus I was shifted during the earliest days of fieldwork away from my initial research topic. Instead of attempting to explain practices as arising out of traditional culture, profit orientation, or some combination thereof, I became intrigued

INTRODUCTION

7

with those that could not easily be explained by either. My search for different modes of interpretation involved a few years of reading and reflection after the fieldwork. I was impressed with attempts to establish cordial relationships partly because of the warmth of my own initial reception in the company. Thirteen years earlier, when Dawnhee Yim and I had begun our research in a rural Korean village,7 we (mostly Dawnhee Yim) had taken the initiative to establish rapport; in the company, others were taking steps to establish rapport with me. Managers tried in a variety of ways not only to facilitate my research but also to make me feel like a welcome member of the company and the division to which I had been assigned. One director gave me a company pin to wear on my lapel. When employees received gift packages of company products at holidays, I received one too. I was also given a desk in the last row of one division's large office, alongside those of the section chiefs and department heads. This choice spot put me right next to the young managers whose actions I wanted to study and commanded a better view of the office than any other location. During my first day at Taesong, the director of the division invited me into his office for friendly conversation and a cup of coffee. The deputy director convened a brief meeting of all the division's department heads (pujang) and section chiefs (kwajang) to introduce us and to explain the nature of my research. It was then that he noted, "Well, this is really only a personal matter, but his wife is Korean so that makes him half Korean," a remark that reminded me of a proverb I had once heard in the village to stress the intimacy of in-laws: "A son-in-law is half a son." 8 After the deputy director later led us all out to lunch so we could get better acquainted, I attempted to pay for the check, but the others insisted that he pay, saying that the treat was like that offered to a newly hired worker (sinip sawon). Had I been more alert, this comment might have tipped me off that my reception was an activity in which these managers were well practiced and skilled. 7 Names of East Asian authors are written according to the East Asian style with surname first, except for persons who I know prefer otherwise. I have used the Western style in the text for Asian American authors, on the other hand, rather than implicitly deny their American identity. For the sake of consistency in citations and bibliography, however, all East Asian names are given with surnames first. 8 The saying listed in most proverb dictionaries (e.g., Han'guk minsokhakhoe 1972: 192) equates a son-in-law with half a child.

8

INTRODUCTION

The junior managers of the division also went out of their way to be friendly and cooperative, seeming almost to compete with one another to make me feel welcome and build rapport. Especially during my first few days, every section chief and department head of the division came over to my desk to talk about the weather, say a few kind words about my taste in neckties, discuss current news events, or share a cup of coffee. The section chief whose desk was closest to mine graciously agreed to my proposal that our desks adjoin so we could communicate more easily over the surrounding cacophony of clacking typewriters, ringing telephones, and spirited conversations. Another section chief charged with acting as my counterpart equipped me with company name cards for my use (my position being shown ambiguously as "researcher"), tickets to eat lunch at the conglomerate's cafeteria, my own telephone, and a full complement of pens, pencils, and other supplies. He also spent a good deal of time explaining the system of ranks and pay grades as well as recounting his own history. I had trouble sleeping when I returned from the office after the first day of fieldwork not because of anxiety but for having drunk so many cups of coffee. All this behavior was such a contrast to the more guarded reception I had initially received in the village of Twisongdwi more than a decade ago that I could not help but reflect on the differences. The earlier fieldwork formed my expectations and understandings of the nature of participant-observation in South Korea and taught me how to negotiate social relationships. My experience at Taesong thus contributed to my understanding of the transformations that accompany the transition from village to office life and of the differences between the new middle class and rural villagers. Reflection has in turn also helped to reform my understandings of village life, allowing me to appreciate alternative meanings in some of my earlier fieldwork expenences. The greatest difference I perceived between Korean office workers and villagers was in the difficulty I encountered establishing closer rapport with many of the men at Taesong. I have already shown how several of them were often extremely helpful, and eventually I came to know some as well as I had known anyone in Twis6ngdwi. 9 But 9 I was not as much a stranger as I had been when I first entered the village. I was teaching a course on Korean ethnography and folklore to American students on a year of overseas study at one of South Korea's elite universities, where many of the directors and department heads whom I later came to know had graduated, and that institutional affiliation gave me an added measure of academic legitimacy. Moreover,

INTRODUCTION

9

frustration in establishing rapport with others occupied my mind and reshaped my thinking. Dawnhee Yim and I had a similar frustration with one person in Twisongdwi, but reserve and reticence were common at Taesong. As one man was criticizing his company's managerial system for leaving no room for subordinates' initiatives, to cite the most extreme example, we were joined by a co-worker who said precisely the opposite, and the first man then reversed his earlier position without explanation. I could only read this as a sign that his colleague's remark had led him to think that perhaps he had gone too far in revealing his views. As the weeks went by, a number of events convinced me, slowly and almost imperceptibly, of the artificiality of much (though by no means all) of the amicable relationships that had so impressed me during the first few weeks. A young manager insisted that many of the signs of comradery were not natural expressions of social solidarity (Chapter 7). And gradually I realized that many managers spoke less frankly in public about their personal circumstances or views than did most villagers, academics, or members of the old middle class I knew. A few men told me of close relatives who were studying or living in the United States, for example, but only when we were alone; and later one manager explained that he and his colleagues generally avoided speaking about their families in the office, lest it seem like bragging and provoke jealousy. More than one manager pointed generally to the difference between what he and his colleagues showed on the outside and what they felt inside. In retrospect, several reasons can be cited for their reserve, some of which now seem so obvious that it is embarrassing to acknowledge that I had not anticipated them. Taesong workers were unlike the villagers, academics, and oldmiddle-class shopkeepers and professionals in that they neither owned the resources by which they produced their livelihood, nor had the job security of university professors or alternative career prospects as attractive as their present employment. Their chances for promotion and even permanent employment (Chapter 4) depended I discovered with some surprise during the first weeks of fieldwork how my own personal network reached into South Korea's new middle class largely through my family and other academic acquaintances. The wife of the director (isa) who allowed me into his division had taken a university course taught by my wife's father decades ago, his deputy director (ponbujang) had taken a course with a Korean economist who has been a friend since graduate school, and two of their section chiefs (kwajang) had taken courses with a Korean anthropologist and folklorist, respectively, whom I have known for several years.

IO

INTRODUCTION

heavily on impression management, and their opportunities for advancement on keen competition with each other. As it turned out, my greatest frustrations occurred in the division where, its managers acknowledged, competition was especially rife. A few men of this division also expressed concern about how the publication of my research might affect their careers. One said to me in only a half-joking tone, "I don't think I can continue to work here after your book appears." Another asked, "Are you going to write that you studied the [A] company, [B] division, and [C] department head?," using the first letters of his company, division, and own last name to imitate a common style of South Korean publications. In this division, the young sawon, the white-collar men who had the least to lose if they changed employers, were often the most vocal critics. I therefore abandoned my plan to use the new pocket-sized tape recorder I had bought for the research, and all of the conversations cited here are from memory, usually entered on a keyboard at the end of the day. Even had I used the tape recorder, however, I would have obtained few accounts as clear and compelling as those provided by Twisongdwi villagers. My linguistic competence, though far from native fluency, had improved, but the statements of office workers were usually more laconic, allusive, and abstract. They also knew I was reading South Korean newspapers and there was little reason to spell out what was common knowledge. Rather than criticize the government at length, for example, they alluded to its repressive nature by making jokes about Chun Doo Hwan. Anti-American sentiments, my comprehension of which was recognized as being a bit retarded, were more forcefully articulated (Chapter 6). Getting close to many persons proved more difficult in the company than in the village also because Dawnhee Yim was not with me. We had accompanied each other almost everywhere in Twisongdwi, and not only had I been able to rely on her native language fluency, interpersonal skills, and social sense to establish rapport with villagers, but we also discussed daily our perceptions and understandings of what we had seen. Her absence from the company particularly precluded easy entree into the world of women workers. I could not socialize with them during lunch or after hours as I could with men, and they were too busy during the workday for extended conversations.10 Thus my research has unfortunately taken on 10 A request to have her join me for this purpose in the last months of my research was one of the very few that were denied.

INTRODUCTION

II

a male-centered perspective. Graduates of commercial high schools, the women workers were not managerial-track employees, their stay at Taesong was intended to be temporary, and thus they were a different and far less advantaged fraction of the new middle class. But they would have added valuable insights. They interacted daily with the men, and their own forms of resistance were constant reminders to their male co-workers. Lower in the system and more disadvantaged by it, women workers could be even more outspoken than the male sawon regarding the internal system of ranking. Before I began my fieldwork, for example, they had complained of the terms used to address them and asked for alternative forms. When they learned that I would be teaching English classes to the men, they asked for their own class as well, to which I readily consented. On the too-few occasions when I was able to converse with them, their comments were especially revealing. I have included some of their remarks. The timing of my research also hampered rapport. It was conducted during a period when South Korean views of the United States were increasingly critical, and some men portrayed (and I assume regarded) me as just as much an agent of American cultural domination as any other American with whom they dealt. Fortunately, the director who wanted me as a specimen was perceptive to the differences between individuals of different occupations. Other men sought to compliment me by contrasting my behavior with that of other Americans they encountered in their business dealings, and some even asked me to explain the peculiarities of American business behavior when it frustrated them. A few made no such distinctions. One manager, for example, mispronounced the common surname of one worker as most Americans would. Others wished to present me with practiced routines for representing their society to Americans, in the manner of Paul Rabinow's "Irbahim" (1977: 22-30). And a few interpreted my questions about differences between American and Korean culture as criticisms, and sought defense in denying the differences or in professing that "Korea too will soon ...." I should have given more thought not to my frustrations but to the reasons so many people were helpful and cooperative. It was also difficult to pass through some social barriers because of my ineptness as a corporate citizen. I pursued contacts across sections, departments, divisions, and even companies, and thereby unwittingly offended the people who sought to make me a member of their own unit. I was often unable to build rapport after hours as

12

INTRODUCTION

they did with each other because of other pursuits, such as writing up field notes. Knowing the long hours the men worked and hearing constantly their complaints about how little time they had to spend with their families, I was also reluctant to disturb them at their desks and add to their work load, looking forward instead to lunchtime or other occasions when they would be free. Fortunately, many kindly took the initiative and approached me. Part of my ineptness also stemmed from my desire to avoid local political involvement, but such entanglements occurred from the earliest days of my fieldwork. Upon agreeing to teach an English class during the hour before work began, I found myself being held up to the office workers as a model of commitment to hard work. When an older manager asked why his employees could not put in extra morning hours if I did, my attempt to defend them by pointing out that my stay at the company was only temporary was brushed aside. On other occasions I was reluctant to disparage or agree with criticisms of South Korea and found myself defending and thereby contributing to the legitimacy of practices that younger men condemned. And though I sought to avoid asserting a fixed rank in the hierarchy by behaving as an equal in dyadic encounters with all those my own age or younger, most group settings precluded this possibility. When men sat around a table according to rank (Chapters 5 and 7), any seat I chose was a symbolic assertion of status.

Dilemmas of Writing My methodological dilemmas extended to writing up an interpretation of the business. I am not sure the choices I made in doing so were the best, but they were the best I could think of. Though my more than two decades of immersion in Korean studies and nine years in South Korea were invaluable, they sometimes handicapped me when I attempted to illustrate a particular interpretation. New field-workers have at least one advantage in that all of their information is derived from a more circumscribed set of encounters. Many of the understandings that informed my research were acquired over several years, some of them when I was not consciously engaged in fieldwork, and I can neither claim a native competence nor recollect now all the details that resulted in their conception. Chapters rand 2 attempt to remedy this by surveying the extant literature on Korean ethnography and political economy. The end of Chapter r includes a section of what Marcus and Fischer (1986: 40-44) call "experi-

INTRODUCTION

13

mental ethnography" on modern institutions and urbanization, and I occasionally draw contrasts with other members of the urban middle classes or rural villagers in later chapters as well, but much had to be omitted in order to maintain some focus. Trying to make sense of informal rules of the road while driving to and from the office each day, for example, led to my comprehension of injong (sympathy for the plight of others; see Chapter 6). And Dawnhee Yim's casual advice to a Korean American student visiting South Korea during my fieldwork prompted a flash of enlightenment regarding subordinates' strategies of resistance. Recommending that the student not argue with her grandparents when they told her to return home each evening by eight o'clock, my wife advised, "She should agree to be home by eight o'clock and can tell them she's sorry if she returns late." What she said contributed significantly to my understanding of managerial surveillance, an understanding later strengthened by a reading of Michel Foucault (1978) and set forth in Chapter 5· Other dilemmas arose from attempting to address a theoretical debate concerning how the construction of cultural meanings articulates with the making of a political economy while simultaneously writing a descriptive ethnography of particular events and experiences (Hefner 1990: xiii-xiv). I found it impossible to engage relevant theoretical issues without referring to some of the major analytic concepts and vocabulary developed by those who have looked at the relationships between structure and agency (Giddens, Callinicos), the material and the symbolic (Bourdieu, Sen), local and international systems (Wallerstein, E. Wolf, Cornaro££, Gilpin, Gill and Law), politics and economics (Bourdieu, Gilpin, Gill and Law), and representations and reality (Marcus, Foucault, Rorty). Their abstract notions and specialized language, however, hinder description by making it less accessible to readers with other academic concerns and by emphasizing selectively and thereby distorting accounts of concrete events. Perhaps this dilemma could have been resolved by writing two separate essays, one descriptive and the other analytic (Foley 1990), but that strategy would have concealed the dialectic between theory and experience and left the theoretical essay with few tangible referents. My preferred solution was to try writing the ethnographic descriptions in plain English and in such a way as to bring the reader as closely as possible to my own experiences. I then attempt to use that ethnography to illustrate the analytic concepts and terminology;

INTRODUCTION

but where that proved too difficult, I briefly explained them in the text or in a footnote. Yet other dilemmas pertain to the political implications of this research and how it relates to my own privileges. Though I like to interpret my actions in terms of ethical commitments and do so in this book, it is unfair to exempt myself from the recognition that moral claims are also a means for pursuing material advantage or to portray myself as a disinterested observer guided only by ethical obligations (Bourdieu 1988). My major problem lies not in acknowledging that attention to domination and resistance within the enterprise advances some of my material interests, but in determining where the overall balance of my advantages lie. Like the new-middle-class workers and managers at Taesong, I occupy a "contradictory location" in a structure of multiple and competing identities and interests. As an academic at an American university I stand to gain by demeaning South Korea's achievements and furthering the hegemony of the United States in the economic, political, cultural, and intellectual realms (Said 1979 ). As a Koreanist, however, my personal interests seem to be advanced more by lauding South Korean actions than by furthering the American Gross National Prod:uct or trade balances. Recent years have seen a rapid growth in Korean studies in the United States, evident in higher course enrollments and increased demand for publications, and much of this expansion is fed by a perception of the "miracle" of the South Korean economy. To portray such achievements in an implicitly critical manner by pointing to domination and resistance is to bite one of the hands that feed me.11 My portrayal of Taesong by no means resolves this dilemma, but it attempts to balance competing interests by presenting as fully and sympathetically as possible the critiques of U.S. policies and practices conveyed to me by Taesong personnel and by deconstructing American criticisms of South Korean trade practices. Such dilemmas extend to the domestic South Korean system of competing interests as well. Word choice and translation unobtrusively and thus insidiously construct cultural and politcal-economic 11 A growing number of middle-class South Koreans, including academics, have come to resent what they perceive as negatively biased accounts by Americans, such as NBC's coverage of the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Particular attention to conflict thus endangers my relationships with South Korean scholars, whose help and cooperation advance my career.

INTRODUCTION

reality. The Korean word Han'guk, for example, is most often translated by South Koreans as Korea or Republic of Korea; but unless it would distort the intended meaning, I have generally opted for South Korea in order to avoid occulting the existence of the political state on the northern half of the Korean peninsula. Similarly, labeling the highest Taesong personnel owners or owner-managers fails to indicate that their ownership claims are contested and thereby tacitly strengthens those claims in the minds of readers. Calling them (grand) bourgeoisie, on the other hand, implies a challenge to their ownership claims that is also not universally accepted. And to readers of Korean, the word chaebol is far less innocuous than group or conglomerate. Generally, I have sought to resolve these dilemmas by alternating between critical and acquiescent terms. Quotation marks, in addition to designating excerpted speech, are also used occasionally to indicate that the assumptions implicit in some common terms are deeply problematic. Korean phrases are included in parentheses or explained in footnotes whenever my attempts to render them in idiomatic English especially sacrificed meaning or evocative force. A similar difficulty enters into defining and naming the organization studied here. I had originally intended to study a company, but eventually came to recognize that what constitutes a single enterprise is another matter of social construction not without politicaleconomic implications. The Korean term taegiop (large firm) is equivocal in that it can refer to either an entire chaebol or one of its principal companies. I have sought to convey that ambiguity by assigning the pseudonym Taesong to both the company and conglomerate and distinguishing between them only when necessary. The final, but not least important, set of dilemmas pertains to the contradictory obligations I owe those at Taesong and others in South Korea who have made this research possible. In recent years, anthropologists have given increasing attention to their responsibilities to the people and institutions (Cornfield and Sullivan 1983) they study, but where do those obligations lie when these people have varied and opposing interests? I have tried to deal empathetically with everyone and to recognize the validity of opposing points of view. As will become all too evident, however, my strongest sympathies are with rural villagers, academics, premanagerial white-collar workers, and the junior managers who provided me with most of my information. I am unable-and unwilling-to hide my antipathy with the view that the so-called authoritarianism of "traditional" Korean culture ren-

r6

INTRODUCTION

ders more democratic decision making less suitable in modern Korea than elsewhere in the world. That claim has been used to legitimate coercive practices for too long, both by foreign powers as well as privileged elites within South Korea. I acknowledge my obligation to the owners of the company without whose permission my fieldwork would have been impossible. Their willingness to allow me into their organization testifies to the strength of their conviction that their practices were justified. My account is not more sympathetic to their views because my direct communication with them was limited to occasional greetings at social events or during elevator rides. They did not encourage greater contact, but I could have taken more initiative in that direction. There is no way completely to hide the identity of their firm or conglomerate, particularly among those knowledgeable about the South Korean economy, but I have adopted a pseudonym to minimize adverse publicity. I ask that reviewers and others who already know the true name of · the business likewise refrain from revealing it when referring to this work in publications and public presentations. And lest the identity of Taesong be deduced too easily through process of elimination, none of the other four largest business groups are named here either. To protect the owners I have blurred the focus of my account by using general criticisms of the major chaebol, rather than those directed specifically at Taesong, and critiques already available in newspapers, academic writings, and other published sources. Though my illustrative details are taken from Taesong, I have directed my attention to everyday white-collar business practices already reported in the South Korean media. Frequent use of public documents is intended to avoid revealing privileged information. I also recognize other obligations to the junior managers and nonmanagerial white-collar workers, especially those who confided in me. I take some comfort from being able to express the opinions of those whose voices are constrained by international as well as local power relations, though I suspect that some would rather not have those voices-or even the contents of local newspapers-heard outside South Korea. Since this book may well be read by persons of varying levels at Taesong-some men asked me to provide them with copies-I have taken particular care to avoid giving away who told me what and about whom. I have often forgone the luxury of what Clifford Geertz

INTRODUCTION

(1973) calls "thick description," for example, and chosen to expurgate altogether or to generalize identities, ranks, positions, units, personal details, and contexts that might reveal my confidants. Thus, there are fewer extended anecdotes than I would have liked to provide, and I have used some other camouflaging devices as well. I employ the modifiers older and younger for managers over and under the age of 40 to avoid specifying a particular rank. These are not Korean terms but were chosen based on my own age (43) during the research and on my sense of where a major fault line lies in many practical as well as discursive understandings of the new middle class. I have omitted photographs, for they would have looked ludicrous with faces airbrushed out or masked over. My prose does as much, depriving persons of their individuality, robbing them of credit for their individual insights, and risking the appearance of greater consensus than is warranted. I would also have liked to pursue the matter of differences between the various organizational units where I eventually developed good contacts, but that would have required describing their activities in too-revealing detail. Other than inventing pseudonyms to avoid identifying the company and the chaebol and referring to real people as X, Y, and Z, however, I have deliberately falsified nothing. Seemingly meaningless details often take on significance in light of later discoveries, and falsifying even minor particulars seems counter to the spirit of the postmodern movement (Foucault 1978: 139-40; Marcus and Fischer 1986: rs). Like other ethnographers, I promise to tell the truth, but not all of it I know (Crapanzano 1986: 53).

The chapters generally progress from past to present, from larger to smaller, and from upper to lower organizational levels. The next two attempt to portray some of the cultural knowledge new employees brought to the firm as well as the extramural context of their actions. Chapter r examines rural Korean culture of the past few decades and some of its urban transformations, and Chapter 2 presents conflicting interpretations of the political economy. Then the narrative turns to the business group and its companies. Moving from the ethnography of rural villages to analyses of the national and world systems and then to an examination of a chaebol entails major shifts in perspective that disrupt the flow of my account. I am trying to follow a strategy suggested to anthropologists by George Marcus and

18

INTRODUCTION

Michael Fischer (1986: 91-92) for relating structure to agency and for integrating local cultures with large-scale political and economic systems. The ethnography of the conglomerate begins in Chapter 3 with a study of the ideological claims of its owner-managers. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with practices of control and surveillance to which the white-collar workers and young managers were subjected. Chapters 6 and 7 attempt to comprehend their own perceptions of tradition, political economy, and other conditions under which they worked, as well as their responses to official ideology, control, and surveillance. A concluding chapter brings in some of the changes that occurred after fieldwork ended and attempts to formulate a general position regarding the theoretical issues identified in the opening paragraphs of this Introduction.

ONE

Representations of Korean Culture When we speak of our traditional culture, the first thing mentioned is the ordering of vertical relationships between superiors and subordinates based on Confucian morality and the conservatism of the patriarchal family .... From an anthropological perspective, however, one cannot speak so simply. Lee Kwang-Kyu (r990: r98)

attempts to portray some of the cultural underT standings and practical knowledge that rural migrants have been HIS CHAPTER

bringing to cities and ultimately to the offices of organizations like Taesong for the past few decades. Then it looks to the schools, army, and cities to explore the transformations cultivated in these modern social institutions. The chapter tries to identify what cultural understandings shaped perceptions and choices of action regarding control, legitimation, resistance, and conflict management. Concepts of national identity, recreation, and time are also relevant to comprehending what transpired at Taesong, but these are more conveniently discussed in later chapters. The main purpose of this all-too-brief review of precompany culture is to present ethnographic accounts of rural Korea that demonstrate the problematic nature of the popular judgment that large-scale South Korean bureaucratic and commercial organizations are products of reified or inertial values, customs, and social relations. More specifically, examples have been chosen to demonstrate the partiality of company ideology (Chapter 3) and of academic studies that contend the "authoritarianism" and nonparticipative management style of modern Korean enterprises and other bureaucratic institutions manifest Confucianism, habits of subordination, or group-centered practices acquired in "traditional" social settings.

20

REPRESENTATIONS OF KOREAN CULTURE

Besides cultural determinism these interpretations also suffer from at least two other major difficulties. First, instances of egalitarianism and resistance to authority abound in the ethnographic literature. Some students of Korean rural society have already begun the task of constructing alternative interpretations (Brandt 1971; Cho Dong-II 1974; Chun 1984), but those who write about modern, largescale South Korean organizations are generally unfamiliar with this anthropological literature. Second, even those white-collar workers who were born and raised in rural villages did not arrive at Taesong headquarters fresh from the countryside but had extensive experiences in the army, in universities, and in cities. I have tried, perhaps unsuccessfully, to avoid choosing between established sides of the dispute over the nature of rural society and to demonstrate instead the multivocality of both the rural and urban experiences of Taesong employees, pointing to ways in which their precompany encounters were simultaneously conducive and antithetical to the managerial forms of control described in later chapters. I have placed greater emphasis on the counterhegemonic strains in rural life because authoritarian interpretations of these settings still prevail. Only by recognizing both faces of interpersonal experience in villages can one comprehend the debates ongoing in the offices of Taesong and the reasons the authoritarian view remains so widely accepted. When turning to modern institutions and urban practices, on the other hand, I do not write against the grain of generally accepted wisdom but attempt to present a more evenhanded account. Preindustrial Korean Culture

South Korea's rural society offers the most appropriate starting point to search for local cultural influences. 1 Though Seoul has been in existence for about six centuries and a few other Korean cities even longer, the urbanization of the population has been so rapid in recent decades that some familiarity with rural life is still part of the knowledge most employees brought to Taesong. In 1955 only about 1 Tony Michell (1984) has sought to demonstrate continuities between modern Korean bureaucratic behavior and that of the Choson dynasty. I have not pursued this explanation because the transmission of Choson-dynasty practices to more recent years is highly problematic. None of the Taesong workers I met mentioned that his father had been a government bureaucrat, and during the colonial period Japanesecontrolled administrative agencies replaced those of the Choson dynasty.

REPRESENTATIONS OF KOREAN CULTURE

21

one-quarter (24.6 percent) of the population dwelled in cities of over so thousand, but that proportion swelled to more than three-quarters (77.8 percent) by 1984 (Moon and Kang 1989: 3). This large-scale migration from rural farming areas to urban centers, and especially to Seoul, was reflected in the backgrounds of the white-collar workers at Taesong. All who worked at the conglomerate's headquarters lived within the city limits of the capital or just beyond them, but many managers had spent some years of their youth in small towns and villages and still retained ties to rural relatives there. Several of their conversations also revealed a more intimate knowledge of rural practices than could be obtained from literature, mass media, academic studies, or hearsay (see the discussion of time in Chapter 7). The man who founded the Taesong conglomerate a few decades ago had also spent all but two of his first 24 years in a rural village.2 Thus, infusions of agrarian culture into the chaebol by both the bourgeoisie and the new middle class began at its inception and continued up to the time of my fieldwork, though all that while rural culture had been undergoing changes too. Probably because many younger office workers, managers, and principal owners of the conglomerate were still close to their rural origins, I could identify no purely "invented traditions" (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983), but I found partial constructions of the rural past and major disagreement about how it related to the present. Fortunately, both South Korean and American researchers have compiled extensive ethnographic records of rural society that many office workers had experienced, to which I can add my own earlier fieldwork in one village. These resources primarily cover the 196o's and 197o's, which overlap but do not entirely cover the youthful years spent in rural areas by those who later became department heads, section chiefs, and nonmanagerial white-collar workers. During my fieldwork at Taesong in 1986-87, most department heads had been born in the 194o's, section chiefs in the early 195o's, and the newest recruits about 1960. For the years before 1960, I have drawn inferences about rural life from sources that are indirect and less plentiful: historical scholarship, autobiographies, the memories of older perso~s, and oral literature. Though my primary concern is with the 2 This statement is based on the account of his early life included in the Taesong company's published history.

22

REPRESENTATIONS OF KOREAN CULTURE

period from World War II to the late 1970's, occasional glimpses at earlier years are useful for assessing the directions of change rural Korean society itself was undergoing in the postwar era. In general these ethnographic and other sources suggest more dramatic changes in the class system than in family life and parental authority, especially after the Korean War and land reform of the early 195o's. South Korean rural sociologists and ethnographers who did fieldwork in the late 195o's and 196o's were personally familiar with earlier decades, and they provide different assessments regarding the rates of change in rural Korea (cf. Lee Man-Gap 1982: 73-77 and ChoiJai-seuk 1975: 121). But fundamental changes in the family system are difficult to Identify in their accounts because their descriptions of family life are generally congruent with family studies and autobiographies from earlier decades (Kang Younghill 1931; Kim Tuhon 1949; Osgood 1951; Sorensen 1988). More striking changes, however, are depicted in accounts of status and class (Kim Taik-Kyoo 1964: 166; Pak Ki-hyuk 1975: 195-96; Lee Man-Gap 1970: 34546). Land reform effectively eliminated the economic foundation of the rural elite, who were known as yangban, and many symbolic cultural practices soon changed. By the 196o's, for example, people with claims to yangban status began to carry funeral biers, a practice widely regarded formerly as indicative of commoner status (Lee Man-Gap 1960: 90; Janelli andJanelli 1982: q, 26). And concubines' descendants, formerly restricted to the rear ranks of participants at formal ancestor rites, assumed places in the front rows (Kim TaikKyoo 1964: 161-62). Rural villagers in the early 197o's commented on the changes, albeit with some exaggeration, by saying that in modern times anyone with money claimed to be yangban (D. Janelli 1984: 35)·3 During the past few decades family and kinship have often been contrasted with nonkinship relations in the ethnographic literature (Brandt 1971; Chun 1984; Ch'oe 1988) and by villagers themselves (Janelli and Janelli 1982: 21-22), especially with regard to authority, resistance, and harmony-the very topics to be examined here. Principles of agnatic recruitment were rather rigidly followed in rural Korea Ganelli and Janelli 1982) and, unlike their Japanese counter3 Laurel Kendall (1985: 42) reports that in a village north of Seoul elderly men with weaker claims to elite status attributed this social and economic relationship to the past as well, maintaining: "They used to call those who had money yangban."

REPRESENTATIONS OF KOREAN CULTURE

23

parts, family and descent group did not readily provide metaphors for nonkinship forms of organization.' The following account of rural Korean culture is divided according to what are generally considered the three main social institutions of that society: the family, the lineage, and the village. It eclipses social groupings like rotating-credit societies and other voluntary associations. Starting with the smallest unit, the family, and focusing on the father-son dyad, the locus classicus of Confucian authority, it then examines the degree to which that relationship was extended to local lineages, and finally turns to relations between co-villagers.5 Fathers and sons. Several academic writers (Shin Yoo Keun 1984: 16-17; Lee Hak Chong 1989b: 133-35; Rhee 1981: 53-54) maintain that a father's control over his family, particularly over his sons, affords a justification or explanation for the firm control a manager exercises over his subordinates (Chapter 4). This is the most frequently encountered theme in the use of tradition to explain managerial practices. Shin Yoo Keun (1984), a professor of business administration, has applied the analogy of the family more fully than any other writer. His interpretation extends the family-company correspondence, maintaining that harmony in the family is the basis for emphasizing harmony in the company, that fathers and sons working for the common welfare of the household is the origin of managers and subordinates working together for the common welfare of the company, and that the importance of relative ages of family members is the foundation for the seniority-based pay and promotion system (yon' gong soya!) described in Chapter 4· Shin himself (1984: 10) perceptively acknowledges that he is adopting a cultural determinist (munhwa kyolchongnonjok) position in attributing present organizational practices to tradition. Analogies between family and firm are plausible to Shin and other South Korean writers because they can perceive similarities between paternal and managerial control. A father's domination of his sons 4 A few fictive kin relationships used kinship ties as metaphors (e.g., suyang ttal and shaman's "spirit mothers"), but these were evidently dyadic relationships involving at least one woman. Though there are terms for fictive adoptions between fathers and sons, I have been unable to find any actual instances. 5 I have not discussed relations between women, or between women and men, which deserve equal attention, primarily because I know too little about women workers at Taesong.

24

REPRESENTATIONS OF KOREAN CULTURE

became a major theme of Korean ethnography, including my own, well before any anthropological attention turned to South Korea's modern enterprises (Osgood 1951: 48; Brandt 1971; J anelli and J anelli 1982). In Twisongdwi where my wife and I conducted fieldwork in the early and late 197o's, for example, we never saw a man argue with his father in public, though we learned of several .instances of less visible forms of resistance. So constrained were sons in the presence of their fathers, at least in public, that they usually avoided them (Janelli and Janelli 1982: 45-48). Poignant anecdotes of domination by one's father and the difficulties of openly confronting his control have also been presented in the personal histories of children and the literature of both genders for decades (e.g., Lih 1966: 29; Kendall 1988; Kang Sok-kyong 1989). The difficulty with the analogy between managers and fathers is not its truth value but its partiality. It is too abstracted from actual experiences to be generally validated or invalidated. Fathers did indeed exert a good deal of control over their sons, but a father's power was checked by other family members, more so than a manager's control of his subordinates. In other words, the family can also be represented as a collective decision-making unit, and this representation has greater validity than has generally been acknowledged. Though men were formally recognized as family or household head (hoju), both Korean and American anthropologists (Kendall 1985; Cho Haejoang 1986; Lee Kwang-Kyu 1990: 197-208) have argued in recent years that the older and generally accepted view devalued the role of women in the management of rural families. As Lee KwangKyu (1990: 204) puts it, "In our nation, the power of the housewife (chubukwonjain puin) acted to constrain patriarchal authority." Moreover, even without the mediating influence of women in decision making, sons did not always acquiesce to their fathers' demands. (Similarities between a son's resistance to paternal control and the counterstrategies of subalterns at Taesong exist, though the forms of such resistance have not been brought into the academic or company discourse on this issue.) An alternative interpretation of the fatherson relationship could emphasize the legitimation of parental control through filial piety or through an apparent unity of interests, and it could also accentuate an offspring's resistance through evasion, deception, and the reinterpretation of parental or family interests. Filial piety was the main ideological device for legitimating paternal authority, but this moral norm cannot be equated with Judea-

REPRESENTATIONS OF KOREAN CULTURE

25

Christian or modern Western notions of obligations to obey parents. Like their Western counterparts, Korean parents occasionally sought to justify their authority in terms of the belief that parental control was in the best interests of offspring too immature to comprehend those interests or how to pursue them. Within the family one set of interests was not easily overridden by another, however, and parental control could not usually be checked by the rights of children. Disputing the custody of a child in terms of the child's best interests or removing a child from parental custody because her rights had been violated was particularly alien to cultural understandings regarding the relationship of parents and their offspring. Instead, parents sought to avoid a confrontation of wills and opposing interests. They were more inclined to warn children of external dangers rather than threaten punishment, for example (J anelli and Janelli 1982: 3435; d. DeVos 1986: 351, 365). To pursue what I take to be a commonly held Western view, difficulty in the parent-child relationship often arises when adolescents perceive their own competence to be equal or even superior to their parents'. A common strategy of many American parents at this turn is to appeal to another set of rights, those pertaining to property. "As long as you're living in my house, you'll have to do as I say" is not an entirely facetious claim. After a son or daughter establishes a separate residence and obtains her own source of income, parental authority is greatly reduced if not terminated. Perhaps not coincidentally, property rights are most often advanced to justify managerial control of subordinates in Western capitalist organizations (Tosi 1984: 40). Personal and property rights, the interests of children vis-a-vis parents, and an emphasis on obedience are not the most salient themes in South Korean discourses on filial piety. In lieu of rights one finds appeals to reciprocity, in place of opposing interests one notices invocations of mutual benefit, and instead of obeying one hears far more often of repaying parents. These ideas both informed and were informed by other cultural understandings that together enabled the counterstrategies of offspring. Reciprocity was probably the most recurrent theme in both written and oral discussions of filial piety. Children were popularly viewed as indebted to their parents for the gift of life, for the indulgence and nurturing received in their earliest years, and for the efforts and sacrifices parents took in raising them. Sons especially were said to be forever obligated to repay that debt. Instead of terminating with

26

REPRESENTATIONS OF KOREAN CULTURE

adolescence, this obligation could never be satisfied in full as long as parents were alive. It even extended to a parent's afterlife. "An offspring's indebtedness to parents is as limitless as the sky," according to an address to the dead recited at household rites for forebears. The Korean funeral chant sung while a coffin was carried from village to grave site litanized the sacrifices parents made on behalf of offspring and the impossibility of full compensation (Janelli and Janelli 1982: 66-67). Precisely how this repayment was to be made, however, was mediated by cultural understandings and particular circumstances. In lieu of the Judeo-Christian motif of obedience and subordination to parental will, the more salient Korean themes involved sparing parents distress, assuring their comfort, caring for them in old age, and offering rites for them after death. Filial piety placed in some ways a more onerous responsibility on offspring to take the initiative in ensuring their parents' welfare. Rather than simply to comply with parental demands, a son was expected to exercise some judgment as to whether overt compliance was really best for his parents, an expectation that was perhaps justified by the Confucian classics (Tu 1986: 181} as well as oral literature. Most folktales of heroic filial piety (Choi In-hak 1979: 163-76) dealt with sacrifices offspring made at their own initiative when they recognized or anticipated a parent's need. Truly devoted offspring didn't have to be told what to do. Conferring property rights also was used to legitimate parental control of offspring. Though property was officially registered in the name of the household head and the state recognized his legal right to dispose of it (Sorensen 1988: 165 ), villagers represented it as being vested in an entire household rather than an individual.• The management of the household's affairs rather than the ownership of property per se was the object of contests between fathers and sons. Successive generations had different opinions about who was better able to manage their common interests, not about whose material gain ought to take precedence, thereby obscuring the long-term opposition of interests between them. When a father had more than one son, he took a smaller share of the property and gave it to the younger son at the time the latter moved out to establish a separate household. The larger portion for the eldest son was justified by his greater obligation 6 This is but another example of the discrepancies between official state records and local understandings noted in Chapter 4·

REPRESENTATIONS OF KOREAN CULTURE

27

to care for parents and perform their ancestor rites as well as by the respective sizes of their households at the time of separation. Property division seemed to have been a relatively harmonious process: only when a father died prematurely and left his sons to divide the property among themselves did opposing interests come to the fore (Janelli and Janelli 1982: 79, 104-6; Sorensen 1988: 167-68). As we shall see in later chapters, the notion of common interests, though often espoused in company ideology, was not grafted easily onto the manager-subordinate relationship. Cultural understandings of filial piety and the nature of household property also informed judgments about the most advantageous strategies for blunting paternal control. Rather than distress parents by confrontation, open disobedience, or assertion of independent rights, children more often sought quietly to evade parental commands, dissimulate, or advance alternative interpretations of what was most advantageous for both generations. Avoiding parental supervision was often possible because many rural practices physically separated fathers from their sons. Only one of them, usually the son if he was married, attended village meetings (ChoiJai-seuk 1975: rr8); sons deliberately avoided their fathers on other occasions in rural Korea (Janelli and Janelli 1982: 48); and a father's surveillance of his son's work on a farm was far less intense than a manager's supervision of subordinates in a modern office (Chapter 5). Another counterstrategy used by sons was dissembling. Because filial piety emphasized that an offspring's primary obligation was to make parents comfortable and not to cause them distress, disobedience was less reprehensible if it did not cause the parent discomfort (as when the senior generation did not observe the transgression or would not otherwise know of it). Indeed, it could even be praiseworthy if successfully justified as a means to avoid arousing a parent's anxiety. Part of the cultural knowledge that informed responses to paternal commands was the belief that open defiance or confrontation was a far more serious offense than secret disobedience. Though few Korean sons speak of dissembling, it appears to have been part of what Anthony Giddens (1979: 25) calls "practical consciousness," the implicit understanding of how to behave. It has recently been brought to the discursive level by anthropologist Kang Shin-pyo (1987: 98), who observed that a son was justified in deceiving his father to spare him unnecessary worry, "even if that mean[t]lying to the father." Yet a third counterstrategy sons knew how to employ, particularly

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in their later years, was devising their own interpretations of what was best for parents. Because filial piety emphasized acting in parents' best interests rather than absolute obedience, it could often be turned on its head, especially when parents became elderly. A son could justify his own actions by claiming they were taken on behalf of a parent, even over the senior generation's objections. This was aided by yet another cultural understanding: elderly parents were expected to retire gracefully from active life and not intervene too heavily in day-to-day household matters (Janelli and Janelli 1982: 43-47; Sorensen 1988: r65). Strategies for countering parental control were illustrated in the anecdote one elderly villager told us, without embarrassment, about an open confrontation with his father. My wife and I had initially used this story as an example of the difficulties of caring for elderly parents, but it also illustrates a son's successful contention with paternal authority. Though the villager omitted the year the events occurred, I infer it was in the early 196o's, between the deaths of his parents. Because the father seemed very lonely after his wife died, his sons found another woman to provide him with companionship in his old age. Unfortunately the woman turned out to be a schemer with whom their father became helplessly infatuated. She soon began to persuade him to transfer all the property of his household to her name. When he finally consented, our informant moved out of the house and refused to return until his father had rid himself of the woman. The old man eventually yielded, for he knew he could not live without the help of his eldest son. Uanelli and Janelli 1982: 49]

The narrator's reputation seems not to have been seriously impaired by this act of defiance, for he successfully presented it as taken in the best interests of his father and their joint household rather than an attempt to protect his inheritance. Indeed, he once won an award from the township office for his filial piety, the only villager we knew to have received such official recognition. Though sons could use avoidance, deception, and reinterpretation to accommodate the ideological demands of filial piety, they could not act with impunity. Not every action could be convincingly justified as conforming to moral norms. The success of such strategies depended on persuading others that one's actions were personally disinterested. Some actions toward parents were difficult to justify even by the most lenient interpretations of this moral norm, and villagers frequently criticized offspring for not providing adequate care

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29

to elderly parents. Among two Twisongdwi families, for example, middle-aged eldest sons did not follow cultural expectations and lived apart from their parents because, as was openly acknowledged, of their inability to get along. More flagrant violations of filial piety occurred among families of lower social standing. Filial piety conferred status, as evidenced by the memorial stones commemorating filial sons placed alongside roads and paths for all passersby to see, and status conferred political and economic advantage in rural Korean society. Those communities in which status was less likely to yield material results were not as motivated to keep up appearances. In studying a village whose members could present only the weakest claims to gentry (yangban) status, Griffin Dix (1977: 120) occasionally observed even violent and bloody confrontations between fathers and sons. And from Sokp'o, Vincent Brandt (1971: 202, 205-7) reported-: "Obvious conflict between sons and parents or between brothers was infrequent but not rare. Out of ro8 households, there were possibly ten that could be called aberrant in this sense." All of the cases were found in the Sokp' o hamlets occupied by persons of lower status. For those not engaged in status competition at higher levels of the social scale, virtue was its own reward. The dominating father was not pure fiction in any village, but this image represents a partial version of experience and cultural understandings. During adolescence, when sons were old enough to have compliance demanded of them but still too young to have their alternative interpretations accepted, it was most difficult to escape a father's injunctions. A father's control at that point probably came closest to the absolute authority depicted by Shin Yoo Keun and other writers who emphasize the power of the household head. Several difficulties arise, however, when this model is extended to company relationships. Indebtedness for earlier benefits, a sense of co-ownership of property, and even the evasion and other resistance mechanisms available to sons did not match the realities of Taesong offices in the 198o's. The opposition of interests between managers and subordinates was not easily obscured in a modern corporation (Chapter 7), and avoidance and deception were difficult when surveillance was so thorough (Chapter 5). Subordinates did challenge the practices of superiors on the basis of what would be best for their mutual (i.e., their company's) interests, but only in private, for the system of advancement granted more power to those who had

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acquired more experience, and managers were retired before they became elderly (Chapter 4). Even in rural villages, Confucian moralists notwithstanding, a father's control over his son was rarely invoked as a model for other social relationships. Lineages. As is the case with interpretations based more narrowly on the family, hierarchy and harmony portray only part-and a smaller part at that-of other relations in rural Korea. In this and the following section, I will try to show how these representations are not sufficient for portraying extradomestic groups. My purpose is to demonstrate that nonfamily relations could hardly be impartially described as replicating those found within domestic groups and that the common practices of these extradomestic groups were even more removed from current managerial methods. They give even less evidence of overt domination and suppression of conflict. I offer this interpretation in response to those who maintain that the basis of South Korean managerial domination is to be found not so much within the family's confines but in the generally hierarchical character of society, its emphasis on maintaining harmonious relationships, or its predominantly Confucian nature. The cultural understandings that informed strategies of control within a lineage provided an even less adequate basis than those of the family for modern managerial practices. A lineage lacked a head who controlled it, deference attenuated rapidly with genealogical distance, and conflict also became increasingly overt as kinship distance increased. These characteristics are not unrelated, and I shall pursue them simultaneously. Brandt (1971) has argued that lineages in South Korea were largely governed by an understanding of hierarchy and authority, and some practices of lineages support this interpretation. Lineage members acknowledged a hierarchy of status based on generation, age, and genealogical position; and some of the deference shown fathers was also shown other agnates, especially a father's brothers and his first and second cousins. Men normally did not smoke in the presence of their father's brothers, for example. Yet such deference diminished with kinship distance (Brandt 1971: 137), and the political advantages of lineage elders were rarely evident except in the most formal and kinship-oriented occasions, such as annual lineage meetings, ancestor rites, or when dealing with a lineage's corporate property (Brandt 1971: ro3). It was evidently the

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31

status differences between close agnates that led Brandt to characterize kinship relationships as generally hierarchical, but among more distant agnates the criteria by which one man ought to enjoy higher status than another were usually inconsistent, as when an older person belonged to a junior generation. These contradictions provided the basis for contending claims to deference in Twisongdwi. One villager, for example, described with some humor his relationship with one of his lineage mates a year older but a generation lower than himself, addressing him as "honorable nephew" (chok'anim) in formal contexts. Another villager noted that it was difficult for anyone to accomplish anything in Twisongdwi because so many residents were either older brothers (i.e., elder kinsmen) or uncles (i.e., of a higher generation). In the village of Hahoe Iltong, an algorithm for reconciling conflicting age and generation differences appeared to have been advanced. Kim Taik-Kyoo (1964: q6) cites a saying to the effect that an age difference of ten years was the equivalent of one generation. Kim questions its accuracy and provides no examples of its operation, however. And even if the kinsmen in Hahoe Iltong had managed to reconcile age and generation statuses, other competing bases for status claims remained. Descendants of the senior branch claimed higher status by virtue of their genealogical position whereas members of the junior branch claimed it by virtue of their descent from a more famous ancestor (Kim Taik-Kyoo 1964: 168-70). This indeterminant hierarchy is also evident in ethnographic reports of South Korean lineages that depict their affairs as having been managed by a group of men who advanced claims to authority by varied criteria. Leadership in rural lineages was better described as a gerontocracy than a chain of command (Brandt 1971: 102-4; Janelli andJanelli 1982: 21-22, 128-29), though in some lineages not all the members of the most influential group were actually elders. A lineage usually had a formal "lineage head" (munjang), but ethnographic studies report that these kin groups were governed not by one person but by a group of influentials, typically men of advanced age and generation, reputations for learning and virtue, seniority of descent (Choi Jai-seuk 1975: 273-75), and wealth.7 In addition to that of lineage head, formal positions included secretaries (sogi), treasurers 7 One member of the Twisongdwi lineage who had accumulated substantial wealth during his own lifetime noted that his opinions regarding community affairs had rarely been sought when he was poor but that he was always consulted after attaining prosperity.

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(ch'ongmu, yusa), and the present incumbent of the most senior line of descent (chongson) of the kin group's focal ancestor. There was no single line of authority between them, however, and none could control the lineage singlehandedly. In Twisongdwi, for example, the most influential man of the lineage was about 6o years old and held the formal position of treasurer (ch'ongmu), but he owed his influence primarily to his social and rhetorical skills. Several other lineage members were older, of a higher generation, better educated, or wealthier. Indeed, this influential man even took pains to avoid the appearance that he controlled the lineage. Just before one lineage meeting was about to start, he anticipated that one of its members would request a loan of lineage funds and, after pointing out to the other elder kinsmen that the prospective applicant had not repaid the last loan, solicited their consent to deny the man any further credit. Having obtained their approval, the treasurer then asked the other elders to speak up when it came time to refuse the new loan, lest it appear that he was the only one opposed to the request. Admittedly, a more general age hierarchy in Twisongdwi was evident in the formation of two age-based factions, referred to as the "elders" (noin) and "young people" (cholmiin saram). Frustrated younger lineage members often claimed that lineage elders controlled its affairs. Yet the young people's faction was able to exert considerable influence in managing the lineage. By all accounts it was they who urged that their kin group stop hiring men from a neighboring village to carry its funeral biers during the mid-196o's. The young people's faction had also managed to have their own leader elected village chief in the mid-197o's (in an elective process numerically dominated by the lineage), and they eventually forced the lineage treasurer to concede to the building of an ancestral hall and simplifying the lineage's corporate ancestor rites (Janelli and Janelli 1982: 145-46). The deference owed senior agnates did not automatically translate into submission or suppression of all conflict. Younger Twisongdwi lineage members were deferential toward their senior kinsmen and generally avoided confronting them except at village meetings, but younger men were not without strategies for evading demands of lineage elders. Toward their senior agnates of collateral descent lines, younger lineage members also used avoidance, deception, and reinterpretation to

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33

resist their elders' control. In 1973 few of the younger men attended the ancestor rites that the lineage organized and the elders dominated. Some had challenged the ancestor rites on the grounds that selling the corporate property that financed them and using the funds for educating promising young lineage members would be a better form of filial piety. And one young man was constantly vying with an elder kinsman about 30 years his senior for influence in lineage and village affairs. One day the elder became infuriated and launched into a loud tirade against the younger agnate, who offered no opposition, protest, or defense but chose to remain out of the elder's sight. On yet another occasion the elder admonished the same young man because he and his companions were disposing of some parts of an animal slaughtered for a village picnic. They were burying the refuse too dose to the village well, the older man admonished, and he ordered them to find a place farther away. The young people offered no protest but moved only a few steps to a nearby spot, located behind a building that blocked the elder's line of vision, and buried the refuse there. Later at the picnic, the elders wanted to play musical instruments the village had acquired for a newly formed farmers' band, but the young people hid the instruments. They were eager to have the elders leave so they could enjoy themselves more freely. Lineages were also different from families in that conflict between members was expressed far more openly. Disputes were less embarrassing than those between family members and were more widely known, as villagers were more willing to discuss as well as display their own involvement in such strife. Although conflict between brothers was considered scandalous, more distant agnatic kinsmen and their families were quite open about their disagreements, far more so than Taesong office workers (Chapter 7). While living in Twisongdwi, people often told us of their pique at members of households headed by cousins or more distant kin (Janelli andJanelli 1982: rr4). Similarly, in Hahoe Iltong, Kim Taik-Kyoo (1964: 168-70) reported open rivalry between the two major lineage segments and conflicts between their respective subsegments.

Villages. Like families and lineages, villages too had both hierarchical and egalitarian practices, and co-villagers tried to maintain harmony and yet often were in open conflict. But whereas kinship relations are sometimes represented in the scholarly literature as more hierarchical than they often were, representations of village rela-

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tions perhaps exaggerate their egalitarian qualities. By the 196o's and 197o's at least, political and economic advantage in villages was often hidden or disguised by apparently equitable practices. How long such strategies prevailed among village governance, landlord-tenant relations, and status group differences during earlier decades, however, is difficult to ascertain. A council of influentials rather than a single individual usually controlled a village. Each had a formal village government, with a village chief (ijang) as well as hamlet chiefs (panjang) for each of its territorial subdivisions. But ethnographic studies of village government or "leadership" since the 1950's portray an informal (pigongsik) government composed of local influentials (yuji) variously qualified for membership by property ownership, age, education, knowledge of affairs beyond the village, reputation for moral behavior, claims to elite yangban status, and membership in a dominant lineage (Lee Man-Gap 1960: 184-85; Pak Ki-hyuk 1975= 89-91,128-30, 1Ss-s8; Choi Jai-seuk 1975: 565-73; Dix 1977: 410, 415-16}. Membership in this privileged group thus seemed to have been linked closely to land ownership and prestige, or economistic and symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1977: 177), respectively, the principal means of economic and political control between households in South Korean villages. 8 That age was a criterion for positions of influence should not lead us to overemphasize its importance. Many ethnographers have given their attention to age as a basis of public deference in villages, but they have generally concluded that it was of limited practical advantage. When describing gatherings at which an aura of equality and informality prevailed, for example, Brandt notes that "for the most part members of such groups are the same age" (1971: 147), elsewhere adding that the presence of older men in such groups dampened conviviality and informality (1971: 158). But such age differences were even less a basis for power across kinship lines than within them. Chun Kyung-Soo's phrase, "No one argued against him" (1984: 42) nicely captures the deference due an elder at public gatherings, but this did not prevent Chun from recognizing elders' lack of authority 8 I use the term economistic capital to designate what are more commonly recognized as assets by those who portray the pursuit of material interests as a kind of activity largely independent of power relationships and cultural understandings. Symbolic capital, on the other hand, refers to other assets such as social esteem and access to priveleged networks. These other assets are always intangible and often unrecognized but also contribute to the production of material benefits.

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35

in village as well as lineage affairs. As Brandt put it, "Formal respect and authority are not synonymous" (1971: 94). Brandt found that elderly men received less deference in the form of restrained behavior and exercised far less influence at village than at family gatherings (1971: 232). The evidence from other ethnographers also points to age differences earning less formal deference in village than in kin relationships.9 Ch' oe Kilsong (1988: 95 ), for example, notes that whereas an age difference of even an hour between agnates was significant, a difference of five years between nonkin was often ignored. 10 Age differences of greater than five years, however, did not earn actual power (Chun 1984: 41-44). In Twisongdwi easy familiarity, joking, and exuberant conviviality across larger age gaps could be observed only between young lineage members and unrelated elderly men. It was a reproduction of the unrelated men's lower status or an expression of their lack of economistic as well as symbolic capital. Had these older men been wealthier or relatives, instead of hired laborers and nonkin, they would probably have been shown more of the deference to which their age entitled them. Few persons of these disadvantaged households were outspoken about such matters, but the head of one complained at length to Dawnhee Yim about being addressed as sobang instead of ssi and other perceived humiliations nonkin suffered. Influence was not acquired through age, or at least not through age alone. As the other criteria for membership among the villagegoverning group of yuji suggests, property ownership and prestige were also important. Here one finds greater hierarchy and domination, but both criteria were undergoing significant changes throughout the twentieth century. Japanese occupation (1910-45) brought a large increase in land tenancy to rural Korea. According to figures published by the Japanese colonial government, landless tenants increased from 38 to 54 percent of the agricultural population between 1918 and 1932 alone (Grajdanzev 1944: 108}. By the end of that fourteen-year period, about another quarter of the agricultural population was composed of part-owners who also tenant-farmed (Grajdanzev 1944: 108-9), paying rents averaging about 40 to 50 percent of yields, and an addi9 See Ch'oe (1988) for a discussion of age differences in kinship versus village relationships. 10 I would modify that to read "close agnates."

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tional small percentage of the population earned their livelihood as hired agricultural laborers. This situation changed dramatically a few years after the end of colonial rule as a result of a land reform that greatly diminished tenant farming (Kim Taik-Kyoo 1964: 204; Janelli and Janelli 1982: 14; Kuznets 1977: 31; Pak Ki-hyuk 1975: 195-96). By setting a maximum of three chongbo (7.4 acres) on legal land holdings, large-scale landlords were eliminated and the class system significantly altered (Koo Hagen 1987: qr). Though neither tenancy nor hiring full-time agricultural laborers was eliminated entirely (Rutt 1964: 148), pure tenants became much rarer. A sample of villages conducted in 1958 found less than 6 percent of the population were landless tenants, about an equal number were part-tenants who owned less cultivable land than they rented, and 9 percent were part-tenants who owned the majority of the land they cultivated (Lee Man-Gap 1960: 64). The same study also revealed few noncultivating landlords, most tenanted land being owned by families who cultivated at least some of their own holdings. Thus, though tenancy persisted even after land reform, particularly in the villages dominated by elite lineages (Kim Taik-Kyoo 1964: 204), economic differentiation between landlords and tenants and landholding as a basis for domination were significantly reduced. Ethnographies of the post-Korean War period examined the symbolic as well as the more explicitly economic bases of control in South Korean villages and reported that they too were changing. Though formally abolished in the Kabo reforms of 1894, yangban (gentry) status was still asserted locally in the 197o's by virtue of descent. Some villages evidently had no one who claimed yangban status (Osgood 1951: 44; Kendall 1985: 41-42), but most ethnographers used the term to describe elite social status in rural villages (Lee Man-Gap 1960: 86-89; Brandt 1971), as did their research subjects. Exactly what this term implied and the extent of social mobility during the Choson dynasty (1392-I9Io), much less the colonial and later periods, are points of major contention in Korean studies literature (e.g., Song 1987: u8-259). Yangban were popularly associated with wealth, a leisured life-style, erudition, moral behavior, and office holding in the civil branch of the Choson state-a cluster of attributes linked by a Confucian philosophy that associated education and morality with the right to rule. But unlike gentry status in China, entitlement to yangban status in Korea was also claimed by descent. All legitimate members of a local lineage, rich and poor,

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37

educated and uneducated, were generally ascribed or denied yang ban status. The result was a contradiction that invited competing claims. Though some villagers after the Korean War maintained that there were no longer any yangban (Lee Man-Gap 1960: 86) or that anyone with money was one, other villagers throughout the 197o's engaged in debates about which kin groups were or were not yangban or how high their own group's standing was within the category (e.g., k'un yangban) (D. Janelli 1984). Status in recent decades was asserted or denied on the basis of multiple and not always consistent criteria: reputation of ancestors, credibility of descent claims, the status of lineages with which marriage alliances were formed, moral reputation, elaborate ancestor worship rituals, and the presence of other symbolic expressions of a yangban life-style (Kim Taik-Kyoo 1964; Brandt 1971: 190, 209; Janelli and Janelli 1982). Given that yangban legal status and its concomitant privilegesexemption from military service and potential eligibility for government office-had been abolished several decades earlier and were unlikely to be reinstated, other causes evidently prompted the continued assertion of this identity in the 197o's. Successful assertion of such an identity and other marks of high status conferred influence, especially in village affairs but even in wider rural society. In the early 1970's, after most villages obtained electrification, the South Korean state began intervening more actively in the internal matters of villages and thereby undercut the local political advantages of yangban status. Factory employment and urbanization also created new opportunities for those disadvantaged by the traditional class system, and heavy migration depleted hitherto abundant farm labor. But until the major consequences of these developments were felt, villages were granted greater autonomy to regulate their own affairs, and that enabled local elites to monopolize the positions of village chief and dominate yuji gatherings. Thus they controlled their villages with less interference from the state and weaker local opposition. Yet throughout the 195o's, 196o's, and 197o's, the mechanisms of elite control were often indirect, disguised through local village councils or village governments, and effected by such devices as delegitimating those who owned no property or forming voting blocks. Hereditary status, the life-style which it implied, and the Confucian ideology that underlay it were inadequate to ensure acceptance of elite control. By the 195o's, at any rate, more ostensibly coercive styles of control were difficult to find. Instead, ethnographers reported rela-

REPRESENTATIONS OF KOREAN CULTURE

tively egalitarian interactions in everyday affairs except from villages like Hahoe Iltong, which was numerically dominated by former gentry lineages of exceptionally high status and where differences in wealth were more extreme than elsewhere. In his study of Sokp'o, based on fieldwork undertaken in the mid196o's, Brandt first articulated the notion of a fundamentally egalitarian practical consciousness that informed nonkin relations there and in many other rural villages. What I have called the egalitarian community ethic is informal and has no codified set of principles, although many aspects of it are expressed in proverbs and homely aphorisms. Important values are mutual assistance and cooperation among neighbors, hospitality, generosity, and tolerance in dealing with both kin and nonkin. Resistance to authoritarian leadership outside the family is combined with strong in-group solidarity for the natural community, defined as a society in which everyone knows everyone else, and where people interact more frequently with one another than with outsiders. [1971: 25-26]

Brandt provides vivid examples of how this "egalitarian community ethic" operated and how claims to authority were resisted (1971: 104-5 ). "The process of decision making is a slow and indirect search for consensus among influential leaders in contrast to the much more authoritarian organization of power within the family and lineage," he concluded (1971: 233). 11 Chun Kyung-Soo (1984) later found evidence of similar understandings regarding nonkin relations in the community he studied. 12 In Twisongdwi even the formal courtesies shown lineage elders were largely absent during· the annual meeting of village government. There villagers themselves were aware of this difference, contrasting the formal deference expected at kin meetings with the "democracy" of village meetings, where people were freer to express opposing opinions (Janelli and Janelli 1982: 21-22). As both agnates and co-villagers, therefore, Twisongdwi lineage mates, especially those beyond the range of second cousin, had alternative modes of interacting. Occasionally, Dawnhee Yim and I could detect 11 A central argument of Brandt's work is that kinship relations were generally more hierarchical than nonkinship relationships, yet he is careful to note also that authority and hierarchy evident in the family gradually declined with genealogical distance (1971: 103, 137, 140). 12 Chun Kyung-Soo points to the phrases kakkaun sai and ch'inhan sai, used, respectively, to designate genealogically close relations with kin and close relations with friends (1984: n9-20). He also portrays greater freedom in the latter.

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39

a bit of negotiation as to which mode of interaction ought to prevail in given circumstances. Reasons for this apparently egalitarian interaction are not hard to find. Many rural residents had been exposed to leftist ideologies while in Japan or Manchuria during the Japanese colonial period (Cumings 1981: 60-61). Most villages in South Korea were briefly under Communist control during the Korean War (1950-53), and published ethnographies indicate some active cooperation with the Communist government (Brandt 1971: 189; Kim Taik-Kyoo 1964: 169-70; Kendall 1988: 65-66), suggesting that socialist ideas were not without some appeal. All of these experiences seem to have prompted elites to be more circumspect in their dealings with the "lower orders" of their village, adopting more covert means of domination and exploitation. In the early 198o's one elderly villager in Twisongdwi lowered his voice almost to a whisper when he told us of hearing stories in his youth of servants from an adjacent village being summoned for corporal punishment. And in the early 197o's, as Dawnhee Yim and I were talking with an elderly woman of the dominant lineage there, discussing class relationships with the residents of adjacent villages who had carried the lineage's funeral bier until about a decade earlier, the woman reached for Dawnhee Yim's arm and signaled for her silence. She later explained that her caution was prompted by her seeing another person coming along our path. Unable to discern the identity of the person, she was concerned that our conversation about class differences might be overheard. Only a few years later did we fully appreciate her caution. The woman's husband had been a wealthy landowner and a target of persecution when the Communists controlled Twisongdwi. Such experiences may well have encouraged the adoption of more covert forms of domination such as communal work teams, to which the poor contributed more labor than the wealthy and received less than its market value in wages. Norms of reciprocity required the disadvantaged to contribute additional labor, again for less than market value, at major social events such as weddings and sixtieth-birthday celebrations in lieu of giving cash or offering return invitations. And considering length of residence as a basis for social standing also muffled the voices of the least advantaged in village debates, for the overwhelming majority of landless persons had moved into the community within the past few decades (Janelli and Janelli 1982: 17-18).

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The material consequences of these practices and their furtherance of elite interests were not openly recognized, and thus the sum of their effects was misrecognized. The industrialization and urbanization of South Korea, which rapidly accelerated during the 196o's and 197o's; also contributed to a leveling of nonkin hierarchy by draining the countryside of much of its surplus labor and providing new economic opportunities to landpoor peasants (Sorensen 1988). When Dawnhee Yim and I returned to Twisongdwi in 1978 after a four-year absence, we could not help but notice that its dominant lineage had become ostensibly more egalitarian in its treatment of nonkin (Janelli and Janelli 1982: 1820). In 1978 its members even carried the bier at the funeral of an unrelated family-a first in the history of the community according to all accounts-and marriages across former status lines (yangban and non-yangban) no longer evoked opposition. Considerable evidence suggests, therefore, that relationships between villagers who were not each other's kin were becoming seemingly more egalitarian throughout the 195o's, 196o's, and 197o's. It is entirely possible that the egalitarian community ethic that Brandt reported from the 196o's had become prevalent only recently. Though overt control may have declined dramatically after land reform, notions of community egalitarianism can be found in Korean village compacts as early as the sixteenth century (Sakai 1985 ). 13 The Tonghak rebellion in the late nineteenth century had the elimination of class barriers as one of its themes (S. Shin 1978-79: 31-33; Weems 1964: 10-12; Yi Ki-baik 1984: 287; Lew 1990). Cho Dong11 has argued forcefully (1974), though on slender evidence from folk songs and lengthy oral ballads (p'ansori), that commoners in Choson Korea never regarded as legitimate the domination by elites. Others have pointed to counterhegemonic themes in Korea's popular culture. Lee Du-Hyun (1974: rr8; 1975: 38-39) has noted the mocking of elites in masked dance-dramas, Cho Oh-Kon (1988: 312) has seen the same in puppet plays, and Yim Suk-jay (1974: 62-69) has pointed to humorous trickster tales in which servants outwit their masters. Though the origins of these various forms of folklore are obscure, all of the material can be dated at least as far back as 1940, 13 For an examination of village compacts in more recent times, see Dieter £ikemeier (r98o).

REPRESENTATIONS OF KOREAN CULTURE

well before the land reform and the birth of most Taesong managers. Related cultural practices were kept alive in more recent decades, and field-workers continued to collect them throughout the twentieth century. As late as 1975, for example, Griffin Dix observed a local performance of folk drama in which local elites were made the butt of folk humor: In these plays or skits every status was mocked, but the play of the "young men" I observed emphasized the public mockery of elders and high status people. The [published] accounts of the Mountain Spirit offering in Korean do not pay enough attention to status distinction within villages (something it is difficult to know without extended residence in the village). It is difficult to get much evidence on this subject from them.14 Even if in many villages the yangban may have Confucianized and supported the Mountain Spirit offering, the farmers' band and folk theatre after the offering clearly delighted in embarrassing and making demands on the rich and those of high status. Lee Du-hyon, who points out the connections between folk theatre and villagewide rituals, says, "This satire against the yangbans is the central act of the mask play." 15 In Yean village [the site of Dix's fieldwork] in 1975, it included dressing up in a yangban horsehair hat, carrying an umbrella, and pretending to be a doddering rich old man confused about the way to the market. This kind of public mockery is not tolerated at other times. [Dix 1987: ros]

Nevertheless, as Dix observes elsewhere (1977: 463-65), it is possible that more recent events may have encouraged this mockery. By the 196o's, at any rate, elite domination does not appear to have been a doxic experience for those who were subject to it.16 Evidently its arbitrariness had some recognition for several decades. Even in Hahoe Iltong, where large differences in wealth persisted right up until the land reform and where elites had sought to legitimate their domination of nankin servants and tenants by monopolizing land, claiming yangban ancestry, and demonstrating erudition and other Confucian trappings, the politically and economically dis14 An exception noted by·Dix is Kim Taik-Kyoo's study (1964: 241), which related that the yangban of Hahoe did not participate in their village's ceremony for the Mountain Spirit offering. 15 Here Dix refers to Lee Du-Hyun (1974: 114). 16 The concept of doxa was developed by Edmund Husser! (1962: 273-315) and later brought into anthropological discourse by Pierre Bourdieu (1977: 164-71). A doxic experience is one which is unquestioned because it is believed to be natural or inevitable, its arbitrariness unrecognized. Doxie is to be distinguished from orthodox or heterodox, both of which imply "awareness and recognition of the possibility of different or antagonistic beliefs" (Bourdieu 1977: 164).

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advantaged do not seem to have been convinced of this ideology. Hahoe Iltong was also the home of one of Korea's most famous masked dance-dramas that satirized yangban pretensions. Finally, conflict between nonkin in rural villages was expressed more openly than within lineages. On this point the ethnographic record seems compelling. Based on fieldwork conducted in the mid196o's, Brandt (1971: 212) wrote: "My impression as a resident was of conviviality and harmony punctuated by occasional violent outbursts, most of which were quickly and permanently settled." Of those outbursts, he observed: The frequent use of intense oral aggression as an immediate expression of tension and hostility is a significant factor in village life .... There is little restraint once a real quarrel is launched, the principals often continuing to shout at each other until every conceivable grievance and bit of resentment has been dredged up and spewed out. Where serious conflict exists, the process may go on for days; in other cases it will last an hour or two, while work continues uninterrupted [1971: 186]. Anger or disapproval is often expressed at a level of sound and with an apparent intensity of emotion that impresses western observers as the prelude to violence, although violence is rare. [1971: 203]

Other observers (Chun 1984: 48; McCann 1988: 45) have noted similar altercations in rural villages and urban areas as well.

Modern Institutions and Urbanization New employees arrived at Taesong equipped with a cultural knowledge acquired within and without rural communities. Even rural residents had been in local schools, the army, and nearby market towns. Many had left their villages for wage labor or the Japanese military during the colonial period and later returned (Cumings 1981: 28; Janelli and Janelli 1982: 25). More recently, villagers have been increasingly engaged with urban relatives, local officials of the central government, mass media, commercial shops in their communities, and wage labor in factories (Janelli and Janelli 1982: 26-27; Kendall 1985; Sorensen 1988). Taesong workers had more such experiences, however, than did those who remained in the countryside. Even among employees who had spent their youth in rural communities, the overwhelming majority had attended urban universities, and most had probably attended urban high schools as well. 17 Many 17 Few South Korean universities were located outside cities, and nearly all of the universities that office workers acknowledged graduating were urban. We seldom

REPRESENTATIONS OF KOREAN CULTURE

43

others had been born in Seoul, Pusan, or other major urban centers and had never lived in rural villages. Some authors (Foucault 1978; Giddens 1987; Althusser 1971) suggest that urban experiences transform the cultural knowledgeability of workers regarding domination/ 8 legitimation, and conflict by preparing them to acquiesce in and then reproduce domination and to suppress overt conflict in company offices. This interpretation is not entirely adequate in South Korea, however, for extravillage experiences appear to be just as double-edged as those in rural settings. Urban encounters were contradictory in that they prepared men both to assent to and resist company discipline, on the one hand inscribing disciplinary practices of capitalist enterprises and on the other equipping them with knowledge that informed resistance to those very practices. This discussion of modern and urban institutions attempts to expand the existing discourse on relationships between South Korea's culture and its modern enterprises by recognizing that an urban and institutional culture also now belongs to South Korea. The connections between this other culture and office practices were not mentioned in the company's ideology or pursued in detail by academics focusing on the relationship between indigenous culture and modern companies. But the newer culture was represented in the media, in other academic writings, and in conversations of Taesong workers, particularly as they themselves compare company practices to those encountered in the army and, to a much lesser extent, in the schools. This attempt to bring in extravillage experiences is frankly "experimental" in the sense proposed by Marcus and Fisher (r986: 40-44). spoke about high schools, however, perhaps at least partly because of my lack of familiarity with South Korea's secondary school system. I infer a high proportion of attendance at urban high schools because promising students from rural Korea are often sent to attend middle or high school in Seoul and because a disproportionately large number of all high-school graduates in Seoul and Pusan have gone on to attend institutions of higher education (McGinn eta!. 1980: 159-66). In 1970, for example, the high schools of these two cities provided half of all the male entrants to South Korean colleges and universities (Ministry of Education 1970: 288-89). A study of urban migration in South Korea (Koo and Barringer 1977: 52) found also that those reared in rural settings were likely to receive less education than those reared in urban settings. 18 The term knowledgeability is taken from the work of Anthony Giddens (1984). It is intended to emphasize that human beings are not primarily unreflecting creatures whose behavior is determined by culture or social structure. Rather, they are active agents who aim at attaining objectives and who possess and apply a substantial knowledge of how to go about their day-to-day interactions.

44

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The ethnographic literature on rural Korea and my own fieldwork there enable me to present different interpretations of authority and harmony, but resources for accomplishing this with urban culture are more difficult to find. The ethnography of schools, the military, and urban life, especially among the middle classes, has yet to be written, and what does exist on this topic does not lend itself easily to an examination of authority and harmony. And though I have spent several years living in Seoul, I have conducted little fieldwork there. This brief experiment therefore pushes at the boundaries of the knowledge I gained haphazardly while studying and teaching at South Korean universities, participating in academic and professional societies, serving as a military advisor to the South Korean army, and living in a residential section. of Seoul during extended periods of reading and writing. Rather than ignore this important issue altogether, I have tried to outline the major contours of these experiences and generally explore their potential consequences, giving some indication of significant alterations in cultural knowledge. I have tried to keep in mind three considerations: the contrasts between village and modern institutions, what struck me as the most obvious parallels between the modern institutions and Taesong, and the comments of Taesong workers themselves. Schools. School appears to have had a much greater impact on the practices of the company than on those of the village. Unlike villagers, Taesong workers often spoke of their teachers and encounters in school. Alumni groups (ton'gch'anghoe) composed of graduates of the same primary, secondary, and tertiary schools are ubiquitous in cities and occasionally found in rural towns (Rutt 1964: 94), but they have not been reported from villages. Twisongdwi residents, for example, did not maintain ties with former classmates. Schools had a greater impact on Taesong workers partly because they had far more formal education than rural residents. Men who occupied the officers at Taesong headquarters had all graduated fouryear colleges or universities, but surveys of educational levels conducted in villages during the late 1950's and early 196o's revealed that about half of the men had less than a primary-school education (Lee Man-Gap 19.60: 59-63; Kim Taik-Kyoo 1964: 73). Even in the 197o's, high-school graduates were a small minority in Twisongdwi: most middle-aged male villagers had no more than a middle-school education.

REPRESENTATIONS OF KOREAN CULTURE

45

The educational system may have contributed to modern managerial practices in at least three ways, all of which took relationships formerly restricted to kin and extended them to nonkin. Students were accustomed to monologic communication, the notion of moral obligation was stretched beyond the family, and an age-ranking system was instituted that accentuated small differences in age between persons not linked by kinship. 19 Such transformations began at the lower levels of the educational system, but college experiences extended these new understandings to adult relationships. Though monologic communication was also prevalent in primary and secondary education, one section chief pointed out that this form of interaction-"one-way communication" as Taesong workers called it-was not unique to superiors and subordinates in the office but had its parallels in college classroom lectures. Little state financial support for higher education (Bae Chong-Keun, personal communication) has been evident in high student-teacher ratios and large lecture classes, providing few opportunities for undergraduate students to express their opinions. Tests, like company entrance exams, emphasized memorization or problem solving rather than ability to analyze heuristically or formulate an original argument. The educational system, especially the universities, may have also contributed to managerial practices by extending to nonkin the notion of morally obligated repayment, an extension that appears to have been uncommon in rural villages. Specifically, a teacher's control over his or her students was legitimated by moral norms made partly analogous to those obtaining between parents and offspring.20 Students were often said to he indebted to teachers for the benefits (unhye) they bestowed-principally providing advice, imparting knowledge, and developing their students' mental abilities-just as children were indebted to parents. Attempting to take advantage of this new understanding, the state made university teachers responsible for the participation of their own students in antigovernment demonstrations, and individual faculty could sometimes be seen pulling their students from the ranks of campus demonstrators. 19 All of these suggest Japanese contributions to the genealogy of South Korea's educational system, a topic examined by McGinn eta!. (1980: So-85). Bruce Cumings (1984: 478) has also pointed to the similarity of the school uniforms worn by Korean and Japanese middle- and high-school students until well into the 198o's. 20 McGinn eta!. (1980: 223) have already pointed to attempts to inculcate attitudes of submission-by requiring bowing to the teacher, school uniforms, mass calisthenics, and recitation in unison.

46

REPRESENTATIONS OF KOREAN CULTURE

Respect and ethical obligations toward teachers have long been a part of elite Confucian ideology, but direct experience with those notions for most of the population came first through modern schools. Those who attended the older, Confucian-oriented, village schools did not appear to hold teachers in particularly high esteem. A few Twisongdwi villagers who had attended these schools remembered how many sacks of grain were paid for tuition, thus portraying the teacher's services as a commodity. And oral literature about these earlier schools often ridicules the instructors. Many folktales describe students outwitting or foiling the schemes of teachers, who are often portrayed as foolish or lecherous (Choi In-hak 1979: 92, 278-79, 287; Yim 1987: q6, 230-31; 1988: r82, r83). On the other hand, I have not yet encountered folklore poking fun at teachers at modern schools or universities, like that commonly found in American universities (Toelken 1968). Taesong's white-collar workers spoke of their teachers with high regard and affection. I was struck by a comment offered by a group of Taesong workers when I asked them if anyone there ever asked a manager to officiate at a wedding. They said that the common practice was to ask a person of high moral character, such as a minister or a professor, to perform this honor. 21 I once misinterpreted as indicating a lack of direction the vague response of one job applicant to my question about the reason for having chosen a particular major. A Taesong manager who conducted the job interviews with me explained that many students followed the recommendations of their teachers when making such choices. Other Taesong workers who discussed this topic often indicated the heavy weight they had given to a teacher's advice. And one manager told me how it was difficult to refuse the requests of former primaryor high-school teachers, who after retirement visited the office selling encyclopedias or asking for loans. Yet a third practice of the schools that had parallels in the company was a year-of-entry grading system. Those who entered a school in the same year formed an age-set and, in cities at least, maintained personal connections even after graduation. A class-year became a new form of social grouping and a basis for social ties that often lasted far beyond graduation. Members of prior years were called sonbae and those entering in later years called hubae, a practice later 21 Inviting a higher manager to officiate at a wedding is not unheard of in South Korea (Dawnhee Yim, personal communication), but the practice was evidently not common at Taesong.

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47

urged on Taesong men for addressing or referring to co-workers. Evidently the terms themselves as well as their application to capitalist organizations were introduced into Korea from Japan, from where they have also been reported (Rohlen 1974: 122). These age grades could provide social resources for a lifetime, as when politic cal factions formed in recent decades around particular classes of the South Korean Military Academy. I have also seen academic societies rotate their presidencies largely in order of seniority, often calculated according to the year of entry into college. One finds little basis for such fine age grading, however, in rural South Korea. As we have seen, relative age (not year of birth per se) was given more significance among kin than nonkin; but, except between brothers and other close agnates, age was only one of the standards on which status negotiations were based. And as we have also seen, even an age difference of five years was not significant in nonkin relationships. Despite all of the ways education may have inscribed domination and hierarchical practices onto Taesong employees, universities also undermined them. University faculty did not use the rigid ranking system found in Taesong offices-although high-school teachers did, as one Taesong manager observed. Thus, universities offered students a model for modern Korean institutions that was not so hierarchical. Even more importantly, a university experience exposed students to critical views of the chaebol, the political economy, and the international world order. A review of education in South Korea (McGinn et al. 1980: 203) pointed to a "negative association between level of education and support of the present [Park Chung Hee] government." Some of the most outspoken critics of the chaebol, moreover, have been academics (Jones and SaKong 1980: 269); and in the few years prior to my fieldwork at Taesong, university students had gone far beyond their predecessors and teachers, organizing their own study groups of forbidden Marxist texts (Roberts and Chun 1984). Students have also been at the forefront of antigovernment and anti-American demonstrations. Respect for teachers was weakening in the 198o's when teachers were required by the state to examine and report on the political attitudes of their students as well as to discourage them from participating in public demonstrations. In the mid-r98o's, students at one university bowed twice to the faculty, as if they were bowing to the dead, and in November of 1988 students at another captured a few professors and shaved their heads. To represent schools

REPRESENTATIONS OF KOREAN CULTURE

as an ideological state apparatus (Althusser 1971) is at best a partial account of their implications for capitalist industrialization in South Korea. Army. Like school attendance, army service seemed to have had a far greater impact on company practices than it did on village life, though Taesong workers had no more exposure than villagers to the army. Some Twisongdwi residents occasionally spoke of their experiences during military service, but none ever drew parallels between military and village practices. Nor did I ever notice any. Taesong workers, by contrast, often drew analogies between the army and the company (Chapter 7), which seemed entirely appropriate in light of my own experiences with both the American and South Korean armies. Military influence on Taesong's organization was not simply theresult of habits acquired through a few years of military service. Many South Korean as well as foreign observers have noted the pervasiveness of military practices in modern South Korean society, especially in the state's bureaucracy and in business (Jung 1987: 63; Kearney 1991). The term kunsa munhwa (military culture) has been used to designate this phenomenon, and I shall elaborate on it in the remaining chapters. Its main forms were a rigid ranking system and a unified chain of command, but it extended to numerous other practices as well. In drawing analogies between the military and office life, Taesong workers often pointed to the ranking system, which was symbolized in so many ways. Such strict ranking was alien to the village except among close agnates when they participated in rites for the dead, and it was also far less common in modern academic life. Its prevalence in the industrial world may have as much to do with the introduction of Japanese business practices into Korea, especially during the pre- · war era (Moskowitz 1979), as with direct military influences of the colonial and later years.22 Outside the companies and the army, senior 22 The extent to which the South Korean army reproduced Japanese disciplinary techniques and was also transformed by contact with the American military needs further examination. Some managerial concepts and practices developed in the United States Army were adopted by American companies, and these too may have ultimately reached South Korean enterprises through joint ventures or business administration courses in South Korean universities (Lee Hak Chong 1984). Having already become somewhat accustomed to American military and business practices, I was probably more likely to take them for granted and overlook such influences.

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49

persons are generally given the warmest spots in. winter, the most comfortable chairs, the "inner" seats at meals, or front-row seats at academic conferences. But yielding more honored seating positions or granting other favors to juniors is not uncommon. Often a series of offers and refusals occurs in both rural (Osgood 1951: 52) and urban contexts. About a decade ago a popular commercial for easyto-prepare noodles depicted an elder and younger man each asking the other several times to eat first. Other analogies Taesong workers often drew between military and office life centered on the unified chain of command that suppressed even the appearance of either collective decision making or autonomy at lower levels. Unlike the collective decision making evident in lineages, villages, and academic societies, management at chaebol was usually described as "top-down," proceeding from the head of the chaebol to its lower ranks.23 I will try to show in subsequent chapters why this description prevailed. Military service gave Taesong workers the knowledge that strict ranking and a unified chain of command were militaristic, and these workers used that knowledge to interpret company experiences. As we shall see in Chapter 7, encounters with military practices provided them with a countermetaphor for interpreting and critiquing superior-subordinate relations in the office. Whereas the· company claimed that relations between superiors and subordinates were familylike, younger office workers viewed them as militaristic. Thus, even army experiences could foster both subordination and resistance.

Urban life. The impact of urban life on the cultural knowledgeability of Taesong workers was potentially very diffuse, and I shall limit my discussion to some of the major arguments put forward in the academic literature and to comments offered by Taesong employees. My goal here is to demonstrate that cities too are both conducive and antithetical to the control practices encountered in Taesong offices. Urban life may well have accustomed individuals to disciplinary surveillance. As Anthony Giddens (1987: 14) has observed, "The concentration of activities within clearly bounded settings greatly en23 The administration of universities, which was closely regulated by the Ministry of Education, also exhibited such centralized decision making. The liberalization that followed the 1987 demonstrations had a significant effect on the management of these institutions, where faculty councils now have a greater voice.

50

REPRESENTATIONS OF KOREAN CULTURE

larges the degree to which those activities can be 'watched over' and thus controlled by superordinates." Such experiences accustom urban dwellers to the kind-if not the extent (Giddens 1987: 15)-of control pervasive in modern organizations and thus inscribes them with habits of submission (Foucault 1978: 170-77). These insights have considerable validity for South Korean cities, especially Seoul, where state surveillance has been more pervasive than in rural villages. In the 197o's, for example, villagers ignored the midnight to 4 A.M. curfew then in effect to attend ancestor rites or shamanistic rituals at each other's homes. Seoulites, on the other hand, who could not violate the curfew with such impunity, developed the practice of holding ancestor rites earlier in the evening and concluding their other activities for the day in time to be home before the curfew began. Urban dwellers also related stories of persons who were overheard telling an antigovernment joke in a bar and later arrested, stories that would be hard to place in a rural setting with its absence of bars attended by strangers. Throughout the 197o's and 198o's, many middle-class Seoulites lowered their voices to a whisper when expressing antigovernment sentiments, a practice I never observed among villagers. Everyday life in cities may have also accustomed their residents to other capitalist notions, particularly regarding time (E. Thompson 1967: 59) and wage labor (Giddens 1981b: 152-53). The first of these I shall examine in Chapter 7, but the latter deserves a brief comment here. Throughout Korea labor has been bought and sold for decades, but whereas farm work for wages (p'ump'ari) carried a stigma in rural villages, no such stigma attached to office labor in modern large enterprises. Wage labor in rural Korea was more personalized, members of one household working for those of another, and thus acquired a demeaning character. In Twisongdwi, at least, my wife and I detected no such embarrassment attached to working in factories, except perhaps among some men who were reluctant to allow their daughters to spend so much time outside their homes. Finally, urbanization focuses resources on individuals for ideological purposes (Giddens 1987: 16-17), legitimating state control and inducing acceptance of the particular form of industrialization which it promotes. Movie theaters in Seoul, for example, preceded their featured films with state-produced short newsreels slanted toward re- · cent economic and technological achievements. Television news and newspapers (Chapter 2) were also controlled.24 Since few villagers 24 Particularly during the early 198o's, the first few minutes of television news were regularly devoted to the recent activities of the new president, Chun Doo Hwan.

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51

attended movies, most had no electricity until the early 197o's, few had televisions until the late 197o's, and newspapers were not readily available in villages, urban residents had greater exposure to these ideological efforts. Only in more recent years has much of this difference disappeared. Yet, although urbanization accustomed people to surveillance and wage labor, subjected them to greater ideological indoctrination, and fostered attitudes suitable for working in capitalist enterprises, at least an equal number of countereffects can also be advanced. If urban residents became accustomed to greater surveillance by state authorities, they were also given greater freedom by being released from much of the local community surveillance that obtained in villages. Inculcated with commodified notions of time and labor, they would use these notions to protest their long working hours (Chapter 7). And though they were subjected to more indoctrination than their rural counterparts, they also had greater access to information that challenged it. Though newspapers and other media limited their criticisms of the state and underreported student demonstrations, for example, readers often inferred the criticism implied in political cartoons (Far Eastern Economic Review, June 13, 1991, pp. 54-55), exchanged rumors over a wider network, and had other sources of information. The number ·of anti-demonstration police, easily identified by their distinctive armor, stationed in downtown areas where students congregated, gauged the official estimate of the possibility of demonstrations on a particular day. Residents and shopkeepers of neighborhoods located within a mile or two of any of Seoul's universities, as well as passersby, learned to judge the extent of each day's demonstrations by the amount of tear gas that wafted over their homes, irritated their noses and eyes, and caused infants to cry. Urban life presented obstacles to modern managerial practices in yet other ways as well, particularly regarding the complete devotion the owner-managers tried to elicit. Cities facilitated the multiplication of social ties and the maintenance of networks of dyadic relationships rather than the formation of small-scale, closely knit communities composed of multistranded relationships. One even finds institutionalized mechanisms, such as participation in rotating-credit societies and alumni associations, used to maintain such relationships. Thus the conditions of urban life appear to have contributed to the reluctance of many Taesong workers to become engrossed in the company at the expense of other social ties. Lastly, urban life may also have weakened the paternal control

52

REPRESENTATIONS OF KOREAN CULTURE

the owners used as a metaphor for legitimating their control over subordinates, as some Taesong managers themselves observed. Lee Kwang-Kyu (r984: 197) has noted that long working hours remove fathers from their homes and from taking part in the supervision of their children or the financial management of their households, thus altering father-son relationships. A Taesong department head who spent his youth in a rural village pointed to the changing practices of South Korean fathers. Most of his section chiefs regularly took their children on a recreational outing on Sundays, he observed, but he could remember only one such outing with his own father throughout his life. Moreover, urban migration was more commonly undertaken by the young, and thus it removed many adolescent and adult sons from their fathers' immediate control. In pointing to the multi vocal character of village and modern institutional experiences, my goal has not been to demonstrate that culture doesn't matter. It has been to show the inadequacy of cultural determinist perspectives that view modern Korean managerial practices as natural outcomes of ossified cultural ideas and habits that individuals carried with them to the companies. As I shall try to show in subsequent chapters, culture matters a great deal. Understandings derived from precompany experiences comprised major resources and constraints for individuals in the office who sought to impose control or resist it, advance or defend their interests, and reproduce or alter the- conditions of their lives. But first I will attempt to demonstrate the equally multivocal character of the political economy and point to the comparable inadequacies of economic determinism.

TWO

Representations of South Korean Political Economy The facts are not in serious dispute, even if their explanation and interpretation are among the most controversial issues in the field of comparative political economy today. Johnson (r987: r36)

to understandings of how to conduct interpersonal I relations, Taesong workers and managers have also brought to N ADDITION

their enterprise knowledge of a national and international political economy, and this other cultural knowledge too informed their perceptions and choices of action in the workplace. This chapter offers an overview of alternative interpretations of South Korea's political economy, its relationship with the international economy or world system, its connections with nationalist movements, and the conspicuous place occupied by the large conglomerates known as chaebol. This overview aims at the political and economic conditions with which owners and employees contended and at how the middle classes understood those conditions. Later chapters will attempt to show how their understandings affected what transpired within the offices of Taesong during my fieldwork. Any account of the South Korean political economy, like any account of South Korean culture, is incomplete. Several competing interpretations of it have already been offered, each based on data chosen from a very broad array of alleged facts and theoretical assumptions that cannot be proved or disproved (Gilpin 1987: 26; Kuznets 1988: 125). The political economy has been the subject of a particularly complex, voluminous, and theoretically contentious literature in recent years. Well represented in this corpus of writings are

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SOUTH KOREAN POLITICAL ECONOMY

neoclassical, statist, and world-system theories, the three major intellectual currents of political economy, in several permutations and combinations. 1 Though consensus exists on the growth of the overall South Korean economy over the past two and a half decadesindeed, the South Korean government's figures for Gross National Product, manufacturing, and exports are not seriously contestedit does not exist on the role of market mechanisms, the nature and consequences of state intervention in the economy, the vulnerabilities and constraints imposed on South Korea by its position in the world system, the equity of income distribution, and a multitude of other issues. Rather than try to advocate one of the existing positions or resolve the debates, I treat each of the major paradigms as capable of yielding what James Clifford (1986) calls "partial truths" and use all three for illuminating different facets of the political economy. More than academic interpretations are involved in this debate, for perceptions of the economy, of national interests, and of the chaebol inform the reproduction or alteration of these phenomena. As Anthony Giddens (1984: xxxii-xxxv) has observed, one of the major differences between natural- and social-science theories is that the latter alter the subjects of their investigation by transforming the knowledge that informs their actions. In a similar vein, Robert Gilpin (1987: 26) and Gill and Law (1988: xvii) have noted that theories of political economy do more than account for reality, they also prescribe courses of action. To borrow Clifford Geertz's (1973: 93) felicitous phrase, such theories are models for, as well as models of, reality. The link between theoretical interpretation and pragmatic action has been particularly intimate in the political economy. Major positions in the academic debates have been reported in the media and followed by the public, particularly by the middle classes, informing their understanding of their present, past, and future, their evalua1 For somewhat different versions of the major theoretical models of political economy see Gilpin (1987) and Gill and Law (1988). The division used here follows that of Haggard and Moon (1983) and seems to account best for the literature on South Korea. I have given scant attention to more conventional Marxist theories (e.g., Hamilton 1986) because I found little serious consideration of them by the middle classes, mass media, or white-collar workers at Taesong. Some of South Korea's university students, however, have been reading Marxist works for several years, and such theories appeared in the minjung-movement literature and even among Catholic circles. After the liberalization of the press in 1988, these ideas were discussed even more openly in newspapers and minjung publications.

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55

tions of state policies, their formulation of business strategies, and, especially in 1987, their participation in street demonstrations. Domestic and foreign competition, state actions, South Korea's relations with its principal trading partners, the role of the chaebol in economic development, and what should be done by or to these large business groups have long been frequent topics of newspaper editorials, televised news reports, and daily conversations. As a result, many of the issues in the academic debates are part of the modern culture. Political officeholders, bureaucrats, dissident politicians, clergy, labor organizers, student leaders, newspaper editorialists, novelists, poets, and many others, including the chaebol owners (Chapter 3) and their white-collar employees (Chapter 6) have participated in these discussions. What many people elsewhere in the world would regard as arcane academic theories have become explicit rhetorical devices in contests for power and legitimacy and, ultimately, the reproduction of the state and the chaebol. These interpretations of the political economy have been based on theories that advance cause-and-effect relationships, and on equally subjective though culturally informed understandings of South Korea's national interests. Here too, opinions differed widely. Whether economic growth should supersede equitable distribution, whether the middle class or the laboring class is the core of society, whether the dangers outweigh the benefits of the chaebol, and whether particular nations (especially the United States) are allies or enemies are the major points of contention. Hence, I have also tried to survey the most salient themes and issues that make up modern South Korean thought on nationalism and the chaebol.

The Political Economy Debates South Korea's economy as measured either in terms of Gross National Product or Gross Domestic Product is estimated to have grown at an average of about ro percent annually since the early 196o's, even after discounting the effects of inflation. Key components of this expansion have been manufacturing and exports, which have grown even more rapidly (see Table r). Viewed from another angle, the transformation of South Korea from agriculture to manufacturing can be seen in the changing composition of its Gross Domestic Product. Between 1965 and 1988, manufacturing jumped from r8 to 32 percent while agriculture declined from 38 to I I percent (World Bank 1990: r83), even while agricultural production was increasing at an aver-

SOUTH KOREAN POLITICAL ECONOMY TABLE I

Average Annual Growth Rates, r96s-88 (in constant dollars) r965-8o (%)

Gross Domestic Product Agriculture Manufacturing Exports

9.6 3.0 18.7 27.2

r98o-88 (%)

9.9

3.7 13.5 14.7

9.7 3.2 16.9 22.7

SOURCE: Computed from World Bank (1990: r8r, 205)

age of about 3 percent annually in real terms (Kuznets 1977: 132; Ban, Moon, and Perkins 1982; Sorensen 1988; National Bureau of Statistics 1989: 465). The partiality of these measurements has received almost no attention, but a significant growth of the total economy, primarily through exports and manufacturing, is not imaginary. 2 The proliferation of private automobiles, greater conveniences in daily life, decline in unemployment, shortage of labor in rural communities, multiplication of large factories, and the popularity of South Korean footwear, appliances, and other products in American markets tell a similar story. Such rapid and sustained economic growth has elicited intense curiosity because it appears to be exceptional in recent world history and was so unexpected. In the late 1950's and early 196o's, South Korea's economic prospects looked so dim to foreign observers that the country was called an economic "basket case." Besides feeling the destruction wrought by the Korean War, South Korea resembled many other Third World nations. It was hindered by a post-colonial society, a primarily rural population engaged in agriculture, a high population density, a prevalence of nonarable land, and a paucity of 2 Gross National Product includes only goods and services exchanged between businesses or households, thereby excluding the value of domestic labor. The Korea Economic Research Institute, associated with the Federation of Korean Industries, estimated that inclusion of South. Korea's underground economy would add about another 30 percent to its Gross National Product (Korea Herald, Apr. 22, 1987, p. 6). And one could also point to the escalation of figures for exports, which are included in Gross National Product, by transferring title to unsold (to the public) goods from a domestic to a foreign company of the same chaebol. For an acknowledgement by economists of the partiality of Gross National Product, see Samuelson and Nordhaus

(1985: 4-5, II7-19).

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mineral resources. Even Korean culture, and specifically its Confucianism, was often cited as an obstacle to economic growth on the grounds that it emphasized abstract rather than practical learning and disparaged commercial activity. By the mid-197o's, however, the former basket case was hailed as an economic "miracle" (The Times [London], July 14,1975, p. 12).3 By the time I conducted my fieldwork in 1986-87, the growth of the Gross National Product had become · the envy of the world, and Confucianism was popularly praised for helping to produce an educated and "disciplined" work force.

Markets. One approach to understanding the political economy looks to the operation of markets as the main cause of South Korea's economic expansion. Relying on conventional or "neoclassical" economic theory, this approach regards market mechanisms as the most efficient and powerful means of allocating resources for maximizing production. Interpreters of this persuasion point to the more effective penetration of domestic and international markets since the early 196o's as the principal reason for the increase in South Korea's economic growth. International markets are deemed particularly important because they appear to offer evidence of the theory of comparative advantage, which prescribes that a nation can maximize its wealth not through international autonomy or state intervention but by producing those goods and services best suited to its own factor endowments, then trading all or a portion of that output for other needed goods and services better suited to nations with a different mix of resources. South Korea's chief comparative advantage until the latter 197o's is thought have been low-cost labor. This perspective, like other kinds of rational choice theory, appears to have the theoretical virtue of acknowledging the role of social action. In a perfect market choices made by consumers and producers are constrained and enabled by the current structure of prices and resource allocations (Gill and Law 1988: 42), though their collective choices may change prices and reallocate resources (Gilpin 1987: 29). When consumers shift their preferences, for example, producers attempt to move into more profitable product lines and the structure of prices and available goods shifts. Yet, as I shall try to show, both this and other forms of rational choice theory define an "economic rationality" that allows for calculation but leaves little room for choice, 3

I am grateful to Igor Kopytoff for first bringing the Times article to my attention.

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particularly when alternative representatives of the political economy are possible and when the choices involve trade-offs between various interests which individuals have reason to pursue. The first of these conditions I take up here, and the second I address in the Conclusions. A major part of the market-oriented theory's limitations stems from its exclusion of the p~litical dimensions of economic actions. For South Korea, in particular, at least five major political considerations seem especially relevant. First, by urging that each nation specialize and trade, neoclassical theory fosters an international interdependency that leaves a society vulnerable to the foreign suppliers of its essential goods and to the principal foreign consumers of its output. Second, it argues that wage increases for blue-collar workers would erode the comparative advantage in labor costs and thereby reduce export production and harm the "national welfare." Third, it generally argues that state intervention in economic affairs can be justified only if it fosters the functioning of markets (World Bank r987b: 85; Gill and Law 1988: 43-44), perhaps by increasing the number of buyers and sellers, disseminating information, reducing the risk of noneconomic origins (e.g., policy shifts), or providing or adding incentives for infrastructural "public goods" that benefit the whole society but not any individual, household, or firm enough to motivate private production of these goods. For states to go beyond market-promotion measures is seen as a substitution of less efficient bureaucratic judgment for market mechanisms.4 Fourth, this economistic position offers but a partial view of how economic choices are actually made. It cannot deal, for example, with nationalism, which has prompted many South Koreans (and Americans) to prefer protective tariffs and trade barriers and thereby to pay higher prices for some items because they perceive such actions as favorable to their nation's and thus their own long-term interests. And finally, by taking as its main model a market in which the number of buyers and sellers is large enough so that none of them can control it (a carryover from the days in which Adam Smith and David Ricardo initially formulated neoclassical economics), it gives inadequate attention to power 4 Some state actions, however can be represented as either market-interfering or market-supporting. The South Korean state's guaranteeing of international loans for selected private enterprises, for example, has been alternatively described as having both effects in international credit markets.

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imbalances in economic transactions, such as those that result from monopoly and oligopoly. Despite its limitations, however, a market-oriented interpretation does provide some understanding of South Korea's economic growth, for prices do affect choices. According to this view, the economic "miracle" began in the early 196o's, shortly after Park Chung Hee gained control of the government in a military coup d'etat and instituted a set of economic policies that removed many of the marketdistorting restrictions of previous regimes. Promoting import substitution, a principal policy of the Syngman Rhee administration, for example, had obstructed international market mechanisms by maintaining artificially low interest and exchange rates. These "distorted" prices had encouraged entrepreneurs to seek profits not by increasing production but rather by acquiring, via contributions to political parties and personal connections, state-controlled access to foreign exchange at the official rate, using it to acquire imports and then selling the imported goods in the domestic market (Kuznets 1977: 48). After the early 196o's, however, the South Korean state is described as having "gotten the financial prices right," or at least as establishing more "realistic" exchange and interest rates (Cole and Park 1983: 8; Krueger 1985: 193; Kim Kwang Suk 1985: 59-62; Kuznets 1977: 193 ), thereby facilitating the operation of market mechanisms and the pursuit of profits through productive activities rather than by paying for political favors. Park Chung Hee and his economic technocrats are also credited with removing a number of other hindrances to the operation of free markets while providing public goods to foster market operation. Specific measures included promoting exports through various economic incentives, encouraging those manufacturing industries that would allow South Korean enterprises to take advantage of their low-cost labor through international trade, and opening access to international credit markets by guaranteeing loans for major enterprises (Lim Youngil 1981: 87 ), thereby fostering participation in international financial as well as commodity markets. This neoclassical interpretation provides the main theoretical basis of several studies of the political economy (World Bank 1987a, 1987b; Kim Kwang Suk 1985; Krause and Kim 1991) and appears to remain the most influential paradigm in the various interpretations advanced by economists. All of these studies recognize that the state did intervene in the economy rather than leave it entirely to the buffeting of

6o

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market forces. What distinguishes this school from the more stateoriented theorists I will review is either less attention to these state actions or a reluctance to acknowledge that market-distorting and coercive measures employed by the state significantly aided economic growth. A World Bank (r987a: xiv) report, for example, pointed out that although there had been "lapses," the state had "tried as much as possible not to move contrary to market signals." Identifying as one of those lapses the state-supported development of heavy and chemical industries in the 197o's, which had evidently been motivated more by military and political considerations than those of comparative advantage (Cumings 1987: 75), the report observed: "Much of the investment in HCI [heavy and chemical industries] which was carried out under government direction and inducement resulted in idle capacities" (World Bank r987a: 93). During 1986-87, when my fieldwork was conducted at Taesong, newspapers almost daily expressed the view that world markets were generally favorable to the continued growth of the Gross National Product, at least in the short term. The main reasons cited for this optimism were "three lows" (sam cho): low interest rates, low oil prices, and the low value of the won. Low interest rates were advantageous because much industrialization had been financed with borrowed funds, and the resulting foreign debt reportedly equaled half the amount of the Gross National Product (World Bank 1988: 4). Low oil prices benefitted the economy because South Korea imported all of its oil. And the low value of the won made its goods cheaper in Japan and cheaper than Japanese goods in the United States and other foreign markets. This gave producers an added advantage, as exports were increasing and the balance of trade improving. 5 Many Japanese companies were reportedly beginning to shift more of their buying to South Korea, though it continued to suffer a major trade deficit with Japan. Overall, however, the international markets were favorable enough to bring about a substantial improvement in the balance of trade. Statistics published by the government portray the balance as moving from a deficit of $r.4 billion in 1984 to a surplus of $6.3 billion in 1987 (Economic Planning Board 1988: 205). 5 Between 1984 and 1987, the exchange rate of the won against the yen decreased by about half (Far Eastern Economic Review, Oct. n, 1990, p. 72) because of readjustments between the major currencies of the world, especially the Japanese yen and the dollar. The Bank of Korea kept the exchange value of the won tied closely to that of the dollar. ·

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Yet, the long-term prospects viewed from a market-oriented perspective were not entirely sanguine during 1986-87. For several years it had been widely acknowledged that the relative advantages of South Korea's factor endowments were shifting. Rising domestic wages and the increasing participation of China and other less developed nations in international markets were undercutting South Korea's "comparative advantage" in low labor costs (World Bank 1987a: 12). Exports were moving from relatively laborintensive industries, such as textiles, toward more capital-intensive or technology-intensive exports, such as automobiles and electronics. Continuing exports in the latter industries, however, required being near the forefront of technology, which was yet relatively undeveloped. Thus, South Korea was seen caught in a squeeze between rising labor costs and obsolescent technology. Complaints about the reluctance of Japan and the United States to impart technology became more frequent, and various state officials announced measures· to promote applied scientific research.

The state. An alternative interpretation of the economic "miracle" attributes less significance to the automatic operation of markets and looks instead to the state as an actor with enough autonomy and capacity to do far more than disrupt markets (Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol 1985 ). This perspective tends to be agency-centered with regard to the state and yet structuralist when viewing individuals. No state is completely autonomous from (or unconstrained by) its civil society, however, nor are individuals left entirely without choices when confronted with state directives. The state's choices and actions are themselves contingent outcomes produced by contending individuals and their political factions. South Korea's industrial magnates have been able to resist or evade state directives in some measure, and the middle classes were not without their own forms of resistance. Massive street demonstrations in the summer of 1987 were perhaps the most dramatic evidence of the vulnerability of the state because they brought about some measure of political liberalization, even if its extent is still contested (Cumings 1989). Other forms of resistance included tax evasion, political cartoons, open criticisms of lesser state officials, whispered antigovernment sentiments, jokes, and foot dragging in response to state directives. Many academics, for example, made less than wholehearted efforts to discourage their students from participating in demonstrations, and others sacrificed

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their academic positions or suffered imprisonment rather than comply with regulations. The majority of those who adopt a statist perspective argue that state control can have positive effects on economic development (Rueschemeyer and Evans 1985). The authors of such studies on South Korea include some of the principal economic technocrats who staffed the state bureaucracy and were responsible for implementing its intervention in the economy (e.g., Jones and SaKong 1980: esp. 120-40), and their acknowledgment and firsthand accounts of the state's coercive measures are telling. Scholars without such bureaucratic ties, however, have also adopted this approach. Stephan Haggard and Chung-in Moon, for example, contend that the strong South Korean state and its control over economic resources were prerequisites for export-led growth (Haggard and Moon 1983). They (1983: 151-52) give particular attention to the state's control over the domestic financial system and its preventing multinational firms from causing the harmful effects seen in Latin America (Evans 1987: 216). Richard Luedde-Neurath (1986) argues that the state's simultaneous pursuit of market-frustrating import substitution and protectionism, as well as export promotion, played an important and constructive role in economic development. Chalmers Johnson (1987), seeking to extend his analysis of Japan's economic miracle (1982) to South Korea, points to industrial policy and state "authoritarianism," largely learned from Japan, as major reasons for economic success. Howard Pack and Larry Westphal (1986) fault most neoclassical approaches for failing to recognize the importance of strategic intervention in infant industries as a means of promoting technology and thereby contributing to economic growth. And more recently, Alice Amsden (1989) has taken issue with those who have portrayed state actions as market-conforming and has argued that the coercive implementation of market-frustrating measures, or "getting the prices wrong," was a main reason for South Korea's economic growth. Not all those who highlight state control of the economy laud its policies. Many have argued that Park Chung Hee's main motive for promoting economic development was bolstering the legitimacy of his regime (Koo Hagen 1987: 168; Lim Hyun-Chin 1985: 72-73), and several have attributed harmful political and economic consequences to coercive state actions (Kim Dae Jung 1985; Im Hyug Baeg 1987; Choi Jang Jip 1989 ). Unlike the neoclassical critiques of state inter-

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vention that assume that interfering with market mechanisms causes inefficiencies, statist critiques focus more on questions of political exclusion and favoritism in the distribution of economic benefits. The most common of these point to the economic concentration that resulted from supporting the larger enterprises, the repression of bluecollar workers in order to maintain an advantage in labor costs, the inequity of distribution across regions as well as classes, a disparity between rural and urban opportunities, and the massive foreign indebtedness caused by the state's policy of relying on external capital to finance industrial expansion. Because control extended far beyond the kinds of fiscal and monetary measures by which economists customarily gauge intervention, the extent of the state's involvement in the economy is difficult to assess quantitatively by conventional methods (Kuznets 1985: 45 ). Yet a general consensus appears to prevail among theorists of all persuasions that the most important mechanism was the state's management of the financial system. By controlling domestic banks and acting as guarantor of international loans, the state was able to direct lowinterest policy loans to favored industries, companies, or individual entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs acquiescing to state directives were able to obtain financing at interest rates so lucrative that throughout most of the 197o's they were allegedly lower than the rate of inflation (World Bank 1987a: 39).6 Some of these loans financed productive plant and equipment while others provided short-term working capital. To promote exports, for example, a business that received a letter of credit from a foreign customer could obtain a loan equal to about three-quarters of the selling price of the goods (Koo Bon Ho 1988: 82). Generally, state officials chose to have banks extend the largest loans to the largest firms or those with an already established "track record" of success (Jones and SaKong 1980: 305). This choice had a number of structural consequences. First, large conglomerates grew even faster than the general economy, and industrial concentration increased. Second, the largest enterprises became highly indebted. Third, chaebol became involved in many unrelated industries, having entered those that were government-supported rather than those in 6 I am wary of taking quantitative data on interest rates at face value. Borrowers were often required to keep countervailing balances at the lending institution, effectively reducing the amount of the funds loaned and increasing the rate of interest.

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which they could extend their prior experience or expertise (Jung 1987). Though preferential credit benefited large firms, it also intensified the extent of state control over their operations (Jones and SaKong 1980; Woo 1991). Many of the bank loans were short-term and staggered, thereby requiring constant renewal and bringing these enterprises even more tightly under government restraints. After the Kukje chaebol, reportedly South Korea's tenth (Fortune, Aug. 20, 1984, p. 206) or sixth (Far Eastern Economic Review, Mar. 1, 1990, p. 47) largest group, collapsed in 1985, for example, it was widely rumored that the state had caused its failure by ordering banks to terminate its credit, an interpretation of events advanced by the head of the chaebol himself. In the spring of 1988, after Chun Doo Hwan had left office and the press became more liberalized, the former head of the Kukje conglomerate filed suit in a civil court to recover his group's flagship company (Korea Herald, Apr. 3, 1988, p. 1). Four months later, a front-page advertisement in several of Seoul's major newspapers, signed by the Committee for the Restoration of the Kukje Group, made the same claim. Another consequence of the state's tight control of the banking system was the growth of a large underground or "curb market" for funds (Yi Changnyol 1965). Interest rates there fluctuated around 3·5 percent a month (Cole and Park 1983: 130), or so percent a year, compounded; but many smaller firms had no other source of credit because the largest firms monopolized the loans available through the official money market. Moreover, the low rates at which chaebol could obtain funds induced their owners to borrow as much as possible through official sources and invest idle cash in curb-market lending or real estate (Cole and Park 1983: 188). Thus, media disclosures that chaebol were investing in real estate or credit financing, though unobjectionable practices in many other capitalist economies, evoked condemnation for having taken improper advantage of the favors granted by the state.7 Besides controlling interest rates and credit, the state intervened in the economy by creating cartels, regulating exchange rates, controlling prices, licensing businesses to engage in particular industries, restricting imports, forcing mergers and acquisitions (the component companies of the Kukje Group were given, evidently at no cost, to 7 The chaebol also used the curb market as an alternative source of funds (Cole and Park 1983: 160).

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other conglomerates), bestowing tax exemptions or threatening tax audits, granting high "wastage allowances" that permitted exporters to import raw materials tax-free in quantities greater than what was needed for production and then sell the surplus in the domestic market, and hindering effective employee unions in order again to maintain a comparative advantage in low-cost labor. The pervasiveness of this state control was particularly evident to Taesong workers (Chapter 6), who had to deal with it daily. Often the control extended far beyond simply altering the rewards and punishments for a category of actions. In its most coercive form, it consisted of commanding the chairman of a major chaebol. These "command" procedures, as well as more subtle forms of pressure, are described in general terms by Jones and SaKong (1980) and reported anecdotally in the press. Even more details of forced mergers and acquisitions were revealed as a result of the liberalization of the media and a coalition of opposition parties gaining control of the National Assembly in 1988 and 1989. The state's capacity for intervention extended beyond the business community and into university education, the persecution of political dissidents, and the control of the media. The latter is particularly informative because it shows how the state was attempting to shape public perceptions of its economic policies, especially with regard to international trade. Its daily "guidelines" were not revealed to the public until September of 1986, when the dissident magazine Mal printed excerpts. How these regulations were enforced remains a matter of some contention, but those who exposed them were prosecuted for revealing national secrets. I have translated a few of the excerpts below, including some that deal with the United States. They provide a revealing glimpse of how the state intervened in the media not so much by forbidding news but by limiting the size and placement of stories, regulating the wording of headlines, and shaping the . general slant of reports, all to make its economic policy choices more palatable. The guidelines also suggest how the state sought to shape perceptions of its own role in the international political economy, defending itself from the claim that it was bowing to American pressure. My translations attempt to reproduce the abbreviated style, short sentences, and simple grammatical construction of the originals. November 4, 1985. University students occupation of the American Chamber of Commerce office in the Choson Hotel. At r:o8 P.M. all were taken into custody by police; r. Do not make this the top story on the social page.

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Do not use a photo. 3· Do not write in the heading [that the demonstrating students] belong to the Seoul National University Committee for the Struggle for National Independence and Protection. 2.

November 7,1985. At the Ministry of Finance, the Monopoly Office's change to a publicly owned corporation [i.e., a distancing from the state]. Make absolutely clear the point that [this action] "is not due to American pressure to open cigarette imports." December 23, 1985. It is desired that the UPI story "Possibility of Economic Downturn in Korea during 1986" not be carried. December 24, 1985. Do not relay the story about President Chun which appeared in the December 23 edition of the Asian Wall Street Journal, published in Hong Kong. January 9, 1986. Relating to U.S. sanctions on Libya: I. It is best not to report just the American perspective but to report carefully the extent of our construction companies' advance [into that market] from the perspective of our national interests (kugik). 2. Do not report the movement of on-site Korean construction companies in Libya and related matters after the [imposition of] American sanctions. July 22,1986. On the overall settlement of the Korean-American trade negotiations: I. Use "Overall Settlement of Trade Problems" for the main heading. 2. The various responsive measures announced by government offices concerned with intellectual property rights, cigarettes, insurance, etc. are to be reported in detail as "complementary measures." 3. The opposition party, nongovernment, and various interest groups' criticisms are to be reported [only] briefly. 4- Even though foreign news agencies report "Bowing to American Pressure" etc., the story is to be reported under the headline of "Our Side's Voluntary Response." 5. Even though some news commentaries went out as "Retreat from Original Position on Copyrights," change that to "Government's Countermeasures."

Even this brief glance at the state's intervention in the media indicates how it attempted to present itself as promoting the national welfare rather than as subordinate to American interests. The regulations are ' evidence that many people viewed the state as dependent, too subservient to the United States, and not adequately protecting the nation's own economic interests against American trade pressure. The International Order

Some approaches to the political economy, particularly those informed by dependency and world-system theories (Cho S.K. 1985; Lim Hyun-Chin 1985; Cumings 1987; Koo Hagen 1987; Kim Kyong-

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Dong I987; Woo I99I), seek to understand how South Korea's economic growth was constrained and enabled by the international systems in which it occurred. Proponents of this approach emphasize that external conditions guided the choices of individuals, firms, and especially the state. While recognizing the state's coercive control over the domestic economy, they highlight the roles of Japan and the United States in furthering that state's domestic autonomy and capacity and in altering the conditions under which its officials made their choices. Generally they are critical of both the international system and the South Korean state. Their perspective has informed many of the arguments advanced by dissident political groups. Because they emphasize structural constraints imposed by an international order, dependency and world-system theorists have been criticized for adopting too deterministic a view of human action (Im Hyug Baeg I987: 233; Gill and Law I988: 62, 75). Indeed, their writings emphasize how the inequalities of international trade and power constrain choices, especially by the less powerful and poorer nations (Wallerstein I979: 6I). Moreover, their focus on classes, states, nations, large multinational corporations, and political parties as the components of these systems obscures the agency of individuals, households, and smaller firms that occupy a central place in market-oriented economics. Most individuals look powerless and their choices inconsequential when viewed in light of a world system because they are constrained increasingly by local, national, and international structures (Giddens I984: I7I). Nevertheless, a worldsystem perspective need not surrender to determinism if it recognizes that the larger structures present additional choices as well as constraints and that all of the collective actors involved are themselves ultimately composed, reproduced, and altered by individuals who make choices (Callinicos I988: I34-35). Moreover, Japan's and South Korea's dramatic rise in the international hierarchy over the past few decades offers persuasive testimony to the malleable___:but not epiphenomenal-quality of the world system. Examinations of the international order from which economic growth and the chaebol emerged have focused not on the European capitalist expansion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but rather on the more recent eras of Japanese and American hegemony in East Asia. World-system advocates, however, vary in the degree of continuity they find between the Japanese colonial period and the post-I96I era. American analysts have generally given greater atten-

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tion to the prewar period than South Korean researchers. The account that follows attempts to consider both views.

The Japanese colonial system. By establishing a "protectorate" over Korea in 1905 and formally annexing it in 1910, the Japanese state played a major role in mediating Korea's increasing involvement with the capitalist world system prior to 194 5. Accounts of how Japan's own place in this international system prodded its colonization of Korea can be found elsewhere (Myers and Peattie 1984: esp. 6r-r7r; Cumings 1987), and I will focus here ori assessing how Japan's actions affected Korea's domestic political economy and position in the world order during the colonial period. Perhaps the most significant effect of Japanese colonization was the creation of a state apparatus in Korea that was far more powerful and centralized than the Choson dynasty (Palais 1975; Cumings 1984; Woo 1991). Japanese state officials used techniques of political and economic control developed during their own Meiji era, and they had also learned from the practices and mistakes of colonial governments elsewhere in the world. Unlike those of European powers, Japan's colonies were close to home, and, particularly in the case of Korea, its colonial officials shared far greater cultural, linguistic, and even physical similarities with their colonial subjects, thereby enhancing their powers of surveillance. Appointment of career military officers to head the colonial bureaucracy, as well as Japan's own militaristic character during the prewar era, further strengthened the state's coercive force. Largely autonomous from the local population, the powerful colonial apparatus used its techniques of control and surveillance to suppress independence and nationalist movements (Robinson 1984) and to direct a good deal of the Korean economy. Though interest in the economy of Korea had largely been motivated at first by a perception that the peninsula was a source of rice imports and a market for light manufactured goods (Duus 1984), Japanese state policies shifted during the 1930's toward promoting industrial production in Korea and Manchuria while Japan itself moved on to a more advanced stage of industrialization (Mizoguchi and Yamamoto 1984; Jones and SaKong 1980: 24-27).8 This strategy required more than equipping 8 This shift away from agricultural development has been attributed to both the difficulties of expanding rice production in Korea itself (Moskowitz 1974; Cumings 1987: 56) and to protests by Japanese farmers that rice imports from Korea were undercutting their prices (Myers and Yamada 1984: 437).

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Korea with a transportation infrastructure for extracting agricultural surplus and distributing manufactured goods to local markets. It necessitated building factories, installing machinery, and constructing hydroelectric generators (Kuznets 1977: 17-23). The transfer of light manufacturing to Korea integrated the colony even more tightly into the Japanese empire, for its industrial development became oriented toward the needs of the empire rather than its own markets. Korea thus occupied a particular niche within the empire's own regional subsystem of the world economy, a subsystem the Japanese termed the Great East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere. One of the colonial government's principal strategies for Korea's industrialization was to offer financing to private firms willing and able to implement its plans rather than to establish governmentowned enterprises. Though a few industrialists were able to take advantage of these incentives, most of the recipients were Japanese enterprises, and the overwhelming majority of industrial corporations were Japanese-owned (Grajdanzev 1944: 171-77). The largest of them were branches of zaibatsu, the large conglomerates headquartered in Japan, and one can find many similarities between the organization and practices of these prewar Japanese business groups and those of the modern South Korean conglomerates Qones and SaKong 1980: 259-60; Hattori 1989 ). Indeed, the word chaebol is the Korean pronunciation of the Chinese characters used by the Japanese to write the word zaibatsu. The Korean industrialists who took up the colonial government's offer presented their activities to their contemporaries not as a service to Japanese imperialism but as nationalistic endeavors aimed at building up industry to protect the country from Japanese imports and prepare it for eventual independence (Wells 1985; Robinson 1988: 92100). One finds here a portion of the genealogy of a nationalist theme pervasive among South Korean chaebol today (Chapter 3), however dubious it may be. When the colonial period ended, many Koreans demanded the punishment of these entrepreneurs for collaboration, and the close cooperation between the Korean industrialists and colonial authorities behind these accusations has recently been documented by Carter Eckert (1986) and Dennis McNamara (1988, 1989, 1990). Today, local acquiescence to Japanese rule, whether in business or other circles, remains a painful subject in South Korea. South Korean historians who study this period prefer to focus on independence movements (Han'guksa yon'guhoe 1981: 483-524).

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From the centralized, militaristic, interventionist, and industrypromoting Japanese state officials, Koreans learned the practices of close business-government cooperation in which the government was clearly in the senior position (Johnson 1987). Koreans employed in Japanese companies and banks acquired many of the office procedures, production methods, management techniques, and even capitalist vocabulary of prewar Japan (Moskowitz 1979; Jones and SaKong 1980: 29-30). Even emphasizing the idea that capitalist companies promote national interests (Chapter 4) was likely prompted by familiarity with Japanese practices. A similar ideology had prevailed during the initial states of industrialization there (Yoshino 1968: 57-59).

The postwar system. Strong state control over the economy, statefinanced industry, a military-style government, close trading links with Japan, and many other features of the South Korean political economy that originated in the colonial period persisted in the postwar era, though not out of sheer structural inertia. The colonial empire in which Korea was enmeshed collapsed with the defeat of Japan in 1945, but just as it was released from that structure it was ensnared in another: the political and economic divisions of the Cold War era. American military occupation (1945-48) has been the subject of a comprehensive and detailed scrutiny by Bruce Cumings (1981), and my account of these years is drawn largely from his and Gregory Henderson's (1991) recently published account. The entry of American troops south of the 38th parallel on September 8, 1945, ostensibly to accept the surrender of Japanese soldiers stationed there, was prompted partly by the American fears of Soviet control over East Asia that had evidently emerged as early as 1943, and this concern with Soviet expansion shaped many of the American military's actions. Apprehensions about Communist influence, for example, led the American forces to deny the legitimacy of indigenous political groups and to establish their own military government. In the weeks between the Japanese surrender and the Americans' arrival, a new government had hastily been form~d in Seoul by several prominent Koreans, and individuals of varying political persuasions (except the most notorious collaborators) were simultaneously organizing local citizens' committees in the countryside. But in lieu of working with these groups, the American occupying forces established their own government bureaucracy and offered employment

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opportunities to many conservatives, anticommunists, and former employees of the Japanese state. The nearly wholesale absorption of Korean police and army officers who had served the Japanese colonial regime, coupled with American support for Syngman Rhee, whose indigenous alliances were predominantly with conservative landlords, also helped to ensure a continuity of leading Korean personnel of the pre- and post-liberation periods (e.g., Moskowitz 1979). Even the land reform initiated by the American military government and later urged on Rhee's government by U.S. officials appears to have unintentionally reinforced the state by weakening the wealthy landlord class that might otherwise have organized to oppose its power (Koo Hagen 1987: 170-71). The political and economic consequences of American military rule went well beyond merely reproducing or strengthening features of the Japanese colonial state. It also divided the nation atthe 38th parallel into two hostile domains, one aligned with communism and the other with the United States. This division not only disrupted whatever industrial linkages the southern portion had with the northern but also resulted in a war (1950-53) that destroyed many of the industrial facilities left behind by the Japanese. And because the United States continued to be concerned primarily with the geopolitical rather than economic potential of South Korea throughout the 1950's, American attention focused on strengthening South Korean military forces, and thereby helped to bring about the military dominance of South Korean society. Major General Park Chung Hee's coup d'etat in 1961 marked the return, not the beginning, of military rule in South Korea. Yet because American interest remained strategic rather than economic, the 1950's appear to have afforqed the South Korean state relative freedom from American economic pressure (Cumings 1987: 68; Haggard and Cheng 1987: 128). During this period the United States tolerated the state's efforts to balance its international trade through import substitution, a policy designed to reduce its reliance on imports. To maintain the viability of the new state after the Korean War, the American government also provided massive economic and military aid. From 1953 to 1962 aid from the United States financed nearly 69 percent of South Korea's total imports (Mason et al. 1980: 185), and the economy is estimated to have grown at an average rate of about 4 percent a year (Kuznets 1977: 44). The choice of new directions in economic policy made by Park

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Chung Hee after he came to power in 1961 was also affected by international power relations. American officials had indicated their intention to reduce significantly the level of aid and to eliminate it entirely unless Park acquiesced to a number of economic demands. The Agency for International Development and the World Bank are said to have played leading roles in prompting the shift to an exportorientedeconomy (Mason et al. 1980: 47; Koo Hagen1987: 169). The United States also exerted pressure on Park to "normalize" relations with Japan, as American officials recognized that the strengthening of Japan required some reconstitution of its prewar trading patterns (Cumings 1987: 6o-61; Lee and Sato 1982: 26). Park's choice was more easily made in a period of expanding world trade. According to Haggard and Moon (1989: 33), "The two decades that preceded the global economic crises of the 197o's saw unprecedented annual growth rates of world industrial production (5 .6%) and world trade (around 7·3% )."Thus, Park fostered export orientation, normal relations with Japan, and altered interest and exchange rates, though the significance of th~se external constraints upon him is still disputed (Lee Chong-Sik 1985: 43-67; Lee and Sato 1982: 28; Lim Hyun-Chin 1985: 82-83). As a result of its new export orientation, South Korea was drawn deeply into the international capitalist system. A scarcity of raw materials and capital increased its dependency on imports and foreign funds, a lack of internally generated research and development created a dependency on foreign technology, and its small internal market and international political alignments created a dependency on industrialized markets concentrated principally in Japan and the United States. The export orientation prospered throughout the 196o's, however, and South Korea began moving from a peripheral to a semiperipheral position in the world system, just as Japan moved from the semiperiphery to the core. When the state later chose to promote the development of heavy and chemical industries in the early 197o's, that choice too was influenced by the international structure of power. Caused in part by a desire for greater economic and military self-sufficiency, declining American hegemony, and rising fears of American withdrawal from South Korea provoked by the departure from Vietnam, this capitalintensive industrial "deepening" greatly increased external indebtedness and industrial concentration. Many authors see the establishment of Park Chung Hee's Yusin government, which created a more

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authoritarian regime in the early 197o's, as the start of a formal bureaucratic-authoritarian system they claim is not altogether different from what Guillermo O'Donnell (1973) has described for Brazil (Lim Hyun-Chin 1985: 51; Cumings 1989; Han Sang-Jin 1987: 365; Im Hyug Baeg 1987: 239; Woo 1991). By 1986 South Korea had its own oil refineries and was competing in international markets for shipbuilding, steel production, and automobile manufacturing. Other important changes in the last two decades have involved shifts in international relations and commerce. America's recognition of China opened up the possibilities for formal and direct trade between them and enabled China, because of its lower wages, to replace much of South Korean light manufactures in the American market. The South Korean government, as a result, was anticipating the need to develop greater comparative advantages in more technologically intensive industries where Chinese competition would not be as severe. Another shift in international relations centered on South Korea's relationship with the United States. During the early 198o's American support for the increasing unpopular Chun Doo Hwan regime prompted many South Koreans to reconsider the American role in their country (Kim Jin-Hyun 1988: 235; Kim Jinwung 1989). The weeks following Park Chung Hee's assassination in 1979 witnessed widespread optimism among the middle classes for a more democratic government, but these hopes were dashed when Chun Doo Hwan staged a coup d'etat six weeks later and repressed an uprising in the city of Kwangju the next year. Both actions appear to have been taken by Chun with tacit if not more active American support (D. Clark 1988). The military violence in Kwangju resulted in several hundred civilian deaths. As early as 1982 an underground report entitled "Is America Our Ally?" (Democratic Coalition in Korea Against Military Dictatorship 1982) was circulating among South Korean dissidents. Other changes also prompted a reevaluation of the relationship with the United States. As dependency theory came into vogue in many nations during the 197o's, many students and intellectuals found it an appealing framework within which to examine South Korea's international alliances. They also came to question the antiCommunist ideology used to legitimate the South Korean state, a questioning furthered by American recognition of China. The unanticipated popularity of a 1983 telethon to reunite families separated by

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the Korean War (Kim Choong Soon 1988) reminded many of personal as well as collective tragedies the division of Korea had wrought. The publication and translation of Bruce Cumings' research on the origins of that war (1981), available at bookstores near major South Korean universities despite state efforts to suppress it, lent greater credence to the thesis that the division of the country was primarily the result of an American initiative. According to a well-publicized survey of over three thousand South Korean college students undertaken in the spring of 1987, 85 ·3 percent of those questioned agreed that "responsibility for the division of North and South Korea lies with American policy" (To and Yi 1988: rr8). This reevaluation of the American relationship was strengthened by increasing American trade pressure. As exporters became more successful in penetrating the American market, rising American protectionism prompted greater trade conflicts between the two nations (Odell 1984). By 1986, when South Korea recorded its first major overall trade surplus, pressure from the United States increased to even higher levels. In the words of one American state official: As the United States' seventh largest supplier of imports and the source of its fifth largest trade deficit, [South] Korea has come under very close scrutiny by the Congress, the private sector, the press and the executive branch. There is strong bipartisan feeling that [South] Korea is not reciprocating adequately for the market access that it enjoys in the United States. Accordingly, the US government increasingly has employed the provisions of its trade law to pry open the [South] Korean market further. 9 More radical proposals aimed at reducing bilateral deficits through· negotiations under the threat of import restrictions received considerable support in the U.S. Congress in 1986 and 1987. [Allgeier 1988: 91j1°

"Reciprocating adequately" suggests the moral claims many Americans pressed against South Korea and other trading partners. Phrases heard in more colloquial conversations referred to "level playing fields" or applying the "same rules" and in other ways conveyed the perceptions of many Americans that it was unfair of other nations to export their goods to the United States when American producers did not enjoy equal access to their markets. . In 1986 and 1987 American trade representatives particularly em9 A note in the original reads: "In particular, section 301 of the Trade and Tariff Act of 1984, and the GSP General Review." 10 In this 1988 publication Allgeier was identified as the assistant United States trade representative for Asia and the Pacific, and his institutional affiliation was the Office of the United States Trade Representative, Washington, D.C.

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phasized opening domestic markets to American agricultural products in which the United States held a comparative advantage, especially cigarettes, reevaluating the won, and conforming to copyright conventions. Many South Koreans perceived the pressure to import cigarettes and other agricultural goods as a threat to one of the least affluent sectors of their economy, and popular resistance took many forms. State officials were prompted to search for alternative markets for its exports. Ultimately, intra-Asian trade as a proportion of total trade increased, a trend that was just beginning to become apparent during my fieldwork (Far Eastern Economic Review, Aug. 9, 1990, p. 52). A few years later the reconstitution of the Great East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere was even noted by Fortune magazine (Special issue on the Pacific Rim, Fall 1990, p. 95). The Rise of South Korean Nationalism Statists and world-system theorists maintain that economic transactions are embedded in relationships of power. Many of these theorists, however, are reluctant to recognize that both economic and power relations are in turn embedded in contingent and subjective social and cultural conditions or that political economies are culturally informed and socially constructed through shared understandings and tacit agreements (Gudeman 1986; Friedland and Robertson 1990). Desirous of eschewing cultural- or social-determinist explanations that leave little room for considering struggles for wealth and power, several political economists have gone too far in rejecting interpretations "favored by humanists in general and the anthropologically oriented in particular" (Johnson 1982: 7-9) that rely heavily on cultural understandings and social considerations (R. Smith 1989 ). Though guns and butter-especially guns-are real, they are produced not solely through free-market transactions or by whoever happens to control most of the guns at the moment. Even the most narrow definition of political economy must .acknowledge the significance of legitimacy of ownership claims and the right to rule. But legitimacy is ultimately culturally perceived and established by consensus. Power is rarely if ever exercised without the perception that it is better to acquiesce, however momentarily and minimally, just as any attempt to represent an economy entails adducing data whose relevance is a matter of subjective choice (Rorty 1979). The most commonly used statistics of national economic welfare, such as Gross National Product, are shaped by agreement over

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what transactions to include or exclude, and their relevance depends on the importance attached to-or even the recognition of-a nation as an entity, a consideration that has hardly remained fixed in world history (Anderson 1983; Gellner 1983 ). If total production by a nation is considered of greater importance than its distribution of wealth or the concentration of its means of production, it is because of cultural understandings and tacit or explicit agreements (Verdery 1991: 420-22). South Korea's internal debates about its political economy, in particular, have been informed by diverse visions of national interests, visions that are culturally informed and socially constructed. Based on often conflicting representations of these interests, maximizing Gross National Product, reducing income and wealth disparities, granting greater popular participation in political decision making, decreasing economic concentration, expanding exports, minimizing imports, and protecting the nation from American economic, political, and cultural domination have all been advanced as national priorities. Competition between alternative constructions of Korean national interests is not new. For the past several decades nationalist ideology in South Korea has been characterized by disagreement (Robinson 1988; Wells 1985; Kim Seong Nae 1989: 283-84). The more frequent topic of debate has not been whether but which nationalism should prevail. Since it is such an obvious and self-proclaimed phenomenon, much attention has already been given to rising South Korean nationalism (Hurst 1985; Far Eastern Economic Review, Nov. ro, 1988, p. 40; Kim Jinwung 1989 ), but little has been done to relate its various representations to the reproduction of the modern political economy, to the chaebol, and to the interests of its respective advocates. The multiplicity of conflicting views that have been advanced over the past few decades shows that nationalism too leaves room for choice, strategy, and self-interest. Like other forms of cultural knowledge, nationalism does not develop over the heads of individuals without their active participation (Fox 1990: 1-7). Industrialization (Gellner 1983), print capitalism (Anderson 1983), television, and foreign domination have all contributed to the rise of nationalist ideology in South Korea, but the multiplicity of versions of nationalism demonstrate that these structural conditions did not bring it about alone. Individuals participated by making choices to advance particular interests, and these choices ultimately reshaped the political econ-

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omy itself. (Chapter 3looks more specifically at the use of nationalism by chaebol owners to legitimate their enterprise, their privileged positions, and their domination of subordinates; Chapter 6 examines the alternative expressions of nationalism advanced by new-middle-class workers.) Portraying nationalism as a device for pursuing self-interest is neither intended to denigrate those who advance it, deny their sincerity, nor question the strength of the emotions it engenders. The moral quality of nationalism makes it another potential strategy for pursuing material advantage in a seemingly disinterested way (Bourdieu 1977), at least vis-a-vis other citizens. Just as rural villagers can subscribe to filial piety but advance very different interpretations of this moral claim, so modern South Koreans-industrial magnates, middle classes, and laborers alike-can subscribe to nationalism while maintaining an ongoing debate over which of its formulations is correct. My attention was drawn to nationalism because it was far more evident among the middle classes of Seoul and in the offices of Taesong during the late 198o's than it had been among rural villagers ten or fifteen years earlier. Less geographically mobile than urban residents, their social networks more circumscribed, and lacking the same easy access to national media, villagers were more concerned with their relationships with neighboring communities than with other nations.11 An American military base was located only a few miles from Twisongdwi, and villagers were curious about the American soldiers and the oddities of their behavior but rarely thought to compare themselves with them. Nor could I interest villagers in discussing how Korean ancestor worship compared with that of China and Japan. Indeed, they usually spoke of me as studying Twisongdwi's ancestor worship rather than the ancestor worship of Korea. They were oriented locally and referred to themselves as uri chiban (a relative term that can refer to the speaker's family, lineage segment, lineage, or higher-level kin group), uri Twisongdwi Kwon-ssi (we, the Kwon-surnamed kin group in the village of Twisongdwi), or uri maUl (our village), rather than as the uri nara (our nation) or uri Han'guk saram (we Korean people) so popular with Taesong 11 Twis6ngdwi had only recently obtained electricity when we began our fieldwork, and only a few families had television sets. Few villagers went to town to obtain newspapers, even on market days, and most would have had difficulty reading a newspaper's Chinese characters.

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workers and others of the urban middle classes (Hurst 1985). Elderly women even referred to their language as Chason mal (Korean language), using the term for Korea usually avoided by urbanites since the 195o's because it implies political sympathy for North Korea. Little of this behavior in the village took on any significance until the 198o's, when I witnessed the rise of nationalism in Seoul generally and encountered specific instances of it often during my fieldwork at Taesong. A pop song of the time had as its title the state-advocated name of South Korea, "Ah! The Republic of Korea" (Taehan min'guk). That song and widespread public demonstrations against American trade pressure to open the South Korean tobacco market were some of nationalism's most audible and visible manifestations. Newspapers reported that one department store in Myongdong, the busiest shopping area in Seoul, displayed a sign that read, "Customers who smoke foreign cigarettes [yangdambae] are not welcome." A high school not far from my home draped a huge banner across its walls that read, "Those who smoke foreign cigarettes are traitors to the nation." And some months later I saw a large printed poster in a Seoul office building that read, "Smoking cigarettes is harmful to your health; smoking foreign cigarettes is harmful to the nation's health." In 1988 the doors on subway cars in Seoul displayed no-smoking decals on their doors, which on close inspection revealed the following message in fine print: "Don't smoke foreign cigarettes." Newspapers, Taesong company publications, and office workers alike often used the expressions "we Korean people" or "our nation." Taesong personnel also presented themselves frequently as members of a national collectivity by contrasting themselves sometimes with Japanese but more often with Americans (Chapter 6). Several men told me that I had made a good choice in studying Taesong because it was a good representative (taep'yo) of South Korean companies. Thus, research subjects constructed their own interpretations of my research and shaped its directions. Though the genealogy of Korean nationalism can be traced at least to the late nineteenth century (Chandra 1986; Lee Kwang-rin 1986), my brief account here begins with the 192o's. A fundamental split during that decade between two movements, Cultural Nationalism (munhwa undong) and Communist Nationalism involved "what and whom constituted the core of the Korean nation" (Robinson r988: 7), and that issue was not entirely different from one of the questions that was being debated during the 198o's.

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The Cultural Nationalists believed Korea needed to strengthen itself to regain its independence. They argued that both cultural reform and the development of indigenous industry were needed, thereby combining economic and cultural nationalism in their platform (Robinson 1988: esp. 75). The foremost proponents of this movement were intellectuals (Allen 1990) and prominent industrialists who instigated a national campaign of import substitution, urging the population to buy locally made rather than Japanesemanufactured goods (Wells 1985). Thus, the early Korean industrialists who attempted to legitimate their actions by appeals to nationalism were not basing their arguments simply on ideas borrowed from their counterparts in Japan but had a proposal that articulated with that of their intellectual allies. The ideology of the industrialists, however, was not altogether opaque. Their Communist opponents pointed out that industrialists who advocated building more factories in Korea and buying Korean products were seeking to advance their own economic interests, as were the intellectuals who advocated mass education. As early as the 192o's, therefore, a debate over defining national interests in terms of total national wealth versus equitable distribution was already enjoined. Given the Japanese colonial government's high degree of control over the economy, Korean industrialists prospered only by acquiescing with Japanese policies, and some even profited from the production of Japanese war materials and trade with Japan, Manchuria, and other territories of the Great East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere (Eckert 1986). From the perspective of Communist Nationalists, their chief rivals, the program of the Cultural Nationalists was a form of collaboration with Japanese colonial rule. Communist newspapers published in South Korea during the years immediately following liberation in 1945 pointed out that the industrialists' wealth had been illicitly acquired and urged that it be confiscated (Lee ChongSik 1977: 31, 33, 38, 100-101, 248). Thus the legitimacy of owning large enterprises was already being questioned in the 194o's. Many indigenous elites lasted from the colonial to the postcolonial eras, and the basic tenets of Cultural Nationalism were advocated by the state and in turn by the owner-managers of the chaebol. Borrowing a term from Benedict Anderson (1983), I call the nationalist ideology of the state "official nationalism" because its advancement was aimed at supporting state rule. "Dissident nationalism" seems to describe the alternative form used to criticize the state's policies and to challenge its legitimacy. Throughout the late 197o's and 198o's,

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the major fault line in South Korean nationalist ideology appears to have been the division between these two schools of thought (Kim Seong Nae 1989: 283-84). Dissident nationalism developed in the 197o's as the legitimacy of Park's regime began to wane, primarily because of his enforcement of the more dictatorial Yusin system. It was advanced largely by intellectuals, students, opposition politicians, and Christian leaders (Commission on Theological Concerns of the Christian Conference of Asia 1984; D. Clark 1986: 39-45). Because the views of Communist Nationalists were repressed in postwar South Korea (Cumings 1981 ), it is difficult to establish clearly the extent of their contribution to modern ·dissident nationalism. Though the charge of collaboration against the Cultural Nationalists has occasionally been voiced by dissident intellectuals (e.g., Kang Man'gil 1981: 460), few people today raise this accusation against the early industrialists. Instead, industrial activity in the prewar period is portrayed as nationalistic in orientation, at least among the middle classes (Eckert 1986). Modern industrialists are occasionally termed "comprador capitalists" in the writings of a few leftist South Korean scholars, but the charge of collaborating with foreign powers has more often been raised against the state than the conglomerates, perhaps because it has popularly been viewed as the dominant partner in ·the state-chaebol relationship. Accusations of illicit wealth accumulation (pujong ch'ukchae) pertain to activities that began just after World War II and the Syngman Rhee era (Shin Yoo Keun 1984: 7076; Kim Kyong-Dong 1976; Pak Pyongyun 1982; Kang, Ch'oe, and Chang 1991: 128-31), as entrepreneurs made profits through state favors, political connections, or real estate investment. Few modern conglomerates trace their origins to the colonial period anyway. Relatively immune from the charge of illicit wealth accumulation during the colonial years, the Taesong group openly acknowledged its founder's commercial activities during that era, portraying those activities as manifestations of his thorough commitment to the nation (Chapter 3). Although it is difficult to establish a direct link between the Communist Nationalists of the 192o's and dissident nationalists of the 197o's and 198o's, some of their claims were similar. Though not denying the value of economic growth, modern dissidents also stressed equitable distribution, arguing that South Korea's growth had benefited only a portion of the population and caused considerable suffering to its masses (minjung) of farmers and factory workers.

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To this critique the dissidents added that the state's economic policies had also led to foreign dependency and exploitation. Moving the masses to the forefront of the nation was a rhetorical device for criticizing the policy of export dependence that repressed laborers' wages and the prices of agricultural products (to enable low-paid workers to eat) for the sake of maintaining South Korea's comparative advantage. Park's and, later, Chun's reliance on American support was portrayed as subservience (sadae) to the United States.

Middle-Class Perceptions of the Chaebol The chaebol, which have been at the center of economic growth, are the subject of several studies, both in Korean and English (Steers, Shin, and Ungson 1989; Jung 1987; Pak Pyongyun 1982; Kang, Ch'oe, and Chang 1991). The account presented here focuses on popular perceptions of these institutions and their place in the political economy. Though several definitions of the term have been offered,12 chaebol are generally thought to be very large conglomerates, owned and managed by a single family and composed of several firms operating in a wide array of often unrelated industries. The largest dozen or so, the names of their founders and current heads, and their major products are all part of the common cultural knowledge of the middle classes. The chaebol have long been controversial and are a frequent topic of newspaper editorials as well as academic studies. Popular perceptions seem to shift with each new revelation of an accomplishment or impropriety. A sharp upswing of automobile exports to the United States inclines a more favorable view, or at least dampens criticism; a disclosure of real estate holdings adds to the critiques. Because views change over time and are not universally shared, I have not tried to average out the favorable and unfavorable perceptions of these business groups. Instead, I attempt here to survey the most common cultural understandings as a basis of comparison for those advanced by the owner-managers and white-collar workers of Taesong. The chaebol have often been credited with contributing to the expansion of South Korea's Gross National Product, creating job opportunities, enlarging exports, and enhancing national prestige through the export of automobiles and other relatively sophisticated 12 For a discussion of variant definitions of chaebol, see Kang, Ch'oe, and Chang (1991: 15-16).

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products to many foreign, including American, markets. Moreover, the chaebol are generally thought to be at the most advanced stage of South Korea's technology, and their products are generally regarded as more reliable than those of smaller or less well-known enterprises. Positive evaluations of chaebol can often be found in newspaper editorials and surveys. An editorial of the Tonga ilbo dated January 10, 1987, for example, acknowledged that "It is thanks to our more than 70 thousand firms, and particularly our large firms (taegii5p), that [South] Korea has risen to the standards of the middle-level developing countries" (p. 2). Similar attitudes can be seen in a stratified sample of the population interviewed by the Chason ilbo, another of South Korea's most influential newspapers. To the question "How much have large firms contributed to our nation's economic development?" 51.7 percent of those surveyed responded "a lot," 32.6 percent replied "a little," only 9·9 percent answered "haven't contributed much," and a mere 2.9 percent said they contributed "absolutely nothing" (Apr. 20, 1989, p. 1). In spite of calls for reform, no one I heard during my fieldwork proposed dissolving the chaebol into their component companies. Middle-class discourses about the chaebol and their leaders, whether in daily conversations, newspaper editorials, or academic literature, also include many negative assessments of the business groups. The same newspaper article that reported the positive evaluations of the conglomerates also revealed several criticisms. To the question, "Are the large firms making many efforts to do things which are good for society?" 33·7 percent agreed while 38.5 percent disagreed. Moreover, the wording of that question, which used the neutral or positive "large firms" (taegii5p) instead of the more critical "chaebol," perhaps induced more favorable responses. There was more striking evidence of ambivalence in November 1988 when the National Assembly questioned on live television the head of one of the largest business groups regarding contributions to the state in return for favors. After questioning high-level state officials in a fairly aggressive manner, even assemblymen of the opposition parties used noticeably honorific terms to address the head of the conglomerate. Their word choices provoked some humorous political cartoons in the newspapers during the next few days, which in turn resulted in less deference at future hearings. Since critiques of the chaebol are

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available in English (Kim Kyong-Dong 1976; Kim Yong-nok 1973; Jones and SaKong 1980: 269-74), I shall limit this discussion to a brief account of the principal criticisms. One of the most fundamental complaints about the conglomerates arises from their post-Korean War history. Because of their close ties with the government (chonggyong yuch'ak), the major business groups are popularly thought to have accumulated their capital through illicit or illegal methods (pujong ch'ukchae). This criticism is traced back not to the era of collusion with the Japanese but to the 195o's, when the Syngman Rhee government sold off formerly Japanese factories and equipment for small amounts to the industrialists and later granted special foreign-exchange and import licenses, allowing these men to make profits ~hrough privileged access to resources rather than through risk taking, competition, and other entrepreneurial activities (Shin Yoo Keun 1984: 76; Pak Pyongyun 1982; Chung 1987; Kang, Ch' oe, and Chang 1991). This perception of illicit wealth was initially encouraged by Park Chung Hee in the earliest days of his rule, when he arrested the heads of the largest conglomerates before deciding to use them and their enterprises as a principal means of economic development. Throughout the Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan administrations, the chaebol continued to enjoy special favors (t'ukhye) and practice a variety of other questionable activities, and the weak legitimacy of these governments did little to bolster the legitimacy of the industrialists' wealth. An academic survey conducted by Hagen Koo at the time of my fieldwork found that 88 percent of the middle classes agreed with the statement that "Those who possess a large amount of property must return their property to society" (Koo Hagen n.d.: r5; cf. Choi Jang Jip 1983: 2r; Eckert 1990). The chaebol are also often charged with profiting from real estate investments, which because of housing shortages and the paucity of cultivable land in South Korea, has acquired an unsavory quality. Such activity by the large enterprises is thought to be all the more reprehensible because they received preferential loans at the expense of smaller firms and other special favors for industrial production. Thus, commercial transactions that are acceptable in other capitalist societies have an illegal quality reminiscent of the price gouging or excess profiteering accusations leveled at American oil companies during the gasoline shortages. From time to time, usually prompted

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by new revelations about the extent of such land holding, the state conducts campaigns to reduce the amount of real estate held by the conglomerates for nonbusiness purposes. Since much of the illicit accumulation occurred with tacit or active official support, criticisms of the chaebol are closely linked with criticisms of the state. In return for carrying out government directives and in many accounts for contributing funds to political chests as well, the conglomerates were given exclusive rights to certain industries and other special licenses as well as low-interest foreign loans. Rather than invest all their funds for productive uses, they have bought real estate and occasionally lent money in the curb market at high interest rates (Cole and Park 1983: 186). The easy availability of loans also made owners of the chaebol reluctant to invest their own funds. Jung Ku-Hyun (1987: 148) has argued that the choices of the conglomerates' owners have been skewed toward excessive risk in part because they have invested so little of their own capital. Other criticisms of the chaebol center on their ownership and management by a single family or group of relatives. Public records do not permit a precise measurement of the magnitude of family holdings because these business groups are not legal corporations and because South Korean laws allow shares of company stock to be held under pseudonyms or the names of relatives. Some companies of the business groups, especially the smaller firms and joint ventures, are not publicly traded and thus do not issue public records of ownership. Hattori Tamio (1986: 182) has estimated that the main family's holdings of publicly traded companies belonging to the ten largest chaebol averaged 32·4 percent, 13.4 percent of which was directly held and the remaining 19 percent held through corporate cross-ownership. These figures, however, appear to omit stock held under pseudonyms. And smaller firms that are not publicly traded usually involve more family ownership. A few years after Hattori's study appeared, the Ministry of Finance revealed to the National Assembly that among the largest ten conglomerates the owning families' direct holdings averaged about 14 percent, but indirect holdings via cross-ownership amounted to nearly 50 percent (Tonga ilbo, Oct. 4, 1989, p. 6). By holding these large blocks of stock, the owning families have been able to populate the upper ranks of management and retain managerial as well as stockholder control. Their "nepotism" (Pak Kidong 1978) is often

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said to hinder more talented persons from attaining the uppermost ranks, to the detriment of the chaebol and the national economy. Another major criticism of the chaebol concerns the extent of their control over the economy. Because of their monopolization of many markets and products, these conglomerates are often compared to the arms of an octopus (munobal ), grasping every economic opportunity in sight-"From Airplanes to Salted Shrimp" in the words of one newspaper editorial (Chason ilbo, July 21, 1988, p. 2)-and driving small and medium-sized businesses out of existence. A variety of statistical measurements have been employed to assess the extent of South Korea's economic concentration. All of them are human constructions. The total net sales of the four largest chaebol, for example, are reported to have equaled 44·3 percent of its Gross National Product in 1984, more than double the 20.7 percent for 1978 (Amsden 1989: n6). Those figures are not unmediated measures of the degree of concentration because, inter alia, net sales and Gross National Product are not directly comparable. Net sales include semifinished products whereas Gross National Product is composed of only final goods and services.13 Comparing more congruent categories presumably would yield a lower figure. On the other hand, the "average three-firm concentration ratio," which attempts to measure economic concentration by averaging the degree to which manufacturing industries are dominated by three or fewer firms, was reported to be 62.0 percent in South Korea and only 49.2 in Taiwan in 1981 (World Bank 1987b: 28; Amsden 1989: 122), but the figure for South Korea would be higher if firms of the same chaebol were counted as members of a single enterprise rather than as separate companies Qeong 13 This is also true if Gross National Product is calculated through the earnings or cost approach. By that method it would include only value added and not the cost of intermediate goods acquired from other firms (Samuelson and Nordhaus 1985: I08). Alice Amsden (1989: 122) suggests that the ratio of sales to Gross National Product may nevertheless "give an accurate picture of the chaebol's command over the economy," but this is difficult to reconcile with her data. On the basis of the value of shipments, "which are a close approximation of value-added," the share of the largest five chaebol in 1982 was only 22.6 percent, whereas their sales were 42.2 percent of Gross National Product in that year (Amsden 1989: n6, 122). (Value of shipments in 1984, or for the four largest chaebol, were not given in her study.) Her data also reveal that by calculating on the basis of employment, the share of the largest five chaebol declined from 9.1 to 8.4 percent between 1977 and 1981 even though their share of shipments rose from 15 ·7 to 22.6 percent, and the ratio oftheir sales to Gross National Product more than doubled.

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Kap-young 1990: 63). Finally, one study (Jeong Kap-young 1990), constructed an alternative set of economic measurements and argued that economic concentration in South Korea has been declining since the late 197o's. Yet, despite the impossibility of arriving at objective measurements, popular perception has long been that the economy suffers from a high degree of economic concentration because of the chaebol (Jones and SaKong 1980: 267). A recent study by three South Korean scholars conveys a sense of their predominance: Day after day we conduct our life with the goods and services of the chaebol. When we get up in the morning, we brush our teeth with chaebol-made toothpaste and listen to the news with a chaebol-made radio or television. We go to work in a chaebol-made bus or car. We enter a chaebol-made building and arrive at the office by riding on a chaebol-made elevator. [Kang, Ch'oe, and Chang 1991: 3]

Another major criticism leveled against the conglomerates pointed to their exploitation of blue-collar workers. Though the wages of laborers at companies belonging to the major business groups were generally thought to have been higher than those paid by smaller firms, the chaebol were commonly thought to have taken unfair advantage of their laborers because of their greater power and state collusion. Kim Dae Jung, the most prominent opposition leader during the 197o's and 198o's, for example, pointed out that average wage increases in 1984 varied inversely with firm size: "This perverse phenomenon implies that as the firm gets bigger, the bargaining power of management increases because of increased suppression by the government" (Kim Dae Jung 1985: 48). Similarly, the English-language Korea Herald reported in 1988 (Oct. 3, p. 3) that the head of the Federation of [South] Korean Trade Unions "claimed that the nation's tycoons have 'collaborated with political powers to make fortunes after depriving laborers of decent working conditions and adequate pay.'" A Chason ilbo editorial of July 21, 1988 (p. 2), put the blame not on state-aided suppression of labor but on the conglomerates themselves: "Even while they [the chaebol] were always talking of the social responsibilities of business, they were always tightfisted about sharing the fruits of growth, have kidnapped leaders of the labor movement, and did not hesitate to employ violence through save-thecompany corps (kusadae).'' 14 Several such incidents of violent labor 14 These men were employed by management to break up strikes and other labor actions by force.

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repression, both with and without active state collusion, had been reported in the press (Palais 1985: 186-288). Because the chaebol were perceived to have been exploiting laborers with these coercive activities, and because the conglomerates' owners enjoyed some of the highest incomes in South Korea, income inequality was often noted in the media. According to newspaper reports (Maeil kyongje sinmun, Jan. 26, 1987, p. rr) the starting wage at the five largest chaebol for workers with a high-school education was about 300 thousand won (about $400) per month at the start of 1987.15 A few months earlier a newspaper (Choson ilbo, Oct. 10,1986, p. 2) had revealed the incomes reported on the 1985 tax returns of top owner-managers at three of the four largest conglomerates: 2 billion won for the head of one chaebol, 1.2 billion won for the vice chairman of another, and 786 million won for the head of a third. In other words the average monthly income they reported to tax authorities ranged from two hundred to six hundred times what their newly employed high-school graduates were earning two years later. Accusations of exploitation leveled at the chaebol are also informed by perceptions of widespread income and wealth disparities. Statistical measures of these disparities are also formed partly by choices over what measures to employ and what data to include, and some controversy surrounds the computation and interpretation of South Korea's Gini ratio and other indices of inequality (Kuznets 1977: 92-99; Mason et al., 1980: 408-44; Choo 1985; Palais 1985: 171-76; Lee Joung-woo 1986-87; Michell 1988: rr7). A household's net worth can be assessed, for example, on the basis of the historical costs or current market value of its assets. The practice of holding real and monetary assets in the names of relatives as well as under pseudonyms adds yet another twist to the subjective nature of such assessments. During my fieldwork the prevailing but not uncontested opinion was that income and wealth distribution had become increasingly unequal since the mid-197o's, a perception supported by most economists' calculations but also informed by plainly visible contrasts between the living conditions of the impoverished and the expensive apartments, private automobiles, and upscale restaurants enjoyed by the wealthy (Kim Joochul 1988). Since the 197o's this perception had also been encouraged by several popular writers who 15 The reported figures for base pay among the five largest chaebol were 219,800 for men and 177,000 for women. To these amounts various bonuses and supplementary payments were added (see Chapter 4).

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drew attention to the plight of the urban poor amid the prosperity of others (Cho Sehiii 1990 [orig. 1976]: 328-67; Yun 1989 [orig. 1977]: 96-147; Kang Sok-kyong 1989 [orig. 1986]: esp. 64-65). It is important to remember that all of the above criticisms represent common middle-class perceptions rather than radical critiques of the chaebol. For example, the Choson ilbo survey (Apr. 20, 1989, p. 1) cited above found that 64 percent agreed that "The large firms will use any means and methods, fair or foul, for the sake of earning money." Only 19 percent of the respondents disagreed. Moreover, 63 percent said the large firms were "stingy" with their bluecollar workers' wages, even after many middle-class citizens lost some of their sympathy for laborers, who had obtained considerable pay increases during the preceding year and conducted strikes that disrupted production and exports. And the same Tonga ilbo editorial (Jan. 10, 1987, p. 2) that recognized the contribution of the "large firms" to the national economy also included the following passage: Why don't our nation's chaebol open their firms to the public and allow many of our citizens to own them? Why do the owners (chu) of our large firms like land and thereby acquire every spot of prime real estate to the point where they practically monopolize it? Why do heavily indebted chaebol-level firms keep cropping up, and in connection with this, want to keep receiving special political favors?

THREE

The Bourgeoisie and Their Ideology There are none who believe so well as those who oppress as honest men. What kind of bourgeoisie is it that does not in some way believe its own legitimations? That would be the denial of themselves. It would be the solution of a problem of which they were the main puzzle. It would invite seif-destruction as the next logical move. Willis (I98I: IZJ)

a decade prior to my fieldwork, Taesong was one Fof the largestthanbusiness groups in South Korea. According to pubOR MORE

licized lists of total assets and consolidated sales, Taesong and three other conglomerates had attained such a preeminent role in the political economy that a recent account calls them "the big four" (Steers, Shin, and Ungson 1989: 49-70). Like the other big four, Taesong was already composed of dozens of companies involved in a wide range of diverse and often unrelated industries, and it was creating more. Clothing, insurance, electronics, international trade, oil refining, sporting goods, chemicals, stock brokerages, and household products were only some of the goods and services it produced and sold. Jung Ku-Hyun (1987: 55-rr2) maintains, correctly I think, that the unrelatedness of the industries in which each of the chaebol engaged resulted from choices made to take advantage of state incentives rather than from expertise or marketing networks. Few of Taesong's firms belonged to vertically integrated production chains where the products of one were used as inputs for another. Yet others, created as joint ventures with American, Japanese, or European companies to acquire foreign technology, so overlapped that they made different models of the same product. Acknowledging the duplications of effort and other inefficiencies

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THE BOURGEOISIE AND THEIR IDEOLOGY

caused by this arrangement, Taesong's top management implemented a major reorganization at the start of 1987, grouping together those firms that made similar products under a newly created chaebol-level division. Taesong was also like other conglomerates in that it was controlled by a group of persons related through kinship ties. Much of the stock of its member companies was held by this kin group, many of whom occupied several of the highest managerial positions both in these companies and in the chaebol's own management. Owing to a variety of strategies and practices to be discussed in Chapter 4, the possibility that other shareholders could dislodge them was remote. Taking the Ministry of Finance's figures on family ownership among the major chaebol as a guide (Chapter 2), the economic benefits that the controlling group of relatives derived from their stockholding included about a third of the cash dividends paid out by the companies and about 30 percent of their stock options.' The options allowed existing shareholders to acquire additional shares at par value or a slightly higher figure. At Taesong during my research, acquiring a share through a stock option cost about 40 percent of the share's market price, but whether the economic advantage derived from this bargain ought to be considered income depends on subjective interpretation. Conventional accounting methods used in South Korea and elsewhere disregard this enlargement of wealth until the stock is sold. In the case of some other assets, however, revaluation to reflect their market price exceeding historical cost is an accepted South Korean accounting practice. The family members who control Taesong also derived income from the many managerial positions they occupied, like the comparable kin groups of most other chaebol (Kim and Kim 1989; Shin and Chin 1989). To convey the extent of family participation in management, Jung Ku-Hyun (1987: 284-86) compiled a genealogy of the closest relatives of the group's founder and a chart of their various senior managerial positions (director-level and above) in the mid198o's. I have used his information, supplemented by an official biog1 These are rough estimates. About a third to half of the dividends and options were distributed to related companies. They thereby remained within the chaebol and were claimed indirectly by individual stockholders. The percentage for stock options is somewhat lower than that for dividends since ro percent of the options were supposed to be issued to employees, in accordance with a legal requirement, thereby leaving only 90 percent to be paid out to other companies, owner-managers, and other stockholders.

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raphy of the founder published by his heirs, to compile the information in Figurer and Table 2.2 Omitted are the younger family members who were advancing up the corporate ladder, more distant relatives, and those who apparently occupied no managerial positions. Income from these executive positions is as difficult to ascertain as income from stockholding. General salary levels and individual salaries for directors and higher managers were not made public, and their remuneration included considerable fringe benefits that are difficult to evaluate. Even the lowest-level director at major chaebol companies, for example, was given a chauffeured sedan, lifetime membership in a golf club (an investment costing in the tens of thousands of dollars, the exact price depending on the golf club), expense accounts, and many other perquisites (Korea Herald, Feb. 20, 1987, p. 6). In light of the systematic way fringe benefits increased with rank (Chapter 4), the financial value and kinds of privileges accruing to higher positions were probably even greater. The head of the Taesong chaebol was regularly included in the annual lists published by South Korean newspapers of persons who paid the most taxes. Though one of the fundamental assumptions of neoclassical economics is that owners or managers of a firm seek to maximize its profits or its rate of return on capital, the distinctive positions of the families that control the major conglomerates and their relationship to the state appear to have led them to aim their efforts in other directions. In one of the most thorough studies of chaebol upper management, Jung Ku-Hyun (1987: 174) has observed that "the objective of the firms of the large chaebol is not to maximize profits but to maximize sales. Making enough profit to maintain the firm is 2 In compiling these data, I have made some adjustments and followed a few conventions. Figure I, for example, shows only those persons who held positions at directorlevel or above. Adoptions between agnatically related descent lines are disregarded. Eldest sons are shown to the right, following the practice used in Korean genealogies since the seventeenth century. Since I did not examine the families' household registers, however, I do not know the birth order of any of the women. They are placed to the left of their male siblings, again following Korean practices. I have also assumed that an individual shown in Figure I was deceased because one of his sons (L) was 62 years old when Jung compiled his data in I985. In addition Table 2 shows an apparently anomalous "chairman" of a company, an elevation evidently intended in part to give an eldest son a higher title than that of his younger brother. No man has a higher title than his elder brother, though the companies to which siblings were assigned were not of equal size or importance in the conglomerate. In the late 198o's the practice of granting more honorific titles continued, so that a number of ne·,v chairman and vice-chairman positions were created, though the man labeled A remained the chief executive officer of the chaebol.

~

O 0 0

Male Female

Deceased Marriage

&= Fig. r. Genealogical relationships among Taes6ng owner-managers

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TABLE 2

Upper Managerial Appointments of Principal Family Members at Taesong Group Genealogical position

Managerial position

A

Chairman of the group Head of group's Office of Planning and Coordination (equivalent to a vice president) and senior managing director at one company Managing director Company president Company president Company director Company president Company president Senior managing director at two compames Director Director at two companies, "chairman" of a third, and vice chairman of the group Director at two companies, president of a third, and vice chairman of the group Director at one company and the president of another Managing director and advisor to the group Company vice president Director Director at one company, president of another, and vice chairman of the group Director at one company and president of another Company auditor and president in charge of American operations

B

c D E F G

H I

J

K

L M N

0 p Q R

s

satisfactory." In partial support of this contention, Jung cites an unpublished paper (Kim E. Han n.d.) which claimed that South Korean taxation laws in effect from 1976 to 1985 made stock ownership per se far less profitable than corporate bonds, which entailed less risk. Jung's interpretation is congruent with the data contained in the public financial statements of Taesong company, though interpretation of these statements is itself problematic (Chapter 4). Although

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THE BOURGEOISIE AND THEIR IDEOLOGY

the company was founded before the Korean War and listed on the Korean Stock Exchange since 1970, its profits have barely kept pace with its dividends. The 1986 balance sheet of Taesong company shows that its total assets equaled approximately 706 billion . won (about $1 billion), against which creditors' claims (i.e., liabilities) amounted to 540 billion won. Of the remaining 167 billion won claimed by stockholders, roo billion originated from the issuance of capital stock, 29 billion from asset revaluation, and only 38 billion from the retention of prior years' earnings. Net income for 1986, for example, amounted to 16 billion won, of which 12 billion was paid out in dividends in 1987. Calculated at 12 percent of par value, these dividends were about 4 percent of the current market value of the stock. Annual inflation at the time was calculated by the government to be an exceptionally low 3 percent (National Bureau of Statistics 1989: 413, 465).

In view of these financial statements, Jung's interpretation, and the nature of the Korean political economy, several reasons can be advanced for the owner-managers' relative indifference to profit maximization. First, profits have not been essential for expansion since most growth has been financed by state-directed lending or crossinvestments from other firms of the chaebol. Second, since conglomerate firms were so heavily indebted, stockholders' claims on corporate assets were not very significant and the owner-managers' claims on those assets were negligible. In other words ownership rights were · more important for control than for claiming the firm's assets or dividends. Third, owner-managers probably obtained far greater income from their salaries than from profits distributed as dividends (Jung 1987: 168) that had to be shared with other stockholders. Fourth, the owner-managers had little reason to be concerned about the effects of lower earnings on the market value of their stock. Their own shares were held for control purposes and unlikely to be sold, and the issuance of additional stock was not an important means of raising capital (Jung 1987: 121). As we have seen, additional shares of stock were issued through options that entitled existing owners to acquire the stock at about par value. Taesong company's issue in 1987, priced above par value for the first time as a result of state pressure, still brought less than half the stock's market value and thus raised far less additional capital than it could have. Thus, the primary motive for stock ownership was evidently to secure lucrative and, in the eyes of many, prestigious managerial positions, while profits were of con-

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cern only to cover owners' salaries and produce a moderate rate of mcome. In lieu of maximizing corporate income, Jung (1987: 174) argues, maximizing sales received greater priority, and my own experiences were congruent with this interpretation. In one division where I taught a morning English class, the director regularly logged onto his computer terminal to obtain the most current sales figures as soon as he arrived in his office; in another, sales figures were used to evaluate the weekly performance of younger managers. Maximizing sales received such emphasis because sales were an important qualification for demonstrating size, on which state favors and public recognition depended. In 1975, for example, when the state encouraged international trading companies modeled on those of Japan, it offered benefits only to companies with an export volume of $50 million (Cho Dong Sung 1984: 246). This relative indifference to profits has special significance because it shows that the owner-managers of the large conglomerates, in collusion with the state and foreign financial sources and with a measure of acquiescence on the part of subordinates and the general public, produced and continued to reproduce their own kind of capitalism. The controlling families had reasons for their indifference to profit maximization and their reluctance to surrender control of their chaebol's companies to nonkin managers. Those motives were based on their understandings of the political economy and their expectations of the choices and actions of state officials and of what would likely happen if unrelated managers were to gain control of the conglomerates. In 1987 a well-publicized suicide revealed how the interests of an enterprise's owning kin group were potentially threatened by its nonkin managers, even those who had attained exceptionally high positions (e.g., senior managing director, company president). The chairman and principal owner of the Pan Ocean Company had turned over its operational management to a nonkin professional manager who later became his rival for control of the company. Each of the men provided police with evidence of the other's illegal activities, principally in the area of illicit foreign-exchange transactions, and the owner took his life in the midst of the ensuing investigation (Far Eastern Economic Review, May 7, 1987, pp. 104-5). A Seoul business daily (Maeil kyongje sinmun, Apr. 27, 1987, p. 3) and one of Taesong's directors expressed concern about the effects of this inci-

96

THE BOURGEOISIE AND THEIR IDEOLOGY

dent on the relationship between controlling kin groups and their nonfamily managers. The di#erence between the class positions of owning kin groups and nonkin managers was often conveyed explicitly or implicitly in Korean. Though newspaper writers were also fond of the word ch'ongsu (commander in chief) to designate chaebol chairmen, more popular expressions for managers who belonged to their conglomerate's controlling kin group were owner-managers (soyu kyongyongin), owners (an English loanword), and enterprise masters (e.g., taegiopchu). "Owner-managers" and "owners" unambiguously signified ownership and contrasted with "professional managers" (chonmun kyongyongin), a term used to designate the nonkin managers regardless of how many shares of stock they owned in their company. "Master" (chuin or chu) is more colloquial and more ambiguous, denoting ownership, possession, or simply control. Alternativ~ly, some intellectuals had begun calling the members of conglomerate-controlling families "capitalists" and "bourgeoisie" with even greater frequency after a major liberalization of the press in 1988. Though these terms were not usually delineated precisely enough to indicate whether they excluded all subordinates unrelated by kinship, the thrust of such comments usually pertained to the privileges or activities of the most prominent and powerful of the chaebol- and company-controlling kin groups rather than to nonkin managers. Moreover, some of these authors also implied a distinction between this elite group and other managers by reserving for the latter the term middle class or new middle class (Christian Institute for the Study of Justice and Development I988: rso). "New middle class" seems to be appropriate for nonkin managers and managerial-track employees, since some of their interests are congruent while others are opposed to those of the owning kin group (Koo and Hong r98o; Giddens r98ra; Wright et a!. 1989). Even the highest nonkin managers occupied contradictory positions, their interests partly aligned with those of the owners and partly with those of other classes. Though the higher a nonkin manager advanced up the corporate ladder, the more his total material rewards and power derived from the privileges of the dominant kin group, his interests never converged with those of the elite group. The higher his level, the more his chances for further advancement were blocked by the kin group's monopoly on most top managerial positions. (As a partial remedy to this, the Taesong group began promoting some of these

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men to high management posts in the companies while promoting themselves to even higher posts in the chaebol, which resulted in an increasing number of chairman positions like that of Kin Table 2.) Though these upper-level nonkin managers presented themselves as firm allies of the owning kin group when making statements to the media or to subordinates, the Pan Ocean incident revealed how their alliance with owner-managers could become unstuck in less public contexts. It is difficult to find just the right word for the capitalist elite whose ideological claims are the subject of the remainder of this chapter. "Owner-managers" is useful for this controlling kin group since it recognizes their ownership claims and their control over the means of production, but it obscures the problematic legitimacy of the claims and the contested nature of the control. To capture these latter meanings, "bourgeoisie" is a useful term, though it suffers from associations derived from the history of capitalism in Europe. I will compromise by using both, shifting between them to convey how the ruling kin group's control and ownership of the chaebol's human and material means of production were sometimes but not always contested. Excluded from this category are the nonkin managers and other white-collar employees of the new middle class, since their privileges were significantly fewer and challenged far less often. In focusing on the owner-managers, I use the term ideology for ideas that sustain or reproduce asymmetrical relations of power and economic privilege (J. Thompson 1984: 4). This usage is still uncommon among organization theorists and students of business administration who speak of "managerial ideology," though it has been taken up by some of the former in recent years (Salaman and Thompson 1980; Morgan 1986: 366; Weiss 1986: 227). The critical meaning is, however, more prevalent in academic writing (Eagleton 1991: 5). Conceptualizing ideology as serving the interests of a privileged group need not deny its frequent use of metaphor (Geertz 1973: 193233) nor its constitutive function (Ricoeur 1986: 13). Ideology is like rhetoric in that it attempts to persuade and, even when true, distorts by emphasizing, often via metaphor, some characteristics or causal relationships at the expense of others. If effective, ideas offer a framework for interpretation as well as action and contribute to knowledge, the construction of identities, the perception of interests, and the reproduction of social systems. Writers as theoretically diverse as Marx, Weber, and Durkheim each recognized the constitu-

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THE BOURGEOISIE AND THEIR IDEOLOGY

tive role of ideas when they acknowledged that social systems are not maintained or reproduced by physical coercion alone, even if they had rather different notions of the sources, consequences, and significance of ideas. All three were attempting to remedy a deficiency in the utilitarian philosophical tradition (Bloch 1989: 107) that continues to inform market-oriented economics and many kinds of rational choice theory. This chapter looks to the more explicit ideological claims the bourgeoisie used to defend their interests. I also try to show how these ideas articulated with the cultural knowledge discussed in the preceding two chapters by examining how the owner-managers drew upon and revised concepts of tradition, political economy, national welfare, and the conglomerates themselves. In subjecting the rhetoric of owner-managers to this kind of scrutiny, I find it difficult to avoid the debunking usually found in studies of specific ideologies. In part, this is because bourgeois ideology is relatively easier to penetrate, the interests of this class being more sharply delineated and less contradictory than those of newmiddle-class, white-collar workers (Ehrenreich and Ehrenreich 1977; Wright 1985; Poulantzas 1974: 193-331; Clegg, Bareham, and Dow 1986: 158-203). Nevertheless, I wish to avoid denying the sincerity or otherwise maligning the moral character of Taesong's ownermanagers. As Paul Willis (1981: 123) observed, the bourgeoisie have good reason to believe the ideas that advance their material and ostensibly nonmaterial symbolic advantages. Moreover, the willingness of the Taesong owner-managers to allow me to study one of their major firms bespeaks self-confidence and assurance rather than a deliberate strategy of deception. Like the rest of us, they formulate and reformulate representations and moral claims that are consistent with their material advantages. What differentiates them is not their moral character but the resources they command and the consequences of their actions. Because owner-managers of the Taesong chaebol occupied a privileged position within the national political economy and in relation to their subordinates, they had reason to address ideological claims to the general public and their employees. Given the different interests and experiences of these audiences, the kinds of resources they were capable of mobilizing, and the nature of the desired effects, the ownermanagers' ideological strategies toward these two groups were not identical, though many of the same claims were pressed into double

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service. Their employees, moreover, were also aware of the claims presented to the public, principally through newspaper and television interviews granted by the commanders in chief, in product advertisements, and via the Federation of Korean Industries (Ch6n'guk ky6ngjein y6nhaphoe; usually abbreviated Ch6n'gy6ngny6n), an association that represents big business. I begin my account of ideology, therefore, with an examination of representations made to the general population.

The Public The owner-managers sought to motivate the public to purchase their products and to acquiesce in their control of Taes6ng. As we have seen, the legitimacy of their control was weaker than that enjoyed by capitalists in many other societies. The extent of their efforts indicates that they perceived their grip on the human and material resources of this organization and on their privileged share of its income was precarious. This perception was culturally informed, for ownership of these large institutions has yet to acquire the sanctity that private property rights usually enjoy in advanced capitalist societies. Not only did a very large proportion of the middle class assent to the proposition that the wealthy should surrender some of their assets (Chapter 2), but precedents for such actions occurred more than once during the past few decades. Land reform, the fines Park Chung Hee imposed on chaebol leaders, the freezing of curb-market loans in 1972 (Cole and Park 1983: 158-68), the forced mergers and acquisitions, and, allegedly, Chun Doo Hwan's dismantling of the Kukje conglomerate in 1985 all reinforced the cultural perception that the state had the capacity to dispossess private citizens of their assets. The possibility that the state could take similar if less sweeping action against the owner-managers of chaebol was not inconceivable to many South Koreans. Indeed, that was precisely what many newspaper editorials advocated. Public acquiescence was also desirable to forestall or at least minimize these less drastic measures or to induce state actions that furthered the bourgeoisie's advantages. State officials continually made decisions that advanced or retarded the interests of the conglomerates' owner-managers. The state has been popularly perceived not as the servant but as the "dominant partner" of the bourgeoisie (Jones and SaKong 1980: 293), though whether it remains in that superior position has become a matter of some debate in recent years (Yoon

roo

THE BOURGEOISIE AND THEIR IDEOLOGY

Jeong-Ro 1989; Kim Eun Mee 1987). And though the state enjoyed a high degree of domestic autonomy at the time of my research, it was not completely independent of civil society. Officials often sought to enhance its legitimacy by public posturing to curb the growth of the largest conglomerates, to pressure owner-managers to list their companies on the South Korean Stock Exchange (Shin Young Moo 1983) and reduce their indebtedness, to curtail economic concentration by limiting corporate cross-ownership and promoting small and medium-sized businesses instead, or to reduce the disparity between white- and blue-collar wages-all measures widely understood to be beneficial to national interests. In February 1987, for example, as South Korea was enjoying a favorable balance of trade and evidently attempting to ameliorate trade conflict with the United States, state officials announced that export-financing loans would be reduced from 670 to 645 won per dollar of letter-of-credit for large firms and from 700 to 68o won for small and medium-sized firms (Korea Herald, Feb. rr, 1987, p. 6; Koo Bon Ho 1988: 82), thus granting limited preferential support to the latter. Yet, many remained skeptical of the effort lent to enforcing such measures, as newspaper articles and editorials had long abounded in reports of their ineffectiveness. On February 25, 1982, for example, an editorial in the Tonga ilbo (p. 2) cited statistics on the increasing domestic market shares of the largest companies and observed: "The fact that the market shares of monopolistic and oligopolistic companies are increasing shows that the government-promoted objective of establishing competitive order (kyongjaeng chi/so) or regulating monopoly and oligopoly during the same period has not resulted in any significant effects." Similarly, a front-page report in the Maeil kyongje sinmun (Feb. 14, 1987) pointed out that in 1986 administrative and managerial salaries averaged 700,523 won per month, but the comparable figure for laborers in the service sector was only 215,879 won. The report commented: "In spite of the government's continuing policies for reducing wage disparities, it was recently revealed that wage disparities by education and occupation among our nation's workers last year were greater than those of 1985 ." Many of the bourgeois claims presented to the public tried to reaffirm or strengthen the conglomerates' favorable image and respond to common criticisms presented at the end of the last chapter. A sort of indirect dialogue had therefore emerged between the owner-managers of the chaebol and their critics, with each side's statements informing the other's responses. The owner-managers re-

THE BOURGEOISIE AND THEIR IDEOLOGY

IOI

iterated what most of the middle classes already acknowledged: their contributions to economic growth, the reliability of their products, and their introduction of advanced technology. "Technological forefront" (ch'omdan kisul) and "first in the nation" (kungnae ch'oech'o) occurred frequently in advertising copy. Simultaneously, the bourgeoisie omitted, minimized, or attempted to exercise spin control over the popular criticisms: illicit accumulation, special government favors, family ownership and management, economic concentration, and low wages for blue-collar workers. Since the chairman of Taesong happened to be appointed chairman of the Federation of Korean Industries while I was· conducting my fieldwork, he was asked to give several interviews that were published in newspapers and magazines. Many of the interviewers raised the common criticisms, and I have drawn my account of his ideology from his responses. Though the chairman was speaking as the representative of the federation, much of the interviews focused on his own chaebol.3 When questioned by an interviewer about government-business collusion, for example, the head of Taesong did not deny the allegations, but, using a strategy not unlike the impression management employed in the state's press guidelines, attempted to downplay its significance: "Because a portion of domestic companies were closely connected with 'politics' in the past,4 the image of the large firms is now tarnished" [literally, has some bad points] (Chason ilbo, Feb. 28, 1987, p. ro). A more oblique defense against the allegation could also be found in the chairman's frequent complaints of arbitrary government interference in the economy. When asked about family-centered ownership, the head ofTaesong sought to supply an interpretation more favorable to the conglomerates: Interviewer: In the case of the Japanese chaebol [i.e., zaibatsu] companies/ they became firms of the people (kungmin ui kiop) by widely dispersing their stock ownership. Naturally, a citizen thinks of them as "my companies" and has affection for them. In our case, however, the companies are 3 The Federation of Korean Industries (r987) has published an English-language edition of its members' representations. 4 The published account of the interview placed angle brackets, the South Korean convention for quotation marks, around the word politics, though the text was taken from an interview. 5 In the published interview the term chaebol is spelled out in the Korean alphabet. I surmise, therefore, that during the interview it was pronounced that way rather than as zaibatsu, the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese characters with which it is written.

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THE BOURGEOISIE AND THEIR IDEOLOGY

still virtually owned and managed by a single owner-manager or family, and it is rather difficult to expect affection for them or a sense of participation in them. Chairman: Japan's Mitsubishi, Mitsui, and other companies were already opened to public ownership 70 or So years ago, and I have heard that their founders and principal stockholders [now] hold no more than 2 or 3 percent of their stock. Moreover, their management is in the hands of professional managers. In the case of our firms, however, it has been only about twenty years at most since they became listed on the stock exchange. It appears that our firms too will become Japanese-style in the future. I'm not sure about my son's generation, but I think it will probably be difficult to have a successor within the family by the time of my grandson's generation. [Choson ilbo, Feb. 28, 1987, p. 10]

Later in the same interview, the chairman justified his family's monopoly on managerial positions as follows: Interviewer: The Taesong group is commonly criticized for being a family enterprise managed by the Na relatives. Chairman: Among the Na relatives, all of the managers who occupy presidential-level or higher appointments have participated and worked [with the chaebol] since its creation. 6 Therefore, even if they weren't family members, those people would be the highest managers by now. Moreover, they were selected on account of their ability. [Ibid.]

To defend themselves against the charge of economic concentration, the chaebol owner-managers drew heavily upon the language of market-oriented economics. Attributing their growth to competitive efforts rather than state support, they justified the size of their enterprises by pointing to the international competition they faced from much larger foreign companies. Indeed, "international competitiveness" was a code word for size, since it was assumed (i.e., "it goes without saying," to borrow Bourdieu's phrase [1977: 167]) that economies of scale are necessary for meeting international competition. Even an editorial critical of economic concentration, for example, acknowledged: "Of course monopolies and oligopolies are not without advantages. The most important is the fact that they are necessary, given our small domestic market, to produce in large quantities and thereby achieve 'economies of scale' for the sake of being internationally competitive" (Tonga ilbo, Feb. 25,1982, p. 2).7 I was unable to find any use of "economies of scale" in the Taesong This is not literally true. The chairman himself joined in the following year. This is arguable, however. Alice Amsden (1989: 117) notes that "economies of scale" refers to plant size rather than company size, interpreting the phrase in terms of manufacturing costs. Yet the recent growth of Japanese general trading companies suggests that size may confer advantages in marketing and information gathering. 6

7

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103

chairman's public interviews in early 1987, perhaps because chaebol chairmen had recently been stung by a Tonga ilbo editorial that displayed the transparency of pointing to international competition in order to justify size. Commenting on recent assessments of the economy offered by the heads of the major conglomerates, the editorial observed: Moreover, also inappropriate [according to the chaebol commanders in chief] is the prevailing attitude [literally, atmosphere] of intending to inhibit the capital accumulation needed for the sake of maximizing the efficiency of financial operations and [achieving] economies of scale aimed at greater economic efficiency. The GM (General Motors) company has annual sales of $96.3 billion, which is at least three times the total sales of our nation's roo largest firms, they say, so the [South] Korean chaebol still have to become much larger. [Indeed,] they dislike the very word chaebol [because it implies enormity] .... Though it is said that the scale of [South Korean] firms is still small, if one considers that the GNP (the total goods and services of the national economy) of the United States is about 40 times that of ours, the claim that our firms must be as large as GM is weak. In our case, where money, land, and other factors of production are fundamentally limited, it seems a good idea to make our large firms on a scale appropriate to [South] Korean-type large firms. [Tonga ilbo, Jan. ro, 1987, p. 2]

During the months following that editorial, the chairman of Taesong evidently avoided the term economies of scale and chose the more allusive "economic competitiveness." In the following public statement, for example, he created a number of neologisms by adding the suffix (n)yok, a morpheme used to indicate strength, power, or ability: The activity of an enterprise, to the extent that it is fated to face keen competition, comes first from the strength of its capital (chabon-ny6k), and from there its planning strength, its productive strength, its technological strength, its judgment strength, its competitive strength in product quality, and its competitive strength in pricing. [Maeil ky6ngje sinmum, Apr. 3,1987, p. 5]

In addition to responding to criticisms about the size of the chaebol, Taesong's commander in chief also had strategies for putting a more favorable interpretation on the disparity of incomes and exploitation of workers with which the conglomerates were frequently charged. To a question about these inequalities, the chairman responded by talking about job creation: Interviewer: In our society, the absolutely impoverished population and alienated class is still very large. And the government takes some interest now but has been too indifferent in the past. If these conditions continue,

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maintaining a capitalist system will be difficult. How does this problem look from the perspective of the companies? Chairman: The only thing which the large companies can do is pay taxes honestly and expand employment opportunities. In particular, creating new employment opportunities is certainly the most important role of the business community. [Chason ilbo, Feb. 28, 1987, p. 10] The Taesong chairman aimed at legitimating privilege in the eyes of the public by countering popular criticisms and by enlisting public support for-or at least reducing public opposition to-defining the proper role of the state in the economy so as to benefit the chaebol. In part the frequency of his remarks about state actions were prompted by a need to fulfill cultural expectations of his role as chairman of the federation, for the group represented itself as an advisory body to the government. In remarks about state intervention, the Taesong chairman sought to portray himself as firmly committed to the free-market model of political economy while simultaneously soliciting state actions favoring the large conglomerates. The apparent contradiction between these two positions was occluded by his representing state actions favoring the chaebol as "market-promoting" and the remainder as "interventionist." In the interview published by the Chason ilbo (Feb. 28, 1987, p. 10), for example, the chairman takes a free-market position: Interviewer: Since assuming the position of chairman of the Federation of Korean Industries, you have advocated "promoting free enterprise" at every opportunity. Concretely, what will you do? Chairman: The future-oriented attitude of an industrialist is an important feature of a capitalist market-economy. Only in an unrestricted atmosphere can one look ahead to the future and invest, but I think that in our case there are many obstructing restrictions and regulations.

Later in the same interview, he went on to complain of the government's "allocative and directive" (paejong hanun sigigo chisihanun hyongsik) quasi-taxation system, a reference to the common understanding that the state's methods for assessing each company's taxes and a chaebol's "voluntary" contributions employed discretionary command rather than rule of law. Press reports in the following year revealed that in 1986 the contributions of the 50 largest firms exceeded their tax payments (Korea Herald, July 24, 1988, p. 6). Despite frequent protestations against state intervention, however, the chairman asked for it on behalf of the conglomerates less than a

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month later. In the following statement, he justified continued financial support for exports, maintenance of a more favorable exchange rate, and debt-financing of new companies for the sake of competing in international markets: Because it holds 40 percent of our exports, the United States is a very important market for us. To that extent we have to be especially careful about trade conflicts. And isn't the trade deficit with Japan our economy's chronic illness? Unless we solve these problems, it will be difficult to speed up our nation's industrial structuring. For the sake of solving these two pending questions, we have to build an efficient industrial structure by rearing internationally competitive industries and companies. Especially needed is governmental-level policy support. I disapprove of the government's forceful attempts to absorb the currency resulting from the trade surplus by reducing financial support for exports as well as the other such powerful measures which they have used to withdraw currency from circulation. [Maeil kyongje sinmun, Mar. 26, 1987, p. 3]

Thus he portrayed the state's reduction of export financing, an action that could be interpreted as a lessening of intervention in the economy, as an active and even "forceful attempt" to intervene. He made no mention of the fact that it curtailed the benefits granted large firms more than those given to smaller companies. The chairman's remarks about state control over the economy appeared to have had the limited aim of reforming state actions. I do not think he was attempting to question the legitimacy of the Chun Doo Hwan government or promote more radical changes, for elsewhere he clearly expressed his support for "political stability," the common euphemism for South Korea's repressive style of government (Chira 1990: 3). "Politics have to be stable (anjong) if society is to be stable and the economy develop," he observed (Maeil kyongje sinmun, Feb. 13, 1987, p. 2) .. Toward trade conflicts with the United States, the chairman took a somewhat conciliatory stance, more conciliatory than the positions discussed in the preceding chapter as well as those of many subordinates, which are examined in Chapter 6. Instead of condemning the United States for being unfair, acting unreasonably, or bullying, the chairman said American requests were "only natural." In lieu of refusing to yield to American demands, for example, he expressed willingness to tolerate a gradual accommodation: American pressure to change the won-dollar exchange rate and open [South Korean] markets are major difficulties. I guess it's only natural to propose them from the American side, but it cannot be other than a severe blow to

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us .... Even if the won-dollar exchange rate is changed, it should be a rational and slow change; and market-opening measures, if they become necessary, should be limited enough to avoid causing a shock to farming and fishing people. [Maeil kyongje sinmun, Feb. 13, 1987, p. 2]

At least one reason for this more mollifying position is not hard to surmise. Some acquiescence to American demands to open South Korean agricultural markets was intended to forestall greater protectionist measures against the products the conglomerates exported to the United States. As one South Korean academic pointed out, the interests of farmers conflicted with those of chaebol owner-managers: "Farmers know that the American pressure for import liberalization came from the success of Korea's industrialization. Why should they suffer when tycoons get the benefits?" (Far Eastern Economic Review, July 21, 1988, p. 57). Managerial Ideology Ideological themes addressed to subordinates differed from those aimed primarily at the public. Toward their white-collar employees the owner-managers had more ambitious aims, for they sought to induce active contribution to their privileges as well as daily submission to their directives. Moreover, the owner-managers had more opportunities to impress their views on subordinates and commanded a greater variety of devices for this purpose. Even before they entered the company, white-collar employees were partially readied for submission by the press, schools, army, family, and other institutions Louis Althusser (1971) has called "ideological state apparatuses." Building on the insights of Antonio Gramsci (1971 ), Althusser pointed out that these institutions of civil society indoctrinate by legitimating capitalist relations and naturalizing class domination (Buci-Glucksmann 1980: 63-66). In Chapter r I pointed to the partial acclimatization to office discipline afforded by the family, schools, the army, and urban life. The same can be said of the press. Despite their criticisms, for example, the media nevertheless contributed to naturalizing the chaebol's existence by never suggesting the dissolution or nationalization of business groups. My observations and experiences are difficult to reconcile, however, with Althusser's deterministic views of the infrastructural origins of ideology, of its pervasiveness, or the stability of its content over time. Throughout this study I try to show that conflicting interpretations may be derived and subsequently refor-

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mulated from experiences with the family, village, schools, army, press, state agencies, markets, and offices. If Althusser were correct, it would be difficult to understand why the Taesong chaebol and company employed so many of their own devices for disseminating their ideology. These included wall posters and a public-address system in the headquarters building, a published company history, company and chaebol training programs, monthly meetings for headquarters staff of the company, and the chaebol's and company's monthly magazines.8 At first glance, the managerial ideology presented to employees appears to have been a fixed set of ideas that upper management sought to impose on subordinates rather than a contingent and shifting product of human interactions. Part of the genealogy of these ideas can even be traced back to the Cultural Nationalism of the Japanese colonial period. But despite the appearance of a state of inertial continuity, rather than emergence, in chaebol ideology, it was a continually recreated and altered outcome of the bourgeoisie's engagement in a dialectic with employees in the workplace. An active re-creation and reshaping of these ideas by upper management in response to employees' reactions over the years was suggested to me by experiences I had with some of the subordinates who specialized in the production and dissemination of company ideology. The staff charged with planning and implementing the training program for white-collar employees, in which many ideological themes were disseminated, were continually experimenting with new practices and ideas. Taesong employees who had been trained in previous years confirmed that instruction differed from one year to the next. The self-control training (kukki hullyon) to be described in Chapter 4, for example, had been instituted only a few years earlier and was evidently influenced by Japanese business practices described by Rohlen (1974: 199-211) and Kondo (1990: 76-ns). It had been contracted to a small business that specialized in leading such. exercises, but the Taesong's company's own training staff attempted to monitor the responses of the new recruits during the training and through post-training interviews, noting those practices that ap8 The magazines were evidently aimed at blue-collar workers as well, judging from how few Chinese characters were used. Written almost exclusively in the Korean alphabet and usually in fairly simple prose, they could easily be read by anyone with a middle-school education. Moreover, they also contained occasional contributions by blue-collar workers or stories about individual factory workers.

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peared to be most successful.9 They also made recommendations as to which practices should be continued or changed in future years.10 More senior levels of management passed judgment on training plans before their implementation, supervised the program, and evaluated the training staff's recommendations. The Taesong company and chaebol offered an embarrassment of ideological riches. The voluminous printed material, such as company histories/ 1 monthly magazines, and training manuals contained a myriad of ideological themes which advanced a favorable and legitimate image of the organization in order to win subordinates' commitment and cooperation (Salaman and Thompson 1980: 244). I have not attempted to survey all of the conglomerate's managerial ideology but have focused on nationalism and harmony, which seemed most relevant to perceptions of political economy and "traditional" culture and which also appeared to receive the greatest emphasis. Had I been a Japanese or South Korean ethnographer, or even had prior experience in the enterprises of these nations, however, these themes might not have appeared so salient, and perhaps I would have been less skeptical. Though I discuss them separately, nationalism and harmony were related. Harmony applied primarily to relationships within the company, but it was extended to relationships with the rest of society and promoted as an ethical code for advancing the welfare of the entire nation. Harmony was also a recognizably Confucian concept that 9 I suspect that the young men who worked on these activities were among the most committed. None of them ever commented unfavorably about the militaristic style of the company, overtime, or control by superiors. One day upon returning from lunch with a director from another division, I was startled by the deepness and formality of the bow with which a member of the training staff greeted him. 10 In 1987, for example, a formal dinner and lecture on Western table manners had been added to the training agenda. Gathered on one of the upper floors of a 63-story building, the highest in Seoul, the trainees seemed to be as fascinated by the view from the windows as by the dinner. The restaurant was one of the newer upscale eateries, and their curiosity about the view indicated that few of them had eaten there before. The event evidently gave them a greater appreciation of the privileges of their new positions as Taesong employees. According to one manager, the experience was rated highly by the trainees and would be continued. Yet, subordinates resisted the imposition of many other Western practices (see Chapter 6). 11 The previous edition of the Taesong enterprise's history, compiled ten years earlier, was mimeographed, bound with a soft cover, kept in the library, and marked "For internal use only" (saoebi). The current edition, by contrast, was printed on glossy paper, illustrated with several black-and-white and color photographs, bound in velvet hard covers, and distributed widely.

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represented a part of national identity. Korea has long been popularly viewed as the nation that adhered to Confucian principles more faithfully than any other (Dix 1977; Haboush 1991: 85-86). The owners evidently chose to emphasize themes steeped in symbolic meanings associated with Korean culture and identity because their ideological claims were more likely to be effective if they were meaningful and plausible to subordinates, resonating with workers' common understandings. Reinhard Bendix's seminal study (1956) has already pointed to how different managerial ideologies articulated with the cultures and political economies of different societies. Michael Yoshino's (1968) examination of such ideologies in Japan showed how they were affected by Japanese culture as well as by the political and economic interests of the Japanese bourgeoisie. Here we need to examine how the managerial ideology of the South Korean bourgeoisie similarly responded to and attempted to alter the perceptions of subordinates regarding culture and political economy, especially regarding the Taesong chaebol and its companies.

Nationalism. In several ways the owner-managers adopted the Cultural Nationalist idea that their enterprise advanced national welfare. As the maxim "What's good for GM is good for the nation" readily attests, this idea is hardly unique to South Korea. But it was advanced repeatedly, and its particular expressions invoked cultural understandings of political economy, history, and culture. The explicit claim that the economic interests of the chaebol were the same as those of the nation was presented in an essay published in the March 1987 issue of the conglomerate's monthly magazine. It elaborated the meaning of "We Are One" (urinun hana), the principal slogan selected for that year by the conglomerate's chairman. The essay was attributed collectively to the Planning Team of the group's Office of Coordination and Planning, which belonged to the chaebol's highest level of management.12 Like much of the ideologi12 The Office of Coordination and Planning, which appears to have no exact parallel in American firms, could be described as the nerve center of the chaebol. As Jung Ku-Hyun (1987: 144-45) has observed, these offices were established in South Korean conglomerates after they had grown so large and diverse that some sort of mechanism was needed to consolidate control over their several companies and wideranging operations. At Taesong the office did not belong to any of the companies and served the highest levels of the conglomerate's management. The current chairman's eldest son and heir-apparent occupied a vice-presidential appointment there during my fieldwork. Its staff was entrusted with publishing the group's monthly magazine.

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cal discourse presented in the conglomerate's and company's printed material, it was more didactic than the livelier style of newspaper editorials and interviews. The notion that "We Are One" has the following three social unities as its components: First, as an enterprise (kiop) we are one with the national society. An enterprise is grounded in the citizens and society of the nation. Therefore, while satisfying the just expectations of the nation's citizens and society, an enterprise chooses a growth industry which matches its abilities, serves consumers by providing fine products and services, expands employment opportunities by continued industrial growth, and through co-existence and co-prosperity with the affiliated firms which supply goods to our enterprise and the franchised distributors which handle our products, the firm comes to discharge its social responsibilities and thereby becomes one with the nation. This passage portrays the chaebol's and nation's interests as entirely congruent. It defines the interests of the nation in terms of economic growth and employment opportunities and excludes any mention of economic concentration or the conglomerates' other negative attributes that appeared so often in the press. Similarly, the group's interests were also defined in terms of growth rather than owners' income. The owner-managers of the chaebol did not acknowledge that their salaries or profits were derived at the expense of their creditors, suppliers, customers, competitors, or employees. Nation and enterprise were equated through the selective emphasis on some facts and the concealment of others. Missing from this statement was any mention of conflicting interests or adversarial relationships. No reference was made to state control, for example. The opposing interests of owner-managers and subordinates were also hidden by using the first-person plural pronoun and portraying the entire business group as a collective actor. Affiliated suppliers and distributors were mentioned perhaps to deflect criticism that the large chaebol have monopolized the Korean economy and inhibited the growth of small and medium-sized firms. A few months later, the conflicting interests of one company and its independent distributors became all too apparent: a sizable group of them held a loud demonstration for a few days in the lobby of the headquarters building to obtain more favorable pricing and payment arrangements for the products they bought and in turn resold to the public. Their militant demonstration disrupted the flow of traffic in and out of the building and was reported in newspapers as well.

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III

Taesong was also presented as advancing the interest of the nation in the portrayal of some specific details of its business operations. Though occasional mention was made of a major import-substitution . accomplishment of earlier years, in which a competing American product was driven out of the South Korean market, employees heard far more often of the growth and volume of exports in company magazines, annual reports, training manuals for new recruits, bulletin board notices, and a variety of other media. Photographs of a trophy from the government for export achievements graced company publications and bulletin boards. The last line of the chaebol's song alluded to exports with the phrase "Reaching out to the whole world, Taesong." No mention was made of the group's or company's imports of raw materials or machinery needed to produce those exports, except indirectly when it was noted that the company had been the first to utilize a technologically sophisticated piece of equipment acquired from abroad. The owner-managers did not appeal to nationalism merely by drawing selectively on theories of political economy and partially representing their interests. A variety of other claims, varying in subtlety and emotional appeal, expressed the idea that the conglomerate and its companies were devoted to advancing the welfare of the nation. The opening words of the group's song, sung at each monthly meeting of the Taesong company's headquarters staff and on a variety of other official occasions, referred to its employees as "We, the young workers of this nation" (urinun i nara ui cholmun ilggundul) and the penultimate line of its refrain called the conglomerate the "pride of the nation" (nara ui charangida). Each morning and evening, workers rose to attention and faced the South Korean flag, found in every office, as the national anthem was played over the company's public-address system. Ringing telephones were answered during the anthem, but no new calls were made and talking within offices ceased. The national anthem opened each month's company meeting for the headquarters staff. A formal salute to the flag followed, with one of the staff charged with organizing the event barking out commands so that everyone pre8ent came to attention, saluted, and relaxed in unison. A large flag, about three feet by four feet, was usually affixed to the wall directly behind the speaker's podium when the president addressed the employees. Viewed from the audience, the flag was aligned with the president's head and upper torso, suggesting that

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he spoke for the nation or that his instructions were backed by it. Photographs of the president so addressing the employees, with the large flag behind him clearly in focus, adorned the pages of the company's magazine and its published history. These pictures were often taken with a telephoto lens, which reduced the apparent distance between the president and the flag. At other gatherings, such as the training of new recruits, a South Korean flag of about the same size was somewhat less conspicuously displayed but was clearly visible on one flagpole, a company flag of equal dimensions on another. A commonly used photograph of the chaebol's headquarters was taken from the angle that showed the South Korean flag, together with the flags of the conglomerate and state-directed New Village Movement, in the foreground, their patterns waving in the wind. Invocations of nationalist sentiment were apparent in other ways as well. On one occasion, the chairman of the chaebol told an audience of newly appointed directors that they were "patriots," and the text of his talk was reproduced in the group's magazine (May 1987). Photographs on bulletin boards and in the company's magazine depicted top executives in meetings with high government officials or with the president himself. The government was not portrayed as too interventionist to employees, though that was a principal point of the chairman's public statements, evidently because it would have been difficult to reconcile that idea with the perfect convergence of national and chaebol interests. Very likely, the owner-managers knew that doing so was unnecessary anyway. As I will show in Chapter 6, subordinates also expressed negative views of state control over their work. Cultural understandings of Korean history informed the ownermanagers' choices of symbolic strategies for pressing the claim that their kin group had contributed to the national welfare. In the company's history, a new edition of which was published in 1987, the conglomerate is portrayed as having grown through the founder's nationalism, as well as his risk taking, arduous efforts, technological innovations, and keen foresight. The history of the founder's commercial activities narrated in this volume began prior to the creation of the conglomerate, reaching well back into the Japanese colonial period. Since neither the chaebol nor its owner-managers had been accused of illicit wealth accumulation during that era, the founder's activities during those early years were portrayed as having been motivated by a thorough com-

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mitment to the nation. According to this account, the founder had grown up under the influence of his grandfather, a man of "intense patriotism," who had resigned his official government position in the waning years of the Chason dynasty and returned to his home in the countryside because the royal court had been corrupted by the invasion of foreign powers. His ardent love of his country was further illustrated by an admittedly oral legend: As soon as the "hellish" annexation occurred, he regarded himself as a criminal and did not eat for three days or leave his house for three months-an allusion to Korean funeral practices in which the sons of the deceased present themselves as criminals for not having prevented the death of their parent.13 The founder also had a "patriotic spirit" (aeguk chongsin), and his interest in commerce was first aroused by a desire to form a village cooperative in order to prevent any further profits from falling into the hands of a Japanese merchant who had settled in his rural community and opened a general store there. Thus, the founder's transition from an elite yang ban family to an un-Confucian commercial career was explained by his patriotic intentions. Throughout the history the reader was told how the founder and the company furthered the economic and technological development of the nation especially by introducing new techniques of production. The most important of these achievements were repeated in a chapter on the company's "Contributions to the Development of Our Nation's Industry." In another passage the founder himself was called "a pillar [literally, huge tree] of our nation's industry" (uri nara sanopkye ui komok). Indeed, the history even mentioned that he visited Manchuria, interpreting this trip as evidence of foresight about exports with no apparent concern that it could also be perceived as acquiescence to, if not a furthering of, Japanese colonial policies. Devices for linking the business group and the nation were endless. Besides equating their interests, using official symbols, and recounting past events, the company also appealed to its employees' sense of nationalism in a more subtle fashion by conveying a commitment to "traditional" Korean culture. Many of the "traditions" it invoked, however, entailed practices far removed from daily activities in the office. A regular feature of the company magazine, for example, was entitled "The Beauty of Korea" and included a photograph and brief 13 For descriptions of Korean funeral practices, see Janelli and Janelli (1982: 63-64) and Dredge (1987).

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description of examples of folk art. The conglomerate also gave its employees a three-day holiday on the lunar New Year, still celebrated widely in rural Korea despite the state's official sanction of the solar calendar at that time.14 The three-day vacation enabled employees to return to rural villages and spend the holiday with friends and family. Other touches of tradition could be seen in the large ashtrays placed next to the elevators that were originally pottery jars intended to store pickled vegetables and other indigenous foods. And the windows of the headquarters building were shaded with sliding screens modeled on the paper-covered doors and windows of older homes. The company also displayed its commitment to selected symbols of cultural identity by inviting speakers to the monthly meetings of the headquarters staff or on other occasions. Several of them propounded nationalistic themes, and summaries of their talks were later printed in the company's or chaebol's monthly magazine. During my research one historian suggested that the Korean kingdom had once extended into the Shan dong peninsula. A singing teacher maintained that Koreans could sing better than the people of any other nation. Another speaker, who held a position at a major university, presented several humorous compari'sons of Korean and Western cultural practices, showing in each instance why the Korean custom was superior. He compared a briefcase and a pojaegi, a square cloth used to wrap bundles. The pojaegi had so declined in popularity during the past few decades that it had acquired an old~fashioned or rural connotation, but the speaker pointed out that because the size of a briefcase was invariable, it was sometimes too big for one's bundle and sometimes too small. Moreover, it had to be carried around even after it had been emptied of its contents. A pojaegi, on the other hand, easily adjusted to the size of one's load; if one had nothing to carry, the pojaegi could be conveniently folded up and put in a pocket, thereby leaving both hands free. He also noted that the waist of Korean men's trousers was not formfitting like Western trousers and thus could accommodate a change in waist size that might occur after one ate a large meal or gained or lost weight. Yet another example dealt with ordering beer. Only in Korea could people enter a bar and ask for 14 In the midst of rising folkloric nostalgia, the state declared the lunar new year Folklore Day and made it a legal holiday; but a single day was inadequate for returning to rural homes and celebrating the occasion there. Shortly after my fieldwork, it was made a three-day legal holiday. For descriptions of lunar new year celebrations, see Rutt (1964: 184-89), Janelli and Janelli (1982: 26, 82, 86-121, 128, 174), and Dix (1987).

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a "few" bottles (handu sana pyang; literally, "one, two, three, or four bottles"), leaving the exact number up to the waiter or waitress. This showed that Koreans were not obsessed with detailed calculations, the kind of mental operations that are increasingly handled by computers. His main point was that Koreans' lack of concern with details, a popular theme of national identity usually criticized, actually represented a kind of flexibility and broadness of outlook that will give them an advantage in the coming postindustrial society. Unlike the more didactic statements regarding the interests of the enterprise and the nation, this presentation was humorous and entertaining. Many employees found it so appealing that they cited it on several subsequent occasions, thereby reinforcing the message. A few pointed out that the president must have liked it too, since he invited the speaker to his office for a cup of coffee. Harmony. Harmony (inhwa tan'gyal) was one of three principles (sahun) in the Taesong chaebol's stated managerial ideology and one of three in that of the Taesong company, which referred to it as a "cooperative life-style" (hyaptongjak saenghwal). Indeed, Taesong was noted by both outsiders and employees for particularly emphasizing this theme, though harmony, solidarity (tan'gyal), or cooperation were among the principles of about half of South Korea's companies (Yi Kiiil 1988: 492; Lee Hak Chong 1986: 98; Hwang Pyongjun 1985: 34-35). Since harmony was explicitly recognized at both company and group levels, it received a good deal of commentary and exegesis. A glossy Taesong brochure introducing the chaebol and its operations, for example, in both Korean and English editions included the following explanation: "The [Taesong] Group seeks harmony and unity in human relations, with stress on affection, trust, respect, cooperation, and, above all, a sense of oneness. Human harmony is valued as a prerequisite for the promotion of public well-being in general as well as for the interests of the group as a business organization." Harmony was invoked in at least four general Taesong practices: in appeals for "teamwork" (an English loanword), in reminders of the mutuality of the employees' and group's interests, in warnings of external dangers, and in the use of the family as a metaphor for the chaebol. The first of these four I take up in the next chapter where I examine company training, since I obtained particularly striking examples while observing that activity. As for the other three themes, my attention here focuses on how

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they linked the pursuit of material interests to constructions of Korean traditions, particularly to popular perceptions of the Korean family. The first two evoked these understandings· by implication, and the third explicitly. Just as the owner-managers sought to establish an identity of interests between the nation and the chaebol or company, so they sought to equate the interests of the chaebol or company with those of their employees. After explaining that the conglomerate's 1987 slogan, We Are One, referred to the unity of the nation and the chaebol, the Office of Coordination and Planning pointed to cooperation and trust between individuals and organizational units ("Second, as each of the industries and companies (hoesa) of the group, and each of the functional divisions (kinung chojik) of the companies, we are one") and then to the unity of interests between the conglomerate and its employees ("Third, as an enterprise and its employees, we are one"). The chaebol and employees shared the same interests: The company itself is its employees. It is difficult to expect either individual growth or the enterprise's growth and development without forming an atmosphere of mutual cooperation and trust on the basis of employees' positive attitudes, voluntary participation, and assumption of responsibility. Through the growth and development of the enterprise, the job security of employees is protected and opportunities for promotion and self-fulfillment are provided. When this happens, a climate is established in which employees participate voluntarily and assume responsibility at their own initiative, and by making possible the formation of an atmosphere of cooperation and trust, not only between employees but also between organizational units, the development of the enterprise too is naturally achieved. When the enterprise fulfills the role of providing its employees with the basis of their livelihood and the company's development is achieved through [its employees'] individual growth, the enterprise and its employees become one.

Chapter r explained how the rural family was often understood as a group whose members shared mutual rather than opposing interests. Other claims attempted to forge a different link between cultural understandings of the family and perceptions of the chaebol. The owner-managers sought to elicit employee cooperation by downplaying dangers within the chaebol itself, such as their being passed over for promotion or even being fired, and chose instead to emphasize external dangers the group faced from international as well as South Korean competitors. These practices were partly analogous to the strategies of South Korean parents who attempt to control their young

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children and inculcate a sense of dependency by warning them of external dangers, such as tigers, rather than threatening them with corporal or other punishment. This approach on the part of South Korean parents has already been recognized (Han Dongse 1972; Dix 1977: 84), though the analogy to managerial strategy is my own. The owner-managers pointed to external dangers on several occasions. Though international market conditions were favorable to the short-term growth of the chaebol, the Taesong chairman and the Taesong company president both identified greater foreign competition and increased protectionism from advanced industrial countries as perils that lay ahead. Employees were asked for their help in overcoming the impending hazards. Dangers from the company's domestic competitors received less explicit attention, perhaps because emphasizing them would not have been entirely consistent with equating the interests of the conglomerate and the entire nation, but the threat of domestic competition was conveyed in an emphasis on information security. Many documents, such as the company's organization chart, were classified. Memos and other documents were carried about or left on desks under covers that prevented a casual passerby from reading their contents, and several areas of the company offices were marked "restricted." A wall poster found in many of the large offices of the headquarters building likened economic competition to warfare. Its cartoonlike drawings, simple color scheme (black, white, and red), and plain prose gave it the appearance of a military poster: Ten Guidelines for Security Consciousness

-Take proper measures when producing the contents of secrets which would be profitable to other companies (i.e., competitors) and do not allow staff whose responsibilities are unrelated either to write them down or to make copies of them. 15 -While handling secret documents, put them in a desk or a filing cabinet and lock it whenever leaving them, even if only for a moment. -Be wary when conversing with officials or staff of other companies and also be circumspect in word and deed. -In security-sensitive departments that are not thoroughly guarded (secretarial, telex, facsimile, copy room, switchboard, etc.), manage and supervise workers thoroughly. 15 The rules are written in the subjunctive, which is usually used in public signs where the imperative would be more appropriate in English: "Let's protect the grass" instead of "Keep off the grass," for example. Imperatives offer a more idiomatic translation into English but lose the nuance of appealing for cooperation.

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-Don't talk about details of the company's operations, even with family, relatives, or friends. -Remember that among competitors' intelligence-gathering objectives, the most important information is that which deals with new products. -Remember that even information that is fragmentary, trifling, and insignificant can become important information when pieced together. -Remember that competitors not only gather information but can also cause confusion to managing the company by using disinformation. -The more valuable the information, the higher the position of the person from which it flows; but don't be careless even with the administration of trifling information. -Remember that for personnel who work in departments that contain very important secrets there are hands outstretched with countless temptations (money, liquor, women, favors, etc.). ''By remembering that the success or failure of the firm can depend on one word spoken by one person, all employees must make security part of their everyday life and thereby maintain strict security.

Pointing to mutual interests, the need for collective efforts, and external dangers implied family practices; the family was also used as an explicit metaphor for the company or chaebol. Kinship terms, for example, were used to signify commercial relationships. Taesong company was called the "mother company" (mach' e) of the group, though on other occasions all the individual firms of the conglomerate were referred to as "sister companies" (chamae hoesa). A regular feature of the group's monthly magazine, entitled "We Are One Family" (urinun han kajok), highlighted one of the companies or franchisees of the Taesong group. Taesong personnel were more frequently represented as family than companies were. The conglomerate's chairman opened his New Year's address to a gathering of its directors by addressing them as ''Taesong family members" (group magazine, Jan. 1987). An employee contributing an essay to the company's magazine introduced himself by saying, "I became a member of the Taesong family in 1975" Uune 1987). And an account of new recruits in the magazine described them as "the newly hired Taesong men who have become family members" (Feb. 1987). A managing director (sangmu isa) wrote in the chaebol's magazine (Nov. 1986) that the proper management of subordinates was like the proper education of children. The title of his essay is "Even If Severe to Workers, by Being Human ..." He wrote: "Just as a human being receives from birth influences from everyone in proximity, especially the absolute influence of parents,

THE BOURGEOISIE AND THEIR IDEOLOGY

II9

and grows up, so it can be said that the role of a manager in the company is to develop the individual abilities of employees (sawon) and to bring about their harmonious efforts" (Nov. 1986). One of the best-written and most detailed equations of office and family life was by a woman employee. It was published in the group's magazine, a sort of collaborative effort between the elites and a lower-level subordinate who was willing to voice support for their view. One of several employees who responded to the magazine's request for personal exegeses of the We Are One theme, she wrote (Mar. 87): Aren't we maintaining relationships between co-workers and between superiors and subordinates too coldheartedly? We tend to let relationships between superiors and subordinates come to feel very self-interested and difficult. How about looking at them from a different perspective, however: as relationships between parents and children? · Parents never feign ignorance of their children's talents and abilities. [Instead,] they cultivate their children's abilities and strive to acknowledge their talents. The children too have complete trust and faith in their parents, and live with a respectful attitude toward them. In addition, the youngest daughter can be said to occupy a very Important place as the darling (usum kkot) of the family. 16 Let's try grafting this atmosphere onto the office. The managers have warm human affection, like a parent's devotion, toward the sawon [employees], cultivate the knowledge and abilities of each individual, and guide their talents and ability to evaluate [their own] work. The sawon too, like sons and daughters toward parents, have faith in and respect for them, and fulfill their own responsibilities. And how would it be if, like the youngest daughter who becomes the darling of the family, the female employees fulfilled the role of reducing friction in their departments and became the basic bridges between personnel [literally, the basic stepping stones of business]?

The woman worker's statement cleverly drew analogies between the family and the office workers by selectively highlighting common knowledge of the Korean family and of office life. Equating the women workers with the family's youngest daughter fits with the fact that women workers were almost always younger than male office workers. 17 Moreover, women workers were regarded as but temporary members of the company, just as unmarried women were often 16 Usum kkot (literally, smile flower) is a trope that connotes "pleasant" (Yi Hilisung 1982: 2726). I am indebted to Yim Suk-jay for suggesting "darling" as a translation for this term. 17 The youngest daughter is commonly thought to be the family member who has least responsibility for household chores.

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regarded as but temporary members of the.ir natal families. 18 The unmarried daughter evoked an image of the family when offspring were in adolescence or early adulthood or when parental control was probably at its height. Though the statement is congruent with many cultural understandings of the family, 'it is nevertheless a partial truth. It attempts to justify the reprimands and other disciplinary practices of managers by claiming that they were motivated by a recognition of the best interests of subordinates, just as parents' reprimands were prompted by a desire to improve their offspring. It further claimed that managers also wanted to recognize the abilities of subordinates but did not praise them because employees needed improvement. Such a claim obscured the opposition of interests between a manager and his subordinates: the harder they work, the better he looks. While making an undisputable (because very abstract) analogy between parental control of children and managerial control of subordinates, the author ignored the fact that the Korean family has not been a model for nankin relationships, that parental authority was legitimated via filial piety and the collective ownership of family property, that added social prestige or enhancement of symbolic capital helped to motivate displays of harmony, that personnel were fired far more easily than children were disowned, and that advancing in the family hierarchy at a slower rate than one's siblings was impossible whereas being promoted at a slower rate than the rest of one's cohort was not. She also occulted offsprings' evasions, prevarications, and reinterpretations aimed at resisting or blunting parental control. The village rather than the family would seem to have been a more appropriate metaphor for promoting cooperative social relationships in modern South Korean institutions. In fact, it is the metaphor more often used by students or dissident groups for their organizations. Perhaps the more egalitarian qualities of village relationships made it a less appealing metaphor to the bourgeoisie. Like nationalism, the notion that the company was a family was conveyed in a seemingly endless variety of subtle symbols and prac18 Even this may be but a partial analogy. Laurel Kendall (1985) has argued that rural women often retained strong ties to their natal families after marriage. Her interpretation does not seem to fit communities dominated by a single lineage of some prestige, where wives usually married in from some distance (Janelli and Janelli 1982), but it does seem appropriate when women married within their natal village or came from nearby settlements (e.g., Chun 1984).

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tices. On Parents' Day section chiefs were given flowers on their desks. To promote better human relations each section chief and department head had funds for distributing cups of coffee, cookies, and other small treats during the workday as well as for taking subordinates out to lunch, for drinking in the evenings, on weekend picnics, or to whatever other entertainment they might enjoy. Employees were also presented with gifts of company products on major holidays, offered rides to work on company buses each morning, and given lunch in the conglomerate's cafeteria. One division, whose members were geographically dispersed, held an annual meeting that had as a major objective, according to the documents used to plan the event, promoting "a sense of oneness" (ilch'egam).

Other Ideological Themes Nationalism and harmony by no means exhaust all the ideological themes used at Taesong or other enterprises. In a survey of the managerial principles of 77 companies, Lee Hak Chong (1989a: 149) found the following themes: harmony and unity, sincerity and diligence, creation and development, business credibility, productivity and quality, work responsibility, progressiveness, social responsibility, scientific management, and sacrifice and service.19 These other themes appear to cluster around two semantic poles, one scientific and the other moral: rationality, technology, innovation, and creativity, on the one hand; honesty, responsibility, sincerity, and reliability on the other.

Technological innovation. Though neither technological innovation nor product quality seemed to receive as much attention as nationalism and harmony, at least in the white-collar offices, they were by no means absent. New products were shown each month in the chaebol's magazine, and every Wednesday morning a five-minute announcement came over the public-address system announcing the chaebol's newly developed merchandise. The group's research laboratories were also featured in its glossy brochures, and the company's published history highlighted its technological innovations. The company's and group's emphasis on technological innovation is a logical strategy for enterprises of their size. The largest firms, 19 These are listed in order of frequency, from more t~ less popular, though the frequencies were a product of the classification system. Lee Hak Chong altered the categories in other publications (1986: 98; 1990: 434) and arrived at a somewhat different set of statistics.

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which can afford expensive facilities for research and development, are popularly acknowledged to be at the forefront of technology. Small firms are thought to be somewhat backward. They connote low prestige, technological simplicity, and back-alley operations (Brandt 1980). I have heard no tales of small innovative companies like young Apple Computer in South Korea. Technological innovation is associated with size, so it is useful for legitimating the economic concentration of the chaebol. Technological innovation was not unrelated to nationalism. In a society that views itself as increasingly handicapped by a lack of technology as it loses its comparative advantage in low labor costs, creating new products or just being the first to introduce new technology from abroad can be seen as an advancement of the nation's stock of knowledge. Employees were aware that rising wages in South Korea required it to move up the product cycle if it was to remain competitive in international trade.20 Perhaps Taesong company's emphasis on technological innovation was also related to its upper managers' sensitivity about its image as a producer of consumer products. In a training session for the new entrants, one instructor made a point of describing the industrial products the company produced. An apparently enthusiastic entrant immediately raised his hand and proposed that the company do more to educate the general public about that side of the firm. The instructor responded, with an air of resignation, that the public image was formed largely through advertisements, and advertising industrial products in the mass media was not economically efficient since there were so few potential customers. Finally, there was the wholly unanticipated response of one manager to whom I posed the question of why the company chose to place such emphasis on its technological achievements. He suggested that to deflect criticism from the company for exploiting its bluecollar workers, profits and growth were attributed to its technological innovations rather than low wages. That had never occurred to me. Moral qualities. Like the officials of the other companies included in Lee Hak Chong's survey, Taesong's owner-managers also advanced a variety of morally implicated ideas to reshape the thinking of its 20 Perhaps it also implied a lessening of royalty payments to foreign nations. A 1988 subway advertisement for a soft drink noted that the beverage was made with purely Korean technology and thus required no royalties.

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employees. In addition to claiming that the group and company had advanced the national welfare, they also declared frequently that their enterprise had earned the trust of the public through the quality of its products and that some of its name brands had become household words. Indeed, its products were among the most trusted in South Korea, and my own experience as a consumer indicates that they were among the most reliable. The chaebol enjoyed such a large share of the sales of these products that the state had declared it a monopoly in several markets and subjected it to price controls. Other ideas encouraged employees to advance the chaebol owners' interests through moral exhortations and promises of the work-hardand-you-will-be-rewarded variety. Among the Employees' Guiding Principles listed in the company's training manual were "I love to work," "I am rational and enterprising," and "I am quick and accurate in my work." Signs in elevators, as well as on the walls of company offices, reiterated the idea found in the company history that success was due to one's own efforts. "Improving one's work with originality develops the company and oneself too," according to one poster. "Let's get rid of choktangjuui [doing no more than a satisfactory job] and root out bureaucratic mentality," read another. Yet one more said, "Believe in ability and don't brag; diligently improve yourself." And among the more frequently heard mottos was "sincerity" (songsil), which I found difficult to comprehend until later reading Helen Hardacre's (1986: 26-27) account of this concept in Japan. It refers to wholeheartedly and selflessly devoting one's energies and is linked to the assumption of responsibility for one's failures as well as one's accomplishments, themes included in the Office of Coordination and Planning's exegesis of We Are One. Ironically, Hardacre (1986: 31-32) also noted how unusual these ideas were among Korean residents in Japan. In the concluding chapter, I take up the relationship of company practices to those commonly found in that nation. .

FOUR

Control from the Top The most succes~ful ideological effects are those which have no need of words, and ask no more than complicitous silence. (Bourdieu I977: I88)

owner-managers guarded their appropriation of the T chaebol's financial and human resources through coercive pracAESONG's

tices that also sustained or reproduced asymmetrical relations of power and economic privilege. These other practices had ideological consequences too, however, for they conveyed the idea that the bourgeoisie had at their disposal powerful means for protecting their interests. Some of the most potent control measures involving close supervision or direct participation by Taesong's owner-managers belonged to the areas of financial and personnel administration. Those of the former helped especially to insulate the bourgeoisie's privileged access to the conglomerate's capital from external challenges, especially by other shareholders but more generally by the public. Personnel management, on the other hand, sought to contain resistance and challenges to managerial control by subordinates at all levels within the organization. Financial Control

The owners and upper managers of the Taesong chaebol and company constructed public financial statements and various reports to government agencies, controlled appointments to their companies' boards of directors, and conducted stockholders' meetings with an eye to shielding their control of financial resources from external interference. It is difficult to describe these practices, particularly the financial records and the stockholders' meetings, without alleg-

CONTROL FROM THE TOP

ing or insinuating dishonesty and thereby implying moral censure. Public financial records, for example, provided a version of reality that obfuscated information potentially damaging to the bourgeoisie but useful to their opponents.' And stockholders' meetings were self-consciously aimed at obscuring what the managers regarded as reality. If the owner-managers felt they had been unfairly judged by their critics, however, they could perceive such practices as a means of legitimate self-defense. They could also point to the need to protect the company from ch'onghoeggun, outsiders who acquire a few shares of stock in the company to gain admittance to a stockholders' meeting and who threaten to disrupt it unless given a payoff. These practices are well known. Academic observers have referred to the "low level of credibility" of financial statements Qung 1987: 178; Shin Young Moo 1983) and the antics at stockholders' meetings have been revealed in newspaper accounts. 2 The public also has a healthy skepticism toward the chaebol, and it seems unlikely that many people were fooled. The methods described here furthered the bourgeoisie's control by preventing embarrassing disclosures, maintaining social propriety, and otherwise preserving their symbolic as well as economistic capital. They belong to what Erving Goffman (1959) termed "impression management" rather than a confidence racket.

Financial statements and reports. As accounting theorists know, any report of net income, any balance sheet, or any other financial statement is an interpretation of transactions and their economic consequences (Montagna 1986). Financial statements of South Korean enterprises were subject to different constraints and enablements and were informed by different cultural understandings than those of capitalist organizations elsewhere. These social and cultural conditions affected choices regarding what the responsibilities of accountants and auditors were, what data were relevant to their tasks, how assets and profits were to be measured Goo 1991), and ultimately which actions advanced, or were likely to advance, which interests. 1 This obfuscation cannot be explained by national differences in what accountants call "generally accepted principles of accounting." Accounting practices in South Korea are largely modeled on those of the United States (Yi Chongho 1985: 439). For English-language accounts of South Korean accounting principles, see Korean Institute of Certified Public Accountants (1985) and Joo (1991). 2 My use of the word antics is intended not to disparage but rather to convey some of the humor with which the practices were portrayed by Taesong personnel and newspapers alike.

!26

CONTROL FROM THE TOP

The state prescribed accounting rules and even specified a chart of accounts, for example, defining the categories accountants used to classify data, but in other ways, the state tolerated considerable freedom in record keeping. Since the conglomerate was not a legal entity, no state agency required it to prepare public financial statements. Instead, each of its member companies prepared its own documents for the public as if they were autonomous organizations, thereby obscuring the conglomerate as an economic and political entity. Most media or academic critics, and even sympathetic observers, attempting to analyze quantitatively a business group as a whole simply summed up the financial statements of its member companies. But such an approach understated the extent of a conglomerate's indebtedness,' permitted sales and income figures to be inflated and other financial data to be manipulated through intra-chaebol transactions, and minimized the apparent concentration of the economy by the major business groups (Jeong Kap-young 1990: 63).4 Comprehensive statements for each conglomerate, however, were evidently prepared in private. For several years, consolidated figures for sales and a few other key indicators had been presented to Fortune magazine for its annual International sao. In 1987 some of the major groups stopped providing the magazine with such data, seeking to downplay their success in order to avoid exacerbating protectionist sentiments in the United States (Asian Wall Street journal, May q, 3 The amount of understatement cannot be calculated without actually having consolidated statements, but the principle can be illustrated with an example. If Firm A were financed with $25 ,ooo of its owners' own funds and $75 ,ooo of debt, its balance sheet would show a debt-equity ratio of tlitee to one: Assets = Liabilities + Owners' Equity Company A Ioo,ooo = 75 ,ooo + 25 ,ooo. If the owners of Firm A then used $25 ,ooo of its funds and an additional $75 ,ooo of debt to create a wholly owned subsidiary, summing up or averaging independent balance sheets for each of the respective companies would also yield a debt-equity ratio of three to one:

Company A Company B

wo,ooo Ioo,ooo

75,000 75,000

+

+

25,000 25,000

Total 2oo,ooo 15o,ooo + 5o,ooo. A consolidated statement, on the other hand, recognizes that $25,000 of the first company's assets are $25,000 of the second's equity, eliminates the double counting, and shows a debt-equity ratio of six to one: 175,ooo = 15o,ooo + 25,000. Korean accountants are aware of this problem (Nam 1985: 468-69).

Companies A & B 4

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1987, p. 3). Within a few years only two of the four largest chaebol presented themselves as unified enterprises in Fortune's annual listings; the other two had their largest individual companies listed separately. The state also granted liberties in the preparation of public financial statements for each group's member companies by freeing them from close scrutiny by external auditors. The Far Eastern Economic Review (Nov. 9, 1989, pp. 73-74) revealed that the state regulated fees paid to auditors and set them too low to permit adequate investigations, a strategy that may have been a recent development. In the early 198o's companies were not legally required to correct their published financial statements to reflect the results of an external audit (Shin Young Moo 1983: r65-66).5 Even if allowed to conduct a more thorough inspection of records, independent auditors would have found it extremely difficult to uncover such transactions as the appropriation of funds for what could be interpreted as the owner-managers' personal use. Auditing techniques developed in the West are predicated on independence of a company's employees and the presumed difficulty of collaboration in illicit activities. More thorough control of subordinates and the conventions of "harmony" facilitated collaboration in a South Korean company. The use of pseudonyms (kamyong) or the names of relatives to designate ownership of bank accounts, land, equities, and other assets would also have defied any auditor's efforts to verify that all transactions, intercompany holdings, and other ownership claims had been included in company records. My point is not that South Korean financial statements are inaccurate "mirrors of reality" (Rorty 1979). Rather, they are humanly constructed, reflect constraints and enablements imposed primarily by the state, and are informed by cultural understandings. Thus, any interpretation of the political economy that attempts to use these documents rests on already interpreted data, generating a hermeneutic circle in" all these reports. Skepticism toward official documents is itself a bit of cultural knowledge that has a long history in Korea. Public records have been used to advance an individual's or group's advantage by appearing to conform to registration laws while effectively evading them. Land 5 The statements used for the 1987 meeting of the Taesong company included the testimony of independent auditors.

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registers of the Chason dynasty (1392-1910), for example, include plots of cultivable land recorded in fictitious names, evidently to escape taxation. During and after the Japanese colonial era, family registers showed similar manipulation. Dates recorded for births, marriages, and deaths were often unreliable, and some data were flagrantly falsified. 6 Thus, published financial statements and other public records were commonly recognized as human constructs and did not enjoy the aura of veritability commonly attributed to such documents in the United States. Effective state control of a chaebol's activities probably required more or different information than that provided to the public, and state officials evidently obtained such data. Companies listed on the stock exchange, for example, were required to provide externally audited statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission but not to the public (Shin Young Moo 1983: 165 ). After press liberalization in 1987, news reports indicated that other state agencies had also acquired additional records from the conglomerates-a sort of second set of books-for their own use. In August 1988 the Bank of Korea revealed for the first time consolidated figures for the chaebol's bank loans; in 1990 a government auditor was detained by the police for releasing details without state authorization on the conglomerate's ownership of land not used for its principal businesses and presumably held for investment. Only with the knowledge that state officials were not likely to take the conglomerate's official records at face value can we make sense of an anecdote regarding landholding, control of finances, and bourgeois responses to the demands of state agencies. The manager who presented the story emphasized the state's onerous control and portrayed his company and its upper managers as innocent here and in several other contexts. My primary interest, however, lies neither in whether the events really happened nor in the manager's intentions but in the cultural premises on which the story was based: official records enjoyed little authority in disputes with the state bureaucracy. 6 Dawnhee Yim and I examined the colonial-era household registers for one village and found, for example, a family in which two brothers less than six months apart in age had allegedly been born of the same mother, who told us years earlier that her husband's concubine had given birth to one of the sons. The contrast with the accuracy of Taiwanese household registers of the same period is striking (cf. Wolf and Huang I98o ). I am indebted to Arthur P. Wolf for drawing my attention to these documents.

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According to the manager, a state agency maintained that one of the relatives who controlled Taesong owned a piece of land unneeded for business purposes and ordered him to sell it. (I surmise that this happened during one of state's public campaigns against chaebol land speculation.) Though the relative protested that he did not own the land, the officials at the state agency refused to believe him and instructed banks to terminate Taesong's loans, a particularly effective stranglehold since a portion of these loans had to be renewed daily. To have the group's credit restored immediately, the alleged owner contracted to sell the land he did not own.7 Later, said the manager, the state agency realized its error. Board of directors. The board of directors appointed to each of Taesong's companies comprised all its director-level managers (isa) and above, including managing directors (sangmu isa), senior managing directors (chonmu isa), vice-presidents, the president, and two other persons who served as auditors (kamsa). These auditors were also drawn from within the chaebol but from its other companies. They were either relatives who controlled the group or non-relative upper managers. According to public records, Taesong company's board totaled 33 in 1986 and included the group's chairman. Bank officers, major customers, or suppliers were rarely included on the boards of companies, thereby preserving the chaebol's owner-managers from another constraint that often restricts management elsewhere. The only exceptions I found were joint-venture companies, in which foreign partners were also accorded seats on the board. Directors' appointments were formally approved by voice vote at the annual stockholders' meetings after being announced in the newspapers several weeks earlier. Stockholder approval was an endorsement of decisions already made by the bourgeoisie. The Taesong company's board of directors met weekly, usually for about an hour or two. I was unable to observe any of their meetings, but according to a few accounts of those who attended, directors reported to the president on the operations of their respective divisions, information regarding company plans or new activities was distributed, and coordination between the various divisions of the company 7 Defaults on such contracts could often be handled without recourse to the courts to determine damages. A seller who did not consummate a sale agreement had to reimburse the purchaser for twice the amount of her deposit. The story also implies a cultural knowledgeability regarding contracts, explored in Chapter 6.

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was ensured there. Some participants also reported that the format of the gatherings was similar to the weekly meeting of department heads and section chiefs (pugwajanghoe) described in the next chapter. The president sometimes resolved issues at these meetings, but no one portrayed them as occasions for collective decision making. Perhaps that would have been unwieldy given the large membership of the board. In addition to company-level directors' meetings, there were chaebol-level directors' meetings. Forty-odd directors selected from among several member companies of the chaebol formed a "comprehensive board of directors" (chonghap isahoe). This group was even larger than Taesong company's own board of directors, and it too was evidently used for disseminating information or coordinating plans and activities across the entire chaebol rather than for participative decision making. Smaller gatherings of the very highest managers, on the other hand, were probably more conducive to discussion and debate. There were weekly president-level (sajang-dan) and chairman-level (hoejangdan) meetings for those company directors who had attained these ranks. The latter were the smallest gatherings and included only the chairman and vice-chairmen, the very highest managers of the group. Since assuming his present position after his father's death, Taesong's chairman has had to work with several of his father's brothers, and I surmise that more collective and participative decision making occurred among this intimate group (Jung 1987: 285). A chairman at another of the four largest chaebol presumably referred to decision making at this very high level in a widely published statement: "Every big group in the country except [Taesong] is a kind of dictatorship." Stockholders' meeting. Like the overwhelming majority of companies listed on the stock exchange, Taesong company and the other major companies of the Taesong chaebol held its annual meeting during the last few days of February. As newspapers observed (Maeil kyongje sinmun, Feb. 26,1987, p. 3), this practice discouraged attendance by outside stockholders, since none could be present at more than a few meetings. The absence of predistributed proposals and mail-in ballots also hindered outside stockholders from using the meeting to challenge the control of the bourgeoisie. Instead, at the meeting which I was kindly allowed to attend, all proposals were pre-

CONTROL FROM THE TOP

sented from the floor and passed by acclamation rather than through formal voting by shares. The owner-managers of Taesong benefited from the method of acclamation because they were able to fill the large meeting room with their own employees. Scores of section chiefs and department heads, allegedly in their capacity as stockholders, attended the meeting, which was held in a building adjacent to the chaebol's headquarters.8 Reminders to attend had come over the loudspeakers in company offices just before the event began. The managers were plainly company employees because most wore company pins on the lapels of their suit jackets, and none wore overcoats. As outsiders entered the large meeting room, their identity as stockholders was verified before they were admitted and they were given a small packet that included the company's financial statements for the previous year, a list of stockholders, an inexpensive ball-point pen, and a small gift of company products. The faces of the managers were already familiar to those charged with organizing the meeting, and they entered without any examinations to determine if they owned stock in the company. The stockholders' meeting followed a prepared "script" (kakpon), to use the terminology of both participants and newspaper accounts (Chason ilbo, Feb. 28, 1987, p. 2). At Taesong company's annual meeting, which its president conducted, a few junior managers, especially those with loud voices, had been selected beforehand to present proposals. They had also been issued a few shares of company stock before the end of the preceding year to prevent anyone from challenging the legitimacy of their actions. In the year I attended, the majority of managers chosen to make proposals were from a division that had recently been reassigned to a newly formed company of the chaebol, so technically they were no longer Taesong company's employees. Yet they still wore their company pins and otherwise acted and spoke as if they were. As soon as the president called for resolutions or proposals, the designated manager asked for recognition, received it from the president without a moment's hesitation, and rapidly made his presentation. As he finished, the president asked if there were any opposing opinions and in the same breath called for a vote. The meeting concluded within 45 minutes. 8 Though South Korean laws required the Taesong company to distribute ro percent of its stock options to its employees, many of the managers had sold their shares.

CONTROL FROM THE TOP

As the meeting proceeded according to plan, some of the junior managers and I smiled furtively at each other, confirming my understanding that we were all engaged in a conspiracy to mislead outside stockholders. I was curious why one section chief I knew well had worn his overcoat. When I asked him, he explained that he had done so at his own initiative to disguise his identity as an employee and give the impression of being an outsider. His action was the most touching instance of company loyalty I encountered during my fieldwork. These strategies for conducting a stockholders' meeting may well have been a recent development in South Korea, though they have analogues in Japan. Most corporations listed on the stock exchange had become public within the previous decade, partly in response to state pressure (Shin Young Moo 1983}. The controlling family evidently held a majority of shares in earlier years, and public stockholders' meetings have apparently only recently opened a window of vulnerability. With the exception of using men who were not technically company employees to offer the prearranged proposals, the Taesong company's owner-managers maintained control of their stockholders' meeting like the officers of other publicly listed corporations in South Korea, as at least two newspaper accounts at the time described (Maeil kyongje sinmun, Feb. 26, 1987, p. 3; Choson ilbo, Feb. 28, 1987, p. 2). Thus, only the most naive could have been deceived. A genuinely concerted effort by a group of dissatisfied stockholders could have been hindered but not prevented altogether, and managers told of meetings at other companies that had gone awry and lasted several hours. Yet, as the newspaper accounts also observed, an open discussion of the company's past operations and future plans was discouraged, and the owner-managers were seldom confronted with embarrassing questions, giving them an advantage in maintaining control. The owner-managers were not without plausible justifications for their tactics. They could portray them as devices for defending the company's rather than their own interests and for forestalling disruptions of the proceedings rather than questions about their management. Some older managers pointed to the "pesky meeting goers" (ch'onghoeggun) who acquired a few shares to be allowed to attend a meeting and threatened to disrupt it unless paid off beforehand, implying that these persons were the major threat that the scripted meetings were designed to thwart. Another means of defense was to

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accede to their demands for a payment, a strategy that could even co-opt them. At the meeting I attended, the only nonmanager to offer a prearranged proposal was identified as one of these outside stockholders.9

Finances and internal control. The bourgeoisie protected the enterprise's financial assets from internal and external challenges. Devices for controlling purse strings included imposing ceilings on the total amount of any expenditure that could be authorized at each level of management, limiting daily amounts for traveling and other expenses, and requiring receipts and other documentation. In 1987, as the Taesong chaebol was expanding its own credit-card company, younger managers were issued their own credit cards for company expenses, thereby introducing another form of cash control. Extensive plans and budgets were also used to maintain control. Taesong company had monthly, quarterly, annual, three-year, and five-year plans that established expectations from which any deviations required explanation. Increased spending or declining sales of a product did not go unnoticed for long, as managers met weekly to appraise progress. Such concerns prompted at least one director to log onto his computer terminal as soon as he arrived in his office each morning in order to see how the current month's sales were progressing toward their targets. Another manager with whom I broached the topic of budgets acknowledged that he was familiar with the tactic of ensuring that all one's expense allotment was spent before the end of the period, lest an outstanding balance provide a reason to reduce the next year's allocation. Plans and budgets controlled human assets in yet other ways. Managers were acquainted with the acronym MBO (Management by Objectives), and the prevalence of this technique at Taesong often caught my attention. The deputy director of the division where my desk was located expressed misgivings about my open-ended research methodology and suggested that I formulate a more concrete plan, perhaps working with the sections of his division for a few months each. I interpret this suggestion primarily as an attempt to help my 9 I see an analogy here to the tactics of rural beggars, ghosts, lesser deities, and ancestors, all of whom may also cause inconvenience until given an offering. The supernaturals too may be rendered benevolent through propitiation Oanelli andJanelli I982; Kendall I985). This parallel was not offered by the managers, however, who rarely shared my interest in popular Korean religious beliefs. A] apanese observer (Hayashi I988: I3) makes a similar point about South Korean managers.

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fieldwork rather than to extract greater services during my presence, especially because I had unwittingly invited it by saying that some involvement in company work would aid my research. (The deputy director did give me a very informative book describing many of the details of the work of his division.) I chose to decline his suggestion nevertheless, fearing that a specific plan in the early weeks of participant-observation would entail commitments that would be difficult to escape and would thereby preclude pursuit of promising research topics that might emerge. Some younger managers also said that they did not have a clear understanding of my specific research objectives, and I responded, truthfully, that neither did I. My attempts to explain the heuristic aspects of anthropological fieldwork were received politely but without enthusiasm. Personnel Management

The bourgeoisie also controlled their chaebol's human resources by supervising a variety of personnel policies that used coercion and ideology as a means of control. Occasional dismissals, for example, removed unwanted persons and informed those who were left that owner-managers had the power and will to defend their material interests against anyone who displayed inadequate enthusiasm or ability. The implicitly ideological and coercive techniques help explain why Taesong subordinates so often acquiesced in their own domination and to the privileges of the owner-managers. We shall see as we near the end of this book that white-collar workers were not entirely convinced by the more explicit ideological themes discussed in the preceding chapter. Many resisted the family metaphor and complained of long working hours, but personnel policies and procedures offered added measures for keeping subordinates in line. My account of these practices, which provides little more than a summary, attempts to show how they facilitated the control of subordinates and how they constantly changed, two of the major concerns of this study. In the section on company training, I also point to how personnel practices attempted to reformulate cultural understandings of authority, harmony, and other aspects of social relationships. 10 10 Partial analogies between other personnel practices and rural experiences can be drawn, and Shin Yoo Keun has drawn them (1984: 26-58), but they are no less abstracted from concrete experience than the portrayals of the father-son relationship. Unlike the analogy between parental and managerial authority, moreover, they were not part of the comments made by Taesong personnel.

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Recruitment. Because I chose to focus my attention on men already employed by Taesong, I was minimally involved in the hiring process. My only direct participation was at job interviews for a few prospective employees whose primary responsibility was to have been English translation at a smaller company of the group. Thus, my account of the recruitment process is drawn largely from the comments of Taesong workers, from descriptions and advice to applicants published in newspapers, and from Recruit (Rik'urut'u) magazine, a monthly publication devoted to the white-collar job market. The Taesong group recruited white-collar employees five times a year as recently as 1981, according to managers hired at that time, but by the mid-r98o's, its annual hiring was concentrated into two major recruitment drives-one in the fall and one in the spring. The former was aimed at college seniors who were about to complete their last semester and the latter at ROTC-commissioned officers soon to be discharged from military service. Other workers were recruited whenever a special need arose. To solicit applicants during each major recruitment drive, Taesong, like the other major chaebol, placed a large advertisement in a few of Korea's major newspapers. The ad indicated the number of persons to be hired or, more vaguely, an order of magnitude of new hires by specifying the number of digits involved (oo for ro to 99, or ooo for roo to 999 ). Its fine print enumerated the steps of the selection process, such as when and where to apply, the date of the entrance exam, and a list of necessary qualifications. The requirements included a maximum age of about 29,11 a bachelor's degree from afour-year college, a major in one of several specified fields, and completion of or exemption from military service. Like those of the other major conglomerates, these advertisements were displayed prominently, often taking up the bottom third of the newspaper's front page. Several published accounts of the hiring process warned against taking these advertisements at face value, however. A guide to employment included as a supplement to one of the major economic dailies (Maeil kyongje sinmun, Sept. r2, 1988, pp. q-20) warned that companies often overstated the number of people they were about to hire to give the impression of faster growth. That warning was evidently based on an investigation conducted a few months earlier 11 Employment ads specified that applicants had to have been born after January I of a given year. Since Korean ages increase by one at the start of each new year, this was how a maximum age was specified.

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by the Ministry of Labor, which claimed that those numbers were often exaggerated and pointed to other misrepresentations in the advertisements (Recruit, May 1988, p. 72). Though the advertisements conveyed the impression that employment was open to all qualified candidates-approximately So or 90 percent of new employees hired by the largest chaebol were said to have been selected through this method in 1986 (Chason ilbo, Oct. 19, 1986, p. 2)-the meaning of the term open hiring was subject to interpretation. In 1986, for example, many ads said that employment was open to women as well as men, but very few women were actually hired (Chason ilbo, Oct. 23, 1986, p. 6). Moreover, the hiring process was but a formality for those employees who obtained their positions through recommendations from their faculty. In general, managers of the personnel departments of major companies sought to cultivate good relations with faculty members, especially those who taught at the more prestigious business schools. A friend of mine who teaches at one of these institutions told me that one chaebol gave gift certificates for a pair of shoes whenever students were recommended. It would be awkward not to hire someone proposed by a professor, he added, for the faculty member would be reluctant to provide future recommendations. A report of an investigation by the Ministry of Labor of the hiring practices among a sample of eight chaebol in 1988 noted that: According to public announcements of hiring placed in newspapers, magazines, and other media, job applicants are hired through a process of open and competitive examinations; but considerable numbers are hired through personal recommendations and other such methods. In extreme cases, the number of applicants selected through open hiring does not even amount to so percent. [Recruit, May 1988, p. 72]

Regional discrimination also affected the selection process, and those from the southwestern Cholla provinces were especially disadvantaged (Yu 1990; Han'gyore sinmun, Oct. 15, 1988, p. ro). At Taesong I never recognized a Cholla accent, but I could not help but notice the accent and dialect of men from the Kyongsang provinces in the southeastern portion of the Korean peninsula, for I often had difficulty understanding them. Park Chung Hee, Chun Doo Hwan, and the chaebol's owner-managers came from that region, which has benefited from South Korea's economic development far more than the southwestern area, its longtime rival, the home of Kim Dae Jung and the scene of the Kwangju uprising.

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The company could practice regional discrimination because it had plenty of candidates to choose from. Though the ratio of job candidates to available positions at Taesong was getting smaller, the conglomerate still had plenty of applicants. The Chun Doo Hwan administration greatly expanded higher education in the early 198o's, and between 1984 and 1987 the proportion of four-year college graduates unable to obtain a job offer before graduation had risen from 21 to 38 percent (Recruit, May 1987, p. 58). As one of the four largest conglomerates, Taesong offered somewhat better wages and greater security, and a survey conducted in 1986 (Korea Herald, Nov. r, 1986, p. 6) claimed it was the most popular business group among job seekers. In the fall of 1987 the chaebol reported that it had rs,4r8 applicants, of whom 2,400 were hired (Recruit, Oct. 1988, p. 37). Yet despite this high ratio of applicants to hirees, managers expressed concern about a decline in the quality of those seeking employment. Several men who had been with the company for rriany years noted that the proportion of hirees from the most prestigious universities was decreasing. The hiring procedure used in the fall of 1986 included an entrance examination (ipsa sihom), which the few dozen largest business groups all gave on the same day. An examination for recruitment to smaller firms was given at a later date, though the smaller the firm, the more likely it was to rely on recommendations (Seoul National University 1985: r85 ). Some managers explained that the scheduling of all the major chaebol examinations on the same day was done in response to state pressure. Its purpose, they explained, was to prevent graduates of the better schools from monopolizing employment opportunities by ensuring that each person could apply to only one employer. A day was set later for entrance examinations given by smaller firms so that they could hire those who were unsuccessful in the first exam. The Ministry of Education also instituted a parallel system of dual examinations for entry to colleges and universities (iphak sihOm) a few decades ago. Entrance examinations focused more on acquired knowledge than basic skills. Chaebol included various topics on their entrance exams, but the usual components were a test in the applicant's major, a foreign language (usually English or Japanese), and substantive knowledge in a variety of subjects. This third area of the exam, designated "common sense," consisted of multiple-choice and occasional fill-inthe-blank questions that demanded very detailed knowledge of cur-

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rent events and a range of topics students were likely to have encountered in college courses: politics and diplomacy, economics and trade, the arts, science, philosophy, and history. Commercial preparation guides and examinations released by other conglomerates indicate that the questions were detailed and difficult. In the spring hiring season, no written exams were used. Spring recruiting was aimed at military officers who received their commissions through ROTC and were about to be discharged, and their selection was based primarily on undergraduate majors, recommendations from military commanders, and interviews. Scheduling entrance examinations on the same day would serve no purpose because, as a group of section chiefs explained, a military commander would not recommend the same person to two different companies. One manager added that spring applicants had been out of school too long to make a written test meaningful anyway. An older manager, however, said that employment examinations were never really necessary anyway since employees could easily be chosen on the basis of interviews and their school records. In his view the exam was useful in providing an apparently objective and therefore socially acceptable reason for turning down the requests for special consideration of particular candidates that often came from friends, relatives, and senior managers of the conglomerate. Those who scored well on the examination received a formal interview, the primary purpose of which was to assess the applicant's personality, managers explained. Some of the company's highest managers, including the president himself, participated in these interviews. One young worker told of legendary encounters at which the back of the applicant's chair was rigged to collapse if leaned on too heavily to detect those who did not show proper respect and reclined too comfortably. A director explained that he asked candidates about their family background and gave preference to those from large families of several generations. They would be accustomed to yielding to others and observing hierarchical relations (sunso), he reasoned. Media reports in 1988 claimed that interviewees were often asked about their extracurricular activities in college to weed out former student activists for fear they might form alliances with blue-collar workers. That practice may have been prompted by the support of blue-collar wage demands by white-collar workers in the previous year. Applicants were also asked what functional area they would like to work in, and why, and some were asked to converse with one of the interviewers in the foreign language they studied to test their

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speaking ability. Information and evaluations thus obtained were then used in assigning positions. In the mid-198o's, about a third of those called for an interview were eventually hired. In years past the names of successful applicants were posted on the walls of the company headquarters, as were those of successful applicants at university entrance examinations, but in more recent years successful applicants received a phone call or telegram. They were told when to report for training, and after its completion they were formally appointed to their respective companies and divisions. When assigning positions, limited recognition was given to a new employee's university major. Only graduates of business schools were put into finance or accounting, for example, and an international trade or foreign-language major stood a good chance of being assigned to exports. The training acquired in college rarely provided the knowledge of detailed procedures, skills, or even special terminology needed, and applicants' preferences were based only partly on their training. In the 197o's exports were an especially desirable specialization because it was likely to afford opportunities for foreign travel. When I was doing fieldwork in 1986-87, finance was popular because South Korea's balance of payments had improved and the accumulation of capital led to a burgeoning stock market and other financial institutions. Some older and more experienced managers also were hired, but for large chaebol like Taesong this was exceptional and was done only under special circumstances. There was no institutionalized practice of hiring retired government officials as in Japan, though the practice was not unheard of. Experienced managers from outside the group were most likely to be hired when a conglomerate created a new company but lacked experienced personnel of their own to staff it. Some major chaebol, including Taesong, even placed newspaper advertisements for experienced personnel in such cases, and many firms were said to "scout" in the late 198o's to staff their expanding financialservice companies. Scouting employees became frequent and drove the compensation for managers in finance up beyond the average for other fields (Maeil kyongje sinmun, Feb. 18, 1987, p. rr). Taesong managers told of a procedure whereby an employee had to obtain a certificate of release before he could be hired by another company but provided no specific instances of its use. None of the men I met said he had been scouted. The hiring process described in the preceding paragraphs advan-

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taged employers in several ways. Setting age limitations, for example, restricted the mobility of more experienced and valuable employees and ensured that new recruits were young and, presumably, more pliable. When combined with the internal promotion system, these limitations also helped to ensure that a manager had more experience with the company than any of his subordinates. The entrance examination's emphasis on memorized knowledge may have been designed to net the most intelligent and hardworking, but it also disadvantaged those who devoted larger portions of their undergraduate years to student demonstrations. Scheduling all the recruitment examinations of the major chaebol on the same day prevented job aspirants from applying to more than one major firm, and thereby assured employers that their prospective employees did not have equally lucrative opportunities elsewhere. The common thread running through most accounts of the interviews was a cultural understanding that they favored subordinates inclined toward docility. Giving little credit to prior experience or special skills when making assignments deprived a prospective employee from using them as bargaining chips. The implication was that knowledge accumulated through experience at Taesong, rather than externally acquired abilities or skills, was the most important basis for competence.

Training for new employees. Both Taesong chaebol and company had a variety of training programs for white-collar employees at various stages of their careers. Each included formal training plans, manuals for trainees, and other documentation. Having read Thomas Rohlen's vivid account (r974: r94-2rr) of employee training at a Japanese bank, I asked for permission to attend part of Taesong company's training, a request that was generously granted. What I observed taught me how the company sought to transform some of the cultural knowledgeability that employees brought to the firm. The Taesong company staff who conducted and supervised the training of new employees were charged with imparting substantive information about the company's history, organization, products, and production processes in a way that supported the ideological claims discussed in Chapter 3, impressing on the new recruits the company's contribution to South Korea's economic development and its advancement of high technology. In addition, the staff attempted to forge among the recruits a new identity as Taesong company employees. But perhaps the most ambitious goal of all was to alter their

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ways of dealing with social relationships. What I would like to highlight here is how training practices attempted to inscribe subordinates with habits of acquiescence and to reshape their understandings of how to deal with others. Some of the most transparent strategies involved training the new employees to accept orders. A videotape that was used, for example, left little to the imagination, reminding me of training films I had seen in the American army. It presented a scenario in which a subordinate behaved improperly, the narrator explaining the subordinate's error and what he should have done instead. Then the subordinate was shown behaving properly with the same actors in the same situation. Among the points conveyed by the film were the following: I. Answer promptly when called by your section chief, no matter how busy you are. Don't make him call two or three times. 2. Accept his order and do your best to complete it on time. Don't say that you are working on something else and will get to it later if he asked for it soon. 3. When you have completed an assignment, report that fact to the section chief. Don't just leave the completed documents on his desk where he may not see them because they may become buried under other papers. 4· If an assignment takes a long time to complete, provide your section chief with an interim report so he's not left wondering when the assignment will be finished. 5. Be prepared when making a report by having the necessary information ready; and bring a pad and pencil when told to receive an order. 6. Sometimes you will receive orders from managers who are not your immediate superiors. Accept the assignment, but be sure to inform your section chief, who may choose to bring the results of your work himself to the manager who asked for it.

Some of the strategies used to instill habits of subordination were a bit more subtle but equally suggestive of military training. Lodged together in facilities that the company owned or rented, the new employees were required to rise at 6 A.M., run two kilometers by 7 A.M., eat breakfast during the next hour, and be in their place of training promptly at 8 A.M. Sometime in those two hours they were also expected to have straightened up their rooms. The company provided all the trainees with the same athletic uniform, which was imprinted with the conglomerate's name and logo. In the classroom each new employee sat in an assigned seat designated by a name tag and was expected to stand up, identify himself, and articulate clearly when called upon or when volunteering to speak. Sometimes the trainees were

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required to respond to questions in unison; when their responses appeared to lack enthusiasm, the instructors made them repeat the answers more loudly. One new recruit who appeared to doze off during a lecture was prodded awake by a member of the training staff. And during the outdoor training exercises, lunch was served from military-style, olive-drab containers. 12 Part of the training program included accomplishing seemingly impossible tasks, such as finding a frog in the woods in winter, writing a letter with an unsharpened pencil, or leaving a room without using the door or windows. The purpose of such training, according to Taesong managers, was to inculcate an attitude of doing one's best in spite of seemingly impossible odds as well as to train new recruits to follow orders even when they seemed unreasonable. Most of the tasks can actually be solved, one manager explained. Pencils can be sharpened with one's teeth, and one of the walls of the room may yield when pushed. He explained further that sometimes a manager assigns his subordinates a task that is very difficult or impossible, but they should not refuse, complain, or question it, lest they be thought "negative." Besides, he added, even if a task seems impossible, it's better to try to accomplish it than to do nothing. Sometimes one can find solutions that are not readily apparent, and even if one cannot achieve roo percent of the desired results, 20 or 30 percent is better than nothing. The company also sought to teach employees how to deal with more egalitarian interpersonal relationships. Some of the means for teaching cooperation and teamwork were amusing and seemingly innocuous. In one session all of the new recruits were lined up and ordered to massage the back of the person in front. Then they were told to do an about-face and massage the back of the person who had just massaged their own. Among the more dramatic and often-discussed activities in this regard were exercises called "self-control training" (kukki hully6n). A class of almost roo trainees was divided into teams of about a dozen each and given difficult tasks to perform. The tasks had been prepared by a professional company hired to conduct the training and were led by its instructors under the general supervision of the Taesong training staff. The department head in charge of company training 12 I suspect that the members of the training staff had been selected in part for their attitudes toward rank (see note 9 of Chapter 3).

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told me the recruits were deliberately given puzzles and other assignments that could be solved better by pooling their knowledge or ideas than by individual effort. Before the exercises began an instructor explained to the trainees that the purpose of the day's activities was not to make them suffer but to let them accomplish things they had never done, as well as to teach them how to make friends and engage in teamwork by thinking of other persons and their needs rather than just themselves. The self-control training started with simple tasks, such as team puzzle solving, but became progressively more difficult. At midmorning, the teams were instructed to find a woman dressed in a certain color, persuade her to join them in traveling to an assembly point, teach her about the company and its products along the way, and help her memorize that information. When they reached their destination, the training instructor quizzed each of the women, gave her a small gift of company products, and invited her to share lunch with the trainees and staff. Points were awarded for the speed with which the team accomplished its task, the accuracy of the woman's responses, and the degree of teamwork exhibited. Some teams were able to persuade the women to run with them to the assembly point. An even more challenging exercise took place in the afternoon, when each of the teams was required to complete a hike of several hours through the nearby mountains using map and compass but without trails or markers. (I was unable to complete more than about a third of the course.) Some of the teams returned late, well after dark, and only after the instructors had gone out to find them. By the time all the new employees completed their mountain climbing and returned to the rally point, it was dark, and the December weather was very cold. When all had arrived, they and the training staff joined hands to form a big circle around a fire shaped in the form of the company's logo and sang the conglomerate's song. Though all of these exercises were overtly aimed at fostering a sense of cooperation, it was not the kind of cooperation in which employees would have engaged based on their likes and dislikes or common interests. Rather, the cooperation was self-conscious and could be shifted from one person to the next as the situation de-. manded. To prevent the formation of factions, explained the instructors, team memberships, sleeping arrangements, and seating assignments were rotated. Thus, the kinds of dyadic relations and networks often formed in South Korea on the basis of school affiliation, place

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3

Titles at Taes6ng Company Rank

hoejang puhoejang sajang pusajang ch6nmu isa sangmu isa is a ponbujang pujang kwajang saw6n or tamdang

Translation

Chairman (a chaeb61-level position) Vice-chairman (a chaeb61-level position) President Vice-president Senior managing director Managing director Director Deputy director Department head Section chief Office worker (lit., "company member" or "person in charge")

of regional ongm, kinship, or common interests were effectively thwarted. Standard ranks and promotion. Each white-collar worker had a standard title which, like a military rank, unambiguously designated a position in a well-recognized hierarchy. The names of the ranks and my translations of them are given in Table 3. 13 These Taesong titles were common to companies throughout South Korea and evidently originated in Japan (cf. R. Clark 1979: ros; Dore 1973: 222). Though some ranks were added or deleted, the standings were always the same. Most other companies, for example, had a deputy department head (ch'ajang), a position that ranked between a section chief and a department head. Most of the deputy-director positions at Taesong company were eliminated early in 1987, when favorable economic conditions permitted a record number of promotions. One older manager explained that those positions had been largely superfluous, having been created to give promotions to department heads for whom no director openings were available. "People don't like to go too long without a promotion," he said. Advancement, particularly among the lower white-collar ranks, depended primarily on years of service and annual evaluations by the 13 The titles ch6nmu isa and sangmu isa were commonly abbreviated to ch6nmu and sangmu.

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two most immediate superiors.14 Promotion from sawon to section chief, however, also depended on passing a company examination that could be taken after a few years of employment. I neglected to look into the evaluation forms used for white-collar workers at Taesong, but instruction books and evaluation sheets drawn from a large sample of South Korean companies (Samsong ch'ulp'ansa p'yonjipkuk 1987; Han'guk insa kwalli hyophoe 1988) indicate that such evaluations placed as much emphasis on attitudes as on ability and performance. Attempting to quantify and objectify a largely qualitative and subjective judgment, they assigned a number of points for outstanding, one less for superior, two less for above average. Evaluated according to a four-point scale was "Sincerity: the degree of obedience to superior's work orders, loyalty to the company, and sincerity and responsibility toward duties" [Han'guk insa kwalli hyophoe 1988: 267]. The evaluations were thought to be important. Younger white-collar workers cited cases in which superiors had used them to block advancement. Along with the structure of titles and promotions was another scaling system consisting of kup, or grades, and hobong (abbreviated to ho ), or steps, for determining each person's base pay, the largest component of salary. It too showed similarities to systems used in other organizations such as the army, government bureaucracies, and universities. 15 At Taesong, kiip correlated with rank as follows: 5 for women sawon, 3 or 4 for male sawon, 2 or 3 for section chiefs, and r or 2 for department heads.16 The lower kiip corresponded to higher ranks. Directors, designated "officials" (imwon) rather than employees, had graduated out of this system. Hobong allowed for finer distinctions within each kiip (see Table 5). A male college graduate entered Taesong company as a new (sinip) sawon at grade 4, step 36 (4 kiip, 36 ho) and his salary step was reduced for each year of employment within that grade. For a normal . 14 Prior to 1987 women workers in headquarters were not eligible for promotion above the rank of sawon. Women graduates of four-year colleges were hired in small numbers and had technical skills that could be put to immediate use in factories and research laboratories. In 1987, however, a few women were hired for managerial-track positions and underwent the same training program as the male recruits. 15 R. Clark (1979: n8-22) reports a similar system among Japanese companies. 16 The salary scale, a portion of which is presented in Table 5, also included a separate column for women workers at grade 4· I was unable to learn whether this was for the four-year college graduates hired for their technical skills and employed outside headquarters or for a few women workers who had graduated two-year colleges, such as the conglomerate's librarian.

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year of service, an employee's hobong was reduced by two, but it could be reduced by three or even four for up to ro percent of the employees. A manager could alter a particular subordinate's salary and rate of advancement using these extra reductions. Occasionally, as a penalty, an employee could have his hobong increased by one or two steps, but such instances were said to be very rare. When a diversion of some assets had been discovered several years ago, for example, the culprit's supervisors each had a step added. Little bargaining was possible over a man's initial kiip or hobong on account of his external qualifications, special abilities, university, major, or prior experience. Except for those who had obtained graduate degrees or who were scouted from other companies, new employees were all hired at the same rank of sawon-grade 4 and step 36. Hirees with M.B.A. degrees were granted the equivalent of either two or three years of experience (a reduction of four or six steps) and nothing more, making them marginally better than where they would have been had they worked instead of attended graduate school. Only those scouted from other companies received a higher placement. And no one, except members of the owning family, was said to have been selected for a fast track. When a sawon reached step 32 of grade 4, normally after two years of service, he was eligible to take a promotion examination for grade 3 and thereby qualify for later advancement to section chief. The passing score for this test was flexible, its cutoff point varying from year to year according to the performance of the candidates and the estimated number of future section-chief openings. Among the test candidates I knew in 1987, however, those and only those who had completed four years of service passed. Employees surmised that years of service, rather than results on the test, had actually been the criterion for passing that year. After reaching grade 3, step 26 (i.e., two years of service in grade 3 ), a man was eligible for promotion to acting section chief, depending on the number of slots available (primarily in his own division) and on the recommendations of his superiors, who were given another opportunity to intervene in the advancement of their subordinates. Directors also had some ability to expand the number of promotion slots in their division by requesting the addition of another section or department, but the personnel department and higher managers exercised considerable discretion in approving or denying such requests.

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Because almost every employee was given the same salary step upon advancement to a higher grade, a late promotion left a man permanently handicapped in the competition with his peers. Nearly all those who were promoted to grade 3, for example, were assigned to step 30, regardless of their step before advancement. Only a small concession was made to this rule when a man's step had been exceptionally low (i.e., a long-delayed promotion). Managers said such a man might be assigned to step 29 at best. Promotions were officially announced along with transfers in memoranda bearing the president's initials or seal and placed on each division's bulletin board. All personnel actions were made effective on the day or day before the memo was issued, but most men knew of their promotions beforehand, either through informal contacts with the personnel department or from their superiors. The average length of time that passed between promotions was not a matter of public information. According to Recruit magazine (July 1987, p. 37), differences existed not only between chaebol but also between companies of the same conglomerate, and the averages varied with the company's rate of growth. Regulations of the major conglomerates typically required a new sawon to work about fourteen years to qualify for promotion to department head. The reported average for current department heads in 1987 was 14·7 years (Maeil kyongje sinmun, Jan. 26, 1987, p. rr), but some individual promotions had taken several years longer (Recruit, July 1987, p. 37). The overall regularity of promotions did not seem to diminish a supervisor's power over his subordinates, for employees were not content with being promoted eventually. Because advancement followed years of service so closely, a high correlation between seniority and rank made even minor exceptions highly noticeable. To be passed by someone who had entered the company even a few months earlier was described as a painful humiliation, and this loss of symbolic capital handicapped a man's career prospects. In casual conversations men did not volunteer their age or year of entry unless their promotions had been at least as rapid as the rest of their cohort. Salary. A man's salary correlated closely with his rank,. though it was determined by a combination of criteria. Each person's income derived from at least three sources: base pay, bonuses, and miscellaneous supplements. I will examine each in turn and the criteria by which they were calculated.

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4

Wages Reported by South Korean Conglomerates in January r987 (in won)

SOURCE:

Position

Largest 5 (average)

Largest 40 (average)

Department Head Section Chief 3rd-grade Sawon Sawon

897,250 609,750 478,500 318,800

822,907 574,653 452,372 315,039

Maeil ky6ngje sinmun, Jan.

26, 1987,

p. rr.

The monthly base pay for male workers when they were first appointed to each of the lower and middle ranks, shown in Table 4, is based on figures publicly released by Taesong and other conglomerates early in 1987 (Maeil kyongje sinmun, Jan. 26, 1987, p. rr). The details of this and other public reports (e.g., Recruit, July 1987, p. 42) show but minor variations between the wage levels of all these groups. Base pay was not determined by rank but by d-ie system of pay grades and salary steps. I was kindly provided with a listing of the respective base salaries for Taesong employees and managers in 1984 and given permission to use them in this study (see Table 5). 17 After base pay a man's bonus was the next largest component of his salary. Bonuses varied more widely than base pay, although differences between the large chaebol were not significant. In early 1987 most of the largest conglomerates offered annual bonuses in the range of four, five, or six months of base pay per year. Until 1987 the amount of the bonus at Taesong was automatic and depended only on rank: sawon received five and a half months' pay per year, and section chiefs and department heads received six and a half. In 1987, however, Taesong company instituted a limited performance-based bonus system whereby the most highly rated 10 percent of divisions and individuals each received an extra half-month's salary and the lowest 5 percent lost a half-month's. This new method was perhaps 17 Since the system of grades and salary steps did not correspond perfectly with the system of ranks, it was theoretically possible for a section chief with more years of service to receive a higher base pay than a new department head, but various supplements, which increased with rank (see below), would have offset such differences in base pay.

TABLE

5

Relative Base Pay by Grade and Hobong at Taesong Company (1984)

Grade Hobong

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

4(Male)

2

1.00 0.99 0.99 0.98 0.97 0.96 0.95 0.94 0.93 0.92 0.91 0.90 0.89 0.87 0.86 0.84 0.83 0.81 0.80 0.78 0.76 0.75 0.73 0.72 0.70 0.69 0.68

0.72 0.71 0.71 0.70 0.70 0.69 0.69 0.68 0.68 0.67 0.67 0.66 0.65 0.65 0.64 0.63 0.62 0.61 0.60 0.58 0.57 0.56 0.54 0.53 0.52 0.51 0.50 0.49 0.48

0.55 0.55 0.55 0.55 0.55 0.55 0.54 0.54 0.54 0.54 0.53 0.53 0.53 0.52 0.52 0.51 0.50 0.50 0.49. 0.48 0.48 0.47 0.46 0.45 0.44 0.43 0.42 0.41 0.40 0.38

0.45 0.45 0.45 0.44 0.44 0.44 0.44 0.44 0.44 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.42 0.42 0.42 0.42 0.41 0.41 0.40 0.40 0.39 0.38 0.38 0.37 0.35 0.34 0.33 0.32 0.31 0.29 0.28 0.27 0.26

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a compromise, for some directors had maintained that individualperformance bonuses were a threat to harmony. Earnings ought to be regarded as result of the whole company's efforts, they explained, and not just those of one individual or department. After the decision had been made, however, I heard no further protests. Instead, one of the older managers who had been opposed to the new system pointed out that it rewarded more individuals than it punished. He did not mention that by placing greater weight on performance, the new system increased the discretionary power of managers over their subordinates' compensation. In addition to a base salary and bonus, employees received anumber of smaller monthly payments for Sunday overtime (sawon only), special duty (e.g., tangjik) allowances, and standard overtime pay (regardless of the number of hours worked). The payments were numerous and their amounts varied widely. The actual salary slips used at Taesong company in 1987 had 28 different sources of remuneration and 24 types of deductions, making generalizations difficult. A survey of the compensation paid to "managers and administrators" in shipbuilding some years earlier reported that these supplementary payments varied from 4 to 33 percent of total salaries (Kim Sookun 1982: 55). At Taesong, many of these payments, like the bonus, increased with greater years of service or higher rank. Finally, though they were not usually considered part of their compensation, employees were also offered a number of fringe benefits, such as free transportation to work via company buses, gifts of company products, a number of expense accounts, and a free lunch that had been included in salaries reported to Recruit magazine by some of the chaebol. Section chiefs, for example, were given a monthly allotment for entertaining their subordinates, buying them coffee during the workday, and taking them out drinking and to other entertainment after hours. Department heads and directors also had access to such funds. The complexity of the pay system, the seemingly ad hoc nature of the supplements, a reluctance to release specific details, and the number of categories in publicly available statistics make it difficult to provide more than a rudimentary comparison of salaries between conglomerates of different sizes or between companies of the same group. Published sources provide little help. The Ministry of Labor, for example, compiled an annual report of wage levels but lumped together all firms with more than five hundred employees. It

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showed that salaries increased with the size of the company and that bonuses increased with age, years of service, education, and occupation. Whereas the average bonus for a newly hired male with at least a college degree between the ages of 25 and 29 was about one month's salary, the same worker with five to nine years of experience and between the ages of 30 and 34 earned three extra months' salary per year (Ministry of Labor 1987: 168-71). There may well be deliberate obfuscation here and not only because of competition between the conglomerates. State-proclaimed campaigns to reduce the discrepancy between wages paid depending on education and a common perception that the chaebol were monopolizing the most talented managers provided additional reasons not to be too specific about salaries. In the past the state had sought to restrict pay increases for white-collar workers at the major conglomerates because their salaries were significantly higher than those of state bureaucrats at comparable points in their careers. And according to a description provided by a South Korean economist (Kim Sookun 1982: 57-58), an equally complex system used for paying blue-collar workers was designed more for appearance than substance. Labor laws required a variety of additional supplements and payments for overtime to laborers, but their total salaries were determined first and then the base pay, bonus, and various supplements were calculated accordingly. Lack of details obscures some of the coercive and ideological implications of the salary system, but a few observations can be made. First of all, the salaries of white-collar workers at Taesong and the other major chaebol were privileged, and the threat of terminating that lucrative employment was potent indeed. Just the base pay and bonuses of the lowest-paid male sawon amounted to about two and a half times the reported per capita Gross National Product in 1987. Adding a conservative estimate for supplemental payments would have brought their salaries to about three times that figure; by a similar estimate, newly appointed department heads earned about nine or ten times the per capita Gross National Product. This pay system had ideological consequences as well. A common system of grades and salary steps allowed the owner-managers to meet their employees' cultural expectations and gave the relative salaries an air of "reasonableness" (Salaman 1981: 181) even to the new recruits who were the lowest paid. Since purchasing power tripled in fifteen years, the most experienced employees were less likely to

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look elsewhere for employment, giving the bourgeoisie a firmer hold on their more experienced managers. A pay system based heavily on years of experience also carried the implicit message that experienced workers made the greatest contributions to the company, were more valuable, and thus most qualified to make decisions. By rarely granting significant value to specialization or externally acquired qualifications, they were devalued. In addition, the ranks, steps, and grades of the pay system constituted an effective divideand-rule strategy. Marxist-influenced writers have pointed to similarly fine gradations in rank and pay as a mechanism for control of blue-collar workers: The differentiation of the organizational work force acts to divide employees, even to set them against each other. The existence of numerous subtle gradations, levels, offices, ranks, offers to some members of the organization the appearance of some sense of superiority over other members. It permits the impression that personal or group experiences and deprivations are the result of personal inadequacy, the inability to achieve, moral failure, or of hostile behavior by "rival" departments, other shifts, certain identifiable groups of workers and so on. [Salaman 1981: 175-76]

Dismissal, transfer, and resignation. According to the rules of their employment, which were listed in the basic training manual provided to Taesong company's new recruits, a white-collar employee could be dismissed for any of several reasons. 18 These regulations, which denied employees any right to permanent employment, appear to have covered most contingencies. ARTICLE 18. Dismissal

Dismissal occurs in the event that one of the following applies to an employee: 1. When the employee has submitted a request for resignation. 2. When the employee has reached retirement age. 3· When the period of employment [for temporary employees] has expired. 4· When the appointment has been canceled during the probationary period. 5. When the employee has died. 6. When the employee receives a prison sentence or heavier penalty. 7· When the employee is (legally) declared incompetent, of limited competence, or bankrupt. 8. When a physical or mental hindrance incapacitates an employee from continuing work. 18

I encountered no retirements at Taesong.

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9· In case the employee's work results or ability are clearly recognized as inferior. 10. When a natural calamity or other such reason arises. II. In case personnel reductions are required by job reorganization or the conditions of the company. 12. When such disciplinary action or firing is decided.

These regulations were rarely invoked, but the threat of being fired and losing the attractive benefits of employment at Taesong probably helped ensure the compliance of employees. Even if they were fortunate enough to be hired by another chaebol that offered a pay scale, fringe benefits, job security, and prestige similar to what they enjoyed at Taesong, employees under age 29 would have had to start all over again, by taking another entrance exam and with their previous experience viewed as more of a detriment than an asset. Conditions at other companies, moreover, were not likely to have been very different. And, except in unusual circumstances, older workers confronted an added disincentive: a very disorganized job market in which they would have to rely primarily on personal connections. Though few people were formally fired, managers and employees commonly spoke of "having to go out" (nagaya handa) often enough to indicate that they viewed dismissal as a real possibility. Typically the subject arose when they spoke about the consequences of not following orders or poor job performance. When asked how the company would go about getting rid of someone, several junior managers explained that instead of firing a man outright the company would humiliate him into resigning by giving him no work to do or transfer him to an undesirable post. One told of an employee at another of the big four whose desk was removed after he resisted other pressures to resign. Perhaps that anecdote was making the rounds at the time, for some months later it was depicted on a television drama about office life. I did not observe any desks being removed or people without work to do, but I did notice several transfers. Since they were not explained by the personnel department, transfers required interpretation, and for devising them employees had accumulated their own cultural knowledgeability. Junior managers did not portray transfers as rounding out their experiences but as motivated by the needs of the company. A reassignment was also taken as a sign of a man's future prospects. A transfer to the center of power, such as the chaebol's Office of Coordination and Planning, was evaluated favorably, and the transferee could be congratulated

154

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on his new appointment. Reassignment to a position with a history of high turnover, to a department that did not match the employee's training and experience, or to a more peripheral position, such as a post outside Seoul or at a smaller company of the chaebol, on the other hand, was usually regarded as a sign that a man's career was in trouble. No congratulations were offered in such cases. Many reassignments were ambiguous. Upon receiving notice of a transfer, a man had to interpret the meaning of his new assignment, while his co-workers quietly discussed his impending move and also tried to devise an interpretation. More than one manager acknowledged how a present or past transfer in his own career could be read positively or negatively. Some transfers appeared to have been motivated by factors other than reward or punishment. When a section chief was promoted to department head and put in charge of a section chief who had entered the company before him, the more senior employee was reassigned to avoid the embarrassment of being directly under his former junior. Some transfers between divisions occurred because there were not enough sections or departments to accommodate all those who had been promoted, and sometimes the wishes of subordinates may also have been taken into account. One man who had told me that he disliked his section chief was later transferred to another section; his new section chief said the action was an attempt to achieve a more rational distribution of personnel. Transfers between sections of the same division were common, nearly everyone being transferred at least once before becoming a section chief. Nevertheless, most employees expected to spend most of their careers in the same division. Despite the transfers, few resignations were tendered except by the youngest workers. A number of men were transferred to other companies of the chaebol during the months of my fieldwork, but most of them had belonged to a division split off to form a new joint venture. A number of other men were transferred to other divisions of the same company, but only one manager resigned after his transfer. Reassignment to other companies of the chaebol had apparently long been a common practice, and many of the upper managers of the group's other companies achieved their posts after having first obtained experience at Taesong company. Thus, transfer was not all that common as a circuitous means of firing. Most resignations were tendered not by transferees but by the most

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mobile employees, the new sawon. During my fieldwork there was a sharp increase in resignations among these men at most of South Korea's major chaebol, and upper managers at Taesong began expressing concern about this new development in the spring of 1987. About one-third of all those hired in the previous year resigned, and newspapers reported a similar figure for all the largest conglomerates. Most of those who left claimed that they wanted to continue their formal education, but this was often understood as a culturally acceptable excuse that masked other reasons. At Taesong, the resignations of the youngest workers were most commonly interpreted as the result of an inability to get along with one's manager. The youngest sawon were evidently voting with their feet in increasing numbers.

FIVE

Control at the Middle Senior organizational members usually are able to achieve some measure of dominance over their potentially recalcitrant employees. But such dominance will require a battery of techniques and strategies, and will involve the manipulation of all sorts of sanctions and resources and mechanisms. (Salaman r98o: 75)

positions within their chaeT bol and its companies wereprivileged protected by more than their own HE OWNER-MANAGERS'

efforts. Though the president of Taesong company, for example, personally conducted the company's annual stockholders' meeting, presided at weekly board meetings, approved the memo announcing promotions and transfers, and engaged in other forms of direct management, control over his company's more than seven thousand employees required the active participation of professional or nonfamily managers throughout the organization. To maintain control these professional managers did not rely merely on the advantages given them by the personnel system, such as influence over career paths or the size of annual bonuses. They also took positive steps to ensure that subordinates complied with their directives and exerted a full measure of effort. Their dominance was not achieved by effortlessly acting out roles in an established power structure. Subordinates had the potential ability to resist and had to be kept in check. Weekly Managers' Meeting

Among the most dramatic techniques for controlling subordinates were the weekly managers' meetings (pugwajanghoe) held at individual divisions where each section chief reported on his efforts and accomplishments during the preceding week. Directors used them

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to convey information from upper management, such as new plans or matters requiring attention that had been revealed at the weekly directors' meeting. Anticipated developments or difficulties in the participants' own division and potential solutions were also discussed. In the words of the managers who led them, the weekly managers' meeting was a form of "training" (hullyonUl sik'ida); section chiefs, however, were more likely to describe them as "getting a scolding"· (yadanUl matta). The meetings were held behind closed doors. Most directors chose Friday mornings for the middle managers' meeting. They were invariably the first activity of the day, beginning in some divisions at 8: 30 and in others at 9: oo. Not every division manager used them, however. In the divisions where departments were mostly unrelated, the director or deputy director met with groups of department heads and their section chiefs separately. The seating arrangement of the weekly managers' meeting contributed to its formality. The highest-ranking person sat at the head of a long table, the next highest closest to him, and the remainder according to their respective positions in the division. At one of the meetings the arrangement was as shown in Figure 2. Other seating arrangements also reflected rank and position. When the director of the division in Figure 2 had to be out of the office, his seat was occupied by the deputy director, the remaining seats on the right-hand side moved up one space each, and the chief of the planning section moved to the other side of the table, next to the Director Department I head

Deputy director

Section I chief

Department 2 head

Section

chief

Section 4 chief

Section 3 chief

Section 5 chief

Planning section chief

Section 6 chief

2

Researcher Administrative section chief

Fig.

2.

Seating arrangement at a weekly managers' meeting

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chief of the sixth section. 1 The only exception to seating by rank that I observed occurred when a section chief was absent and his most senior sawon sat in his usual chair, but this apparently signaled that the sawon was participating in place of his section chief. Seating arrangements that symbolically express t~ organization chart and respective ranks were evidently widespread at meetings of other companies and government bureaucracies. They were parodied, along with much else in company life, in a weekly television comedy popular when I was doing fieldwork. The program portrayed the meeting of a chaebol chairman and a handful of his top directors, whose seating arrangement similarly reflected their respective ranks. The frequent promotions and demotions portrayed in the show resulted in a sort of musical chairs, as the seating positions were repeatedly rearranged to reflect the new rankings. Taesong workers were familiar with the television show, which aired on Sunday afternoons, and occasionally referred to it in conversations. (Newspaper photographs of the president meeting with his cabinet also showed the president seated at the head of a long table and his cabinet members along the sides.) At the opening of each weekly managers' meeting, the senior manager checked attendance. The following are two exchanges from the start of these meetings at two different divisions. None of the persons at the first meeting were present at the second except me: Senior Manager: Where is Section Chief Kim? Section Chief Mun: He participated in military reserve training (yebigun hullyi5n). [Since some of the training is conducted at night, this implied that he got little sleep, was very tired, and perhaps had not returned to the office yet.] Senior Manager: The other section chiefs who participated in military reserve training are here, so why isn't he? Go out and get him. [The administrative section chief left the room, and the meeting resumed after he and the missing section chief joined us.] Senior Manager: Where is Section Chief Yi? Section Chief Namgung: He has an appointment and had to be out of the office until 10: 30. Senior Manager: What's he doing out of the office? He knows the weekly managers' meeting usually lasts until 10: 30. He's just making an excuse so he can be absent. 1 The administrative section chief always sat at the foot of the table, evidently because he was responsible for drawing up the meeting's agenda and ensuring that it was followed.

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From both the tone and content of these exchanges I surmise that senior managers sought first to ensure that subordinates were all present or accounted for and understood that they would have liked to avoid the meeting. Section chiefs acknowledged that they disliked these meetings intensely (Chapter 7), and afterward their behavior in the office often seemed to lack its usual conviviality. The senior person's behavior at these meetings was regarded as "severe" (omkyokhada). One older manager frankly admitted that he was reluctant to allow me to observe the weekly gatherings because he sometimes "became angry" with his subordinates and didn't want me to see him in such a state.2 Another manager, who also conducted these meetings, explained: The training is very severe. Americans would be shocked by the severity of it. They couldn't stand it. It's because we Koreans are all one people (minjok), sharing the same blood and having the same yellow skin color [pointing to the skin on the back of his hand]; we're not made up of several different kinds of people like Americans. We are like one family, so a person can train his subordinates like a father trains his son, pointing out mistakes rather than giving praise for things done correctly.

The opening of the meeting set the tone that the presiding manager normally employed throughout the delivery of the oral reports. As each section chief made his presentation, sometimes with slightly trembling hands or while fidgeting with the pages of his notebook, the senior manager either listened in silence or pointed out mistakes. The junior managers addressed the gathering in formal Korean verb endings (e.g., hamnida, mot toeossumnida), as most academics do when reading a paper before a scholarly society, and finished with an equally formal "That concludes the report" (isang imnida). At Taesong such expressions were found only at the managers' meetings or on other equally formal occasions. The formality of their speech matched the participants' other actions. All the managers wore their suit jackets, though at most other 2 Earlier he had used other reasons, claiming at first, for example, that nothing important was to be conducted. I thought I was presenting my request tactfully by saying that participation at these meetings was not essential for my research and that I was giving him an easy excuse for refusal by stating that I did not want to be privy to any of the company's secrets. In retrospect, however, I was probably regarded as pushy just for repeating the request after it was turned down. I might well have overlooked these meetings entirely had it not been for a section chief who suggested that I observe them. His suggestion was made during the early weeks of my fieldwork, when I found myself defending managerial practices, and I still wonder if it was aimed at reshaping my perceptions.

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times they went about the office in shirtsleeves, their jackets draped over the backs of their chairs. Section chiefs sat erect with both feet on the floor: Sitting cross-legged implied informality and disrespect. Hierarchy was also implied by the absence of smoking at these meetings, for in villages and urban homes youths usually do not smoke in front of their father or close senior male agnates (Janelli and Janelli 1982: 47). The chairman of Taesong himself noted the symbolic significance of this abstinence at higher-level managers' meetings: "It's as if the young people are participating together with their father's friends, so they can't smoke" (Sindonga, March 1987, p. 319). In every case but one the senior manager exercised firm control over the conduct of the weekly meetings. He usual1y addressed his subordinates in blunt Korean (e.g., hae), often used scolding tones, and thoroughly reprimanded them for their mistakes. Once a section chief discovered a miscalculation in one of the documents which he had prepared for the meeting and informed the others of his error. The senior manager admonished this section chief immediately, lecturing him on the importance of doing careful work. "How can proper decisions be made on the basis of incorrect facts?" he asked. He continued in this vein for several minutes as everyone else listened in silence without stirring.3 According to sa won and managers, this style of interaction is standard practice for managers' meetings throughout the company, a claim that all of my information is consistent with. I saw weekly meetings conducted by five different managers, all but one in the same manner. The sole exception occurred when a young and recently promoted department head chaired the meeting because the director and his deputy were out of the office at the same time, one of them unexpectedly. The department head's style, his inexperience in this role, and the knowledge that unusual circumstances had put him in charge of the meeting all resulted in his adopting a more mild-mannered approach. And managers who had participated at higher-level meetings 3 When I later asked other participants at one of the meetings if my presence had any effects, three section chiefs offered three different perceptions. The first said that the senior had been restrained by my presence, the second observed that the senior had been more severe than usual, and the third related that the degree of severity had seemed to be about normal but that the senior manager seemed to have elaborated his points more than usual for my benefit. From these responses I infer that those assembled were highly conscious of my presence in the room. I have never heard of any other outsider at these gatherings.

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r6r

said that upper managers also conducted them in a similar fashion. One described a gathering at which the president asked most of the questions and the directors adopted a defensive posture. "If [a director] receives few questions, he thinks the meeting went well," the manager explained. Senior managers actively controlled their section chiefs and tried to get them to exercise more initiative in controlling their sawon. At one meeting I attended, the senior manager emphasized the importance of closely supervising the work of subordinates. Section chiefs were told not to initial or affix their seal on a document prepared by a subordinate without checking it first. They should not assume it was correct or that it would be checked by someone else later on. At another meeting section chiefs were told that they had been lax in keeping subordinates informed of company objectives and had also failed to correct their mistakes. The senior manager pointed out that Saturday mornings offered a good opportunity to do this since the pace of work was a bit slower on that day. Moreover, he added, if the section chiefs were worried the "training" might harm their relationships with subordinates, they could treat them to lunch or some recreation on Saturday afternoon. At least one section chief evidently took the advice to heart, for some weeks later one sawon complained to me that his boss had assembled the members of his section and pointed out all their shortcomings. The degree of control exercised at the weekly managers' meetings was hardly a doxic experience. Taesong managers were well aware of other ways of interacting with subordinates, even in capitalist settings. Directors, for example, were acquainted with more participative styles of management, such as Douglas McGregor's (r96o) Theory X and Theory Y, and even William Ouchi's (r98r) Theory Z. One of Taesong company's training manuals, moreover, recommended an altogether different approach. Used as part of a training course for new section chiefs, the manual had evidently been inspired by the human-relations movement in American management and included instructions that were clearly at odds with the style of the managers' meetings.4 4 I suspect it was translated from English into Korean, though I have been unable to locate an original. The manual recommended several English-language publications, including Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking (1952), and in several passages the Korean translates very easily into idiomatic English expressions.

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When You Intend to Give a Scolding Sometimes it's necessary to give a scolding. It's best to scold effectively; but on the other hand, caution should be used. r. It should be done at a time Wait a moment, but before too when you are composed much time has passed, make sure that not only yourself but also the other person isn't too excited 2. When others aren't around Think of a good place, and in a natural style 3. Only when it is. worthwhile After understanding the facts well, think carefully about whether scolding is the best method Don't beat around the bush, and 4· Frankly without ridicule or scorn 5. Center on the facts Centering on the facts, point out the core [of the problem], and without letting it take the form of a personal attack 6. With trust, encouragement, With trust in the other person, hope, and appropriate concern wishing for that person's development, and considering the person's situation and personality, don't be discouraging but make an effort to produce a "let's try" attitude 7· Don't be discouraging And be completely supportive. -A scolding given without wanting the other person to improve isn't a scolding. It's an expression of anger.

A section chief who happened to see me copying these instructions from the training manual observed, "That's the way we're supposed to do things, but we're so busy that we just [can't]." Thus, no matter how "natural" the training method was portrayed by the manager who compared it to a father's training of his sons, subordinates had alternative frames for interpreting it.

Quotidian Control Managers' efforts to control subordinates were most conspicuous at the weekly managers' meetings, but throughout the week they supervised in more subtle ways. Some of their methods were common in capitalist enterprises in many other societies as well, methods such as quantitative production and sales targets. Among those not as common elsewhere were document routing and visual surveillance.

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Narrow assignments also were given, and employees were kept in the office until late at night. The routing of documents systematically informed superiors of requests subordinates had received from outside the office. In the division where my desk was located, for example, a saw6n received incoming messages only after his section chief had first seen them. Section chiefs received some documents directly, but many others, such as all interoffice memos, came to them through department heads. Outgoing documents were even more thoroughly controlled, each stamped with a row of squares for the initials or seal of the saw6n who had prepared it, as well as for his section chief, his department head, his director, and sometimes higher-level managers as well.5 As a result, each man's supervisor, and most often the next level of supervisor as well, had an opportunity to examine and was required to approve every outgoing document that he prepared. To prevent accidental oversights, logbooks were also kept of all incoming and outgoing documents as well as of work in progress. Managers did not automatically approve the documents their subordinates prepared. One who had not scrutinized a document carefully enough evidently provoked some of the scolding described in the preceding section. More often, managers demanded changes or corrections. One man approached me wearing a broad grin after his superior approved an English-language letter without demanding any revisions. It was a rare achievement, the man explained, and he had accomplished it by telling the superior that I had been the letter's author. In addition to checking documents prepared by subordinates, section chiefs and department heads could exercise direct surveillance thanks to the physical arrangement of the desks. Michel Foucault's observations (1978: esp. 170-77) regarding physical layouts and control are resonant here. Taes6ng offices were generally large enough to accommodate an entire division, and desks were usually lined up in rows with aisles separating the sections. Desks belonging to the same section and located in the same row were adjoining, thereby contributing to the population density, frequent communication, and ease of surveillance. A room of. roughly 6o by 25 feet, for example, accommodated about 40 people. Unless prevented by the physical dimensions of the room, desks were arranged to resemble an organization chart. 5 I never saw such rows of squares for vice-chairmen or the chairman, but I assume they existed for documents dealing with the entire chaebol.

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Staff sections, meeting rooms, and director's office

~

c::::=r=J CJ

D

I

D

CJ Sawon's desk

-

I

I

I

I I I I

CJ

I

I I I

I I I I

CJ

c::::=r=J

-

I I I I

CJ

CJ

CJ Section chief's desk -

Department head's desk

Fig. 3. Floor plan of a division

The formation shown in Figure 3 of six sections that were numbered from right to left exhibits the usual layout. Variations were possible, but they also attempted to reproduce the organization chart. When pressed for space to accommodate new recruits and another section, for example, the sections depicted in Figure 3 were rearranged into the Japanese style described by Thomas Rohlen (1974: ros-6) and depicted in Figure 4· With either configuration section chiefs and department heads were close to and had an unobstructed view of their subordinates throughout the day. Each section chief was seated directly behind the members of his own section, each department head slightly behind and no more than a desk removed from his section chiefs, and the deputy director usually commanded the most comprehensive view of the office. A section chief could see whether his subordinates were working and often what documents they were working on. He could also overhear what they said on the telephone. Moreover, sawon could not as easily observe their section chief observing them. And sawon rarely left the office without informing him: unexplained absences were normally understood as visits to the rest room. The configuration of the desks was not the natural outcome of a nonreflective adherence to rules but required active choices by the administrative section chief and the other managers. A few months after

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r6s

I began my fieldwork, for example, the office had to be rearranged to make room for personnel who had been newly hired, and the administrative section chief tried hard to devise a new layout. When asked where I would like to have my desk, I suggested a spot between a department head and one of his section chiefs, thinking it an excellent vantage point to observe their interaction. My suggestion was politely received but not accepted. When later I suggested a spot equidistant between two departments, thinking that there I would be out of the way, the administrative section chief gently explained that such a position would make it look as if I were the division's deputy director. Yet another way in which managers controlled subordinates was by narrowly circumscribing their tasks. Taesong managers did not give subordinates open-ended assignments or let them try out their own ideas to see what they could accomplish. Sawon in particular were given clearly defined tasks. I noticed such restrictions when they brought me documents for editing or translation. Sawon were reluctant to accept any wording other than the most literal translations, section chiefs and department heads were somewhat more open to suggestions, but only directors ever accepted a major rewording. A newly hired sawon who shared my interest in computers told me of an idea he had for computerizing some of his company's record keeping, but his section chief told him to devote his energies to his assigned work. Such managerial actions shaped perceptions of the chaebol's and company's emphasis on creativity and innovation. Sawon soon

Sawon

Sawon

Sawon

Sawon

Sawon

Sawon

Section chief

Fig. 4· Alternative ·arrangement of a section

r66

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learned that creativity was supposed to be limited to accomplishing the objectives chosen by superiors. Managers could also keep subordinates in the office until certain documents had been completed or other assigned tasks accomplished. Though music began to play softly over the loudspeakers at 6 P.M., indicating that the official workday was over, almost every man remained until seven and many worked until eight or nine every weekday. One section chief revealed that he had been told his evaluations would not be very good unless he stayed at least until seven o'clock. Men sometimes asked to be excused from having to work late on special occasions and, though such requests may have been granted, the men spoke only of the times they were refused (Chapter 7).

Symbolic reproduction of domination. An almost endless variety of practices apparently aimed at naturalizing the hierarchy while supplementing measures that controlled work directly. The administrative section chief's rearrangement of desks, for example, not only facilitated surveillance but also made readily apparent, even to those entering an office for the first time, the ranks of its various personnel. The chief also placed a sign on the desk of each manager stating the name of his department or division, the name or number of his section, his rank, and his name in that order (e.g., Accounting Section 3 Chief Hong Kiltong). The desks of sawon had no such signs, but their locations followed a prescribed order as well. Those of the senior sawon of each section were in the rear rows, closest to their section chiefs, with those of the newest men employees and all women workers toward the front. These secretaries, ranked at grade 5 and below any of the male office workers, sat farthest from the section chief. The sizes and accoutrements of the desks reproduced the hierarchical order of their arrangement and nameplates, since the administrative affairs departments of the companies sought to standardize the desks throughout the headquarters building of the chaebol. Sawon, both men and women, were given a chair without armrests and a desk with a single bank of drawers; section chiefs were given chairs with armrests and slightly larger desks with banks of drawers on both sides; department heads were issued still larger desks, a sepa- . rate two-drawer file cabinet, and a chair equipped with armrests and a higher backrest than those given the section chiefs. Directors had their own offices, each of which was furnished with a still larger desk and chair, conference table, computer terminal, glass-doored bookcase, and coat rack.

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The physical signs of rank were so systematically employed that they became part of the cultural knowledgeability that workers soon acquired and used to interpret what they saw. When I started my fieldwork, for example, some employees began calling me Section Chief, because my desk was of that size and location, though they knew I was in charge of no one and was in the office to conduct research. Differences in rank were also naturalized by training programs that attempted to inculcate habits of acquiescence. Someone of lower rank was taught to stand up when a man of higher rank approached his desk, for example, but the latter remained seated at the approach of the former. When a Taesong company vice-president happened to enter an office in which I was working, all so-odd employees stood up. Since it seemed awkward to remain seated, I joined them. How quickly or stiffly a man stood up was affected by his relationship with his superior and other contingent circumstances. Another sign of hierarchy was body language. As elsewhere in Korea, subordinates exchanged documents and other objects with superiors by extending two hands while the latter used only one. I could often surmise when a subordinate was being admonished by how long and how stiffly he stood without speaking before his superior's desk. One manager paused as he was about to put twenty thousand won into an envelope for an employee who recently had a death in the family to see that his gift was smaller than the sum given by his boss. Ranking was apparent from the very start of the workday, as employees arrived at the office building. Those below the rank of director usually passed the doorman without receiving an acknowledgment or greeting. Directors, however, were greeted with a word and a slight bow from the doormen, who saluted company presidents in military fashion and held open an elevator's doors for them. A notice that the chairman was about to arrive was sent evidently by car radio, and the elevator of easiest access from the main door was kept empty and waiting for his arrival, an elevator operator standing outside its open door ready to whisk him up to his office. All the doormen stood at attention and saluted as he entered the building. Relative power was also inscribed by yet more practices. Lowerranking persons were taught to greet their seniors first, and seniors returned but did not initiate greetings to subordinates. When using the elevators, the highest-ranking person went first, unless the elevator was so crowded that this politeness could not be observed. The senior person also walked first through doorways. Automobile seats

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also had a relative rank. If a chauffeur drove, the highest-ranking person sat at the right rear, the second in rank at the left rear, the third in the right front, and the fourth in the least comfortable middle-rear seat. A different set of rules applied for cars driven by their owners, for then the right front seat was for the most senior passenger. When I drove a group of workers in my car one afternoon and a sawon took an inappropriate seat, a section chief told him to move. The terms of address managers used to reaffirm differences in rank were considered so important that they were the only instruction I was given about office behavior when I began my fieldwork. The deputy director had lived for a few years in the United States while assigned to one of the company's overseas offices, and he was well acquainted with the American custom of addressing people by first names. Evidently he wanted to ensure that I knew the rudiments of etiquette and would observe them, and he had to determine how the office workers should address me. 6 A few days later, when I made a mistake addressing a sawon, it was quickly pointed out to me by his section chief. A manager's superiors addressed him by his name and rank, as Section Chief Kim (Kim kwajang) or sometimes by the name or number of his section and rank: Fifth Section Chief or Planning Section Chief. Sawon, on the other hand, addressed a section chief by his title plus the honorific suffix nim (kwajangnim), just as section chiefs addressed their department heads by their titles plus the honorific suffix (pujangnim). Juniors could also use the surname of a superior before his title if it was necessary to differentiate him from others of the same rank. Managers of the same rank normally used each other's last names and titles. Adding an honorific suffix to the title of an equal connoted a degree of flattery and perhaps indicated with a touch of humor that a favor was about to be asked. Men and women who had no managerial titles were addressed to reproduce symbolically their respective rankings. Male sawon were usually addressed by everyone according to their full names plus the addition of ssi (Pak Kimun-ssi), but for women the prevalent form was the English title Miss plus their surnames (Miss Cho). In all 6 When he asked me what I would like to be called, I responded that Janelli kyosu (professor) or Janelli·ssi would be fine, not yet knowing the implications of the latter term. Everyone younger than myself settled on calling me professor plus an honorific suffix (kyosunim), a term commonly used for academics, except one section chief. On several occasions he expressed dislike of the ranks and had a fine sense of humor, and he sometimes enjoyed challenging my own privileges. He occasionally addressed me publicly, though never in private, as Janelli·ssi.

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situations the English terms Mister and Miss were used only to indicate lower status. Even in English-conversation classes, despite my explanation that Mister plus a last name was an acceptable term of address for persons of higher status, no participant ever used it to address or refer to a superior. Instead, they translated superiors' titles into English (Director Ko). Some evidence of structural transformation in language rules could be seen, however. When I began my fieldwork I was told that the women sawon had complained of being addressed with a lower form than that used for the male sawon, and during my stay at Taesong managers were interspersing whole names followed by ssi with Miss plus a surname to address female workers. Only occasionally did nonmanagerial workers refer to an earlier entrant by his surname plus the title sonbae and an honorific suffix (Kwon sonbaenim). Sonbae has no convenient English translation. Used in schools by students and alumni, it designates someone who entered the institution before oneself. Those who entered later, by contrast, were referred to but not addressed as hubae. Except at the company training for new entrants, however, I seldom heard the terms sonbae and hubae. As a term of address, sonbaenim too often connoted an air of flattery and humor, for despite its honorific suffix, it was used only for a man of equal rank; anyone of higher rank was addressed by his title. Seating arrangements also contributed to the naturalization of ranks, even at occasions less formal than the weekly managers' meeting. The senior person usually sat at the head of a meeting table, persons in the next rank sat to his immediate left and right, and more junior persons sat farther away. In restaurants persons of higher rank sat in the "inner" seat, usually the one farthest from the door or aisle. Seniority within each rank was rarely evident, but differences between ranks were carefully observed. Managers used these seating arrangements in my English classes too, though the sawon and section chiefs of one division chose not to. When the chaebol moved into its new headquarters building, the company's top executives were dismayed by some of the furnishings selected by an American firm for the Taesong company president's office. In the area to be used for his consultations with upper managers, all of the chairs were alike and the table was square. Because that left unclear which location was for the president, the furniture was soon changed. Even lunch appointments were made with an awareness of rank. Early in my fieldwork I was told that lunchtime meetings with those

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who worked within one's own office were usually arranged just prior to eating and that invitations were issued by higher to lower persons because juniors were expected to match their schedules to those of seniors. Only after many mistakes did I realize how these two rules were connected and make lunch arrangements in the expected manner. If a director had no appointment, he often chose to invite his department heads out to lunch; if the department heads had no appointment, they usually chose to eat with each other or with their own section chiefs; and a section chief who had no appointment sometimes ate with other section chiefs of his department or, somewhat more often, with the male sawon of his section. (Women sawon usually formed their own lunch groups.) Initiating or accepting appointments well before the lunch hour ran the risk of having to refuse a superior's lunch invitation, or worse leave the superior stranded. Occasional appointments made outside the office were acceptable but not those made within it. A section chief whom I had invited out to lunch during the first few days of my fieldwork confessed he felt uncomfortable because he had to refuse another invitation from his deputy director. Some managers devised their own strategies for handling these situations. A department head for whom I arranged a lunch with an American friend he wanted to meet had his own plan for keeping the appointment. Knowing that he would be in a meeting with a senior manager and an important customer just before lunch and surmising that he would be invited to join them so that he could pay the check, he had brought one of his own section chiefs to the meeting to act in his stead. Status and rank could be observed in seemingly innocent details. Even the Christmas cards chosen for directors to send out were a little nicer than those distributed for the use of section chiefs and department heads. And, as one manager explained, the value of gifts brought back for friends and office mates after a trip overseas were expected to correlate with the ranks of their recipients. These practices are significant because of their symbolic meanings and their pervasiveness. Taken together, they imply a consistent and sustained attempt to naturalize or "enchant" (Bourdieu 1977: 167) the ranking system in the company and obliterate the kinds of flexibility, counterstrategies, and negotiation over hierarchy often seen in rural and academic South Korea. These and many more symbolic expressions were intended to create and reaffirm an understanding that rank was natural and that authority flowed from top to bot-

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tom. When opportunities to contest the authority of superiors even symbolically were minimized, potential avenues for challenging control were constricted. Moreover, the ubiquitous use of rank and the strategy of internal promotion combined to make advancement that was slower than the rest of one's cohorts all the more painful: a man who fell behind was constantly reminded of his inferior position among former equals. A person's absence from a major social event was attributed by his co-workers to hard feelings from being passed over for promotion. That managers employed so many techniques to maintain the hierarchical structure of the company, used them so self-consciously, and took substantial efforts to inscribe acquiescence during the training for new employees also indicate that hierarchy in the workplace was not merely the result of workers' cultural knowledge when they entered Taesong. Though much has been written about hierarchical relations in South Korea, I will try to identify the most salient differences between company practices and those found in the other settings with which I am most familiar: rural villages and academic institutions. My argument for a large measure of discontinuity between precompany and company practices at Taesong is further supported by employees' own views about these matters, which are presented in Chapter 7· Admittedly, ranking in the office often correlated with age, which made it appear similar to what had been experienced outside the company and thus less arbitrary. As I tried to show in Chapter r, age was a common criterion for status in rural South Korea, as elsewhere (Flanagan 1989: 246). Although age did not always correspond perfectly with actual power or authority at Taesong, the correlation was close enough at the lower levels of the headquarters hierarchy to help legitimate it there. As I also tried to show in Chapter r, however, age differences either among nankin or between distant kin earned polite deference but not authority, and deference was not as inflexible as in the company. Members of a lineage had multiple criteria for claiming deference, and this multiplicity created space for negotiation regarding their respective statuses. In addition, the criteria themselves were regarded as accidents of birth that did not reflect on ability or accomplishment. Incongruities could, therefore, be openly acknowledged, often with humor, in discussions about which criterion ought to take precedence or how to take more than one into account in any particular situation (R. Janelli 1975: 137-39). At the office, on the other hand, incongruities between age and

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rank were a source of embarrassment and were whispered about rather than discussed openly. I noted in Chapter 4 that when a section chief was promoted ahead of another of the same division who had entered the company before him, assignments were rearranged to avoid placing the new department head directly above his former senior. And in casual conversations with me, those who had advanced a bit more slowly than one of their cohorts were often reticent about revealing their age, year of graduation, or the year they entered the company. Sometimes my own faux pas, especially during the first few weeks of fieldwork, unwittingly brought incongruities between age and rank into the open. Since I had no official position in the company, many men I met for the first time asked my age, partly in order to place me somewhere in the hierarchy, and I asked theirs in return. It was in this way that a section chief learned to his surprise that an acquaintance who had entered the Taesong chaebol a year earlier and whom he had regarded as his senior was actually a year younger. More often, however, the incongruities of age and rank were already known but left unspoken. Administrative section chiefs, for example, had a list of the dates of birth, years of graduation, and dates of entry into the company for everyone in their respective divisions. South Korean academics also pay more attention to age than do their American counterparts but not as rigidly as in the offices of Taesong. While presidencies of academic societies and seating arrangements at academic meetings usually reflect cultural notions of seniority, academics do not always correlate prestige with age. I have seen elections for offices in academic societies (as well as villages), for example, at which each person was given a written and anonymous ballot. Senior academics sometimes yielded inner seats or those at the head of a table to their juniors, who accepted only after the senior person insisted. And though I have observed at informal gatherings a senior academic pouring a glass of wine for a junior, I never witnessed such symbolic reversals of rank in the company. A closer parallel to Taesong's ranking system appeared to be the army, a point that has escaped neither Taes6ng workers nor many other observers (Chapter 7). After Hours The owner-managers of South Korean companies budgeted funds for the entertainment of their employees, but unless the events were

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particularly expensive, lower-level managers decided when and how to spend the money. Managers at several levels organized a variety of recreational activities, depending on the interests and abilities of their subordinates, the part of Seoul where most happened to reside, the season, and other considerations. Restaurants or drinking houses frequented by some departments or divisions, for example, were unknown to others. In addition to eating and drinking, other popular forms of company-sponsored entertainment included mountain hiking with cookout picnics, visiting saunas, playing cards, bowling, and disco dancing. Almost invariably, the recruitment of personnel to participate in officially sponsored recreations followed the organizational chart of the company, their frequency varying inversely with how large the unit was. I saw no recreational activities for the entire chaebol or company, which is not surprising in view of the sizes and geographic dispersion of these organizations. Taesong company's headquarters staff, however, held two recreational events during my fieldwork. One was a year-end office party at which the president made a formal appearance at each division and many managers visited other divisions to exchange greetings; the other was an outdoor gatheritig to watch a sporting event of the type the company was sponsoring for the upcoming 1988 Olympics. Division managers organized a few more outings throughout the year, including an athletic competition in the spring and another outdoor recreation in the fall. Departments gathered even more often, though my information here is based primarily on the division in which my desk was located. Using that division as an example, there was one departmental gathering at the beginning of each month, which celebrated completing the rush of work at the end of the previous month, as well as occasional outings, such as picnics, and a follow-up party to the office party at the end of the year. Directors and deputy directors of the various divisions took their junior managers out for lunch or afterhours recreation, and department heads also took their section chiefs out to drinks and dinner. Section chiefs often took their sawon drinking and eating after hours and to other entertainments about once a week according to my observations and the testimony of several office workers.7 7 These occasions were referred to as drinking but included eating as well. The first round usually consisted of mild drinking while consuming a meal; the second involved recreation (e.g., dancing) and drinking; the third was for drinking primarily; and the

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Since the after-hours gatherings generally followed the organization chart rather than personal preferences, everyone who belonged to a given unit was expected to participate in all of its events. When a department organized an evening of bowling, for example, it was not just for those who liked to bowl. The heads of the sections and departments usually consulted each other and tried to organize a variety of different activities, weighing the merits and appeal of each. Most employees spoke positively of this socializing, no one ever complained of its being an onerous obligation, and attendance was high. Yet not everyone attended every event, as some sought to evade gatherings on particular evenings by citing other social obligations. One evening a man asked to be excused because he had to attend his father's ancestor rite; and another, rather than join a Sunday event, said he wanted to spend the day with his child. Moreover, both managers and workers alike used the verb "escape" (tomang hada) to describe leaving early, thereby hinting that attendance was not purely voluntary. Attendance was seen as a commentary on the group's social relations, unless an absentee had offered an ironclad reason for skipping an occasion. Managers spoke with apparent pride when they pointed out that all of their subordinates had attended an event or that an absent person had very pressing obligations. Other absences were sometimes explained in terms of a person's ill feelings, as in the case of the absentee who had been passed over for promotion. Many privately sponsored after-hours events also followed the organization chart. An entire division was often invited to the home of a member on special occasions, such as weddings, funerals, or the celebration of a child's first birthday. And sawon of the same section, especially those who were unmarried, sometimes went out drinking together without their section chief. Not all private social gatherings followed the organizational chart, but those that did not often seemed surreptitious. Participants did not talk about them in the office in front of co-workers. At some gatherings of sections and departments I was invited to join, other participants and I were told not to inform members of adjacent sections about the event. If others got word, they might feel jealous or want to be invited. A mountain hike and picnic originally planned fourth (if there was one) was only for the most zealous drinkers. The fourth round was said to be the last because, as one manager pointed out, the sino-Korean word for "four" (sa) is a homonym for "death" (sa). The fourth round was said to finish off everyone.

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by a section was said to have been ruined because word got out and an entire division ended up going. I assume that several events took place that I did not know about. Almost without exception Taesong workers articulated an understanding of their after-hours gatherings as an antidote to the stresses and strains of office life. Most said they relieved (p'ulda) the stresses of interaction in the office, repeating a statement from the chaebol's and company's magazines. An older manager said these occasions were important for providing opportunities for communication to flow upward, since that was unlikely to occur in the office. Others said that interpersonal conflicts hidden in the daytime would often be spoken of at these occasions. In fact, the seemingly informal behavior at these occasions contrasted sharply with what prevailed in the office. This conventional interpretation was challenged by a newly hired sawon who doubted the stress-relieving function of these events, but most often after-hours recreations were represented as "antistructural" (Turner 1969) celebrations that deliberately set aside the usual office hierarchy. Junior managers and even sawon were often allowed to take the initiative in their planning or organization, even when superiors were present. At one mountain hike in which I participated, for example, a department head practicing his English said of his section chief who was a more experienced hiker, "Today, Mr. To is our king [i.e., our leader]." A deputy director, speaking of an afterhours party at which a sawon acted as emcee, observed: "On these occasions, 0 Songik-ssi is the deputy director." Office workers spoke of these occasions as antidotes to office life because of the dramatic difference in interaction as well as the alleged role reversals. Superiors often smiled and joked with subordinates; a few even danced suggestively With women workers. I was told of a party some months before I began my fieldwork at which an older manager danced on a table with one of his woman workers, causing it to collapse. Indeed, I too was struck by the difference between the stiff and formal interaction in offices and that during recreation. Contrasts between office life and cocktail parties in the United States paled by comparison. At a soccer game organized by one division, for example, the women workers laughingly chanted the full name of their director, in imitation of spectators at public sporting events who chant the names of their favorite athletes to encourage them, enjoying a license I never saw in the office. Their laughter as they chanted

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indicated they knew they were pushing the limits of acceptability, especially since their director was the referee. Early in my fieldwork a section chief took advantage of another party to break down reserves by turning the tables on me and reversing fieldworker and researchsubject roles. Saying that he always was in great awe of teachers and had never even seen one go to the bathroom, much less drink alcohol, he was curious to observe me to find out what a professor's alcohol tolerance was. Would I therefore have another drink? That section chief soon became one of my favorite people at Taesong. Yet the more subtle aspects of these events reveal much to support the interpretation given by the dissenting sawon. Claims about role reversals notwithstanding, I never observed a junior ordering a superior, ignoring the requests of superiors, or attempting to go beyond the boundaries of their temporarily allocated power. The possibility of making a mistake (silsu) and offending someone while under the influence of alcohol was openly acknowledged. The higher statuses of superiors were apparent from the seating arrangements, the order in which food was served, or the asymmetrical levels of politeness in verb endings. When one division played cards, for example, a few groups of four or five persons each usually formed on the basis of rank, the director and his department heads in one group. The financing of these events was yet another subtle means of reaffirming rank. At an event held at a sawon's house, for example, the highest-ranking person was said to have brought a more expensive gift than any of his subordinates. And at gatherings organized for departments and sections at restaurants and other public places, the senior person always paid the check. One section chief said that part of the costs were provided by company funds and the remainder from his own pocket, but sawon were more inclined to view the entire expense as coming from the company. After attending my first party, I felt sorry about absorbing some of the section's entertainment funds, if not the section chief's personal money, and offered to underwrite the next month's event. The section chief asked me to take his subordinates to lunch instead, explaining only that my financing of a regular function would make things "difficult" for him. A measure of secrecy surrounded the financing of these occasions, as another section chief acknowledged. I surmise that one of their purposes was to give the impression that they were treats from the section chief to his subordinates. Recreational and social events in villages afford an interpretive

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frame for office parties, which can be seen as partial extensions of village practices. One sawon called a previous evening's entertainment a salp'uri, a shamanistic rite offered to remove baleful influences (Han'guk minsok sajon p'yonch'an wiwonhoe 1991: 760). When a section chief's father died, the members of his division, and particularly those of his own section, performed many of the tasks covillagers would have done, such as staying with him at his house throughout the evening. The sharp contrast between formality, hierarchy, and restraint in some situations, and informal, egalitarian boisterousness in others corresponds to the duality Vincent Brandt (1971) found in South Korean villages. And rural residents also used entertainment as a means of acquiring symbolic capital. Perhaps these similarities resonated with the practical consciousness of workers. But as with all attempts to establish the traditional nature of behavior, the continuity between past and present is challenged by alternate interpretations. It can be argued that what was seen in the company was a transformation rather than repetition of village practices. In Twisongdwi, for example, the most hierarchical relationships were not relaxed at community celebrations, where sons avoided their fathers. Though the informal and egalitarian nature of community relations was openly recognized, it was not considered an antidote to the formality of kinship relations since both were accepted as valid modes of interaction. Moreover, the after-hours recreation in the company never became as egalitarian as community festivities in villages. Subordinates always maintained a measure of reserve in front of their managers, and I was unable to find the pranks and open argumentation that Dawnhee Yim and I had often noted at such occasions in Twisongdwi. In view of these differences, one can also regard after-hours activities not as mere nonreflective extensions of village practices but as part of a deliberate strategy for rendering more palatable the rigid meetcontrol of the office. In the discussion of the weekly~managers' / . ing, I mentioned a senior manager who instructed his section chiefs to use entertainment on Saturday afternoons in this manner. Recruiting participants for activities according to the organization chart may also have been intended to direct each person's loyalties toward their unit and away from other alliances, illustrating the same principle as the teamwork of the self-control training. This was apparently the reason other meetings were often surreptitious. The exclusiveness of such gatherings, moreover, was counter to the preva-

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lent village practice of opening gatherings to all eligible participants (Brandt 1971: 147). The many hours of entertainment perhaps had the more insidious intention of minimizing free time spent with family or friends from outside the company, thereby encouraging greater identification with the company or forcing a higher level of involvement in its affairs. Though no one at Taesong offered this interpretation, some managers have adopted a similar strategy for dealing with their bluecollar workers, and it seems possible that some applied the same technique to the new middle class. A how-to book written for Americans interested in conducting business in South Korea advises: A possible preventive tactic to ward off possible labor disruptions is to build a community or family-like atmosphere through company-sponsored activities such as picnics and sports events .... A satisfied employee pursuing a personal interest as a company activity will probably not have time or motivation to instigate labor problems .... Such diversions are far more productive and economical than lost time from strikes and sabotage. One astute local labor relations manager was successful in channelling a union activity into the beautification of the factory premises. "Keep 'em busy with something worthwhile!" Uang 1988: 127]

SIX

Responses from Below 1: International and South Korean Political Economy My head is going back and forth. A Taesong manager

the ideology and coercion the bourgeoisie used on D new-middle-class subordinates to sustain or reproduce asymESPITE ALL

metrical relations of power and economic privilege, despite the considerable resources which owner-managers wielded to attain those ends, and despite many shared interests, Taesong subordinates expressed many views that were at odds with those advanced by the bourgeoisie. They also resisted their superiors and even sought to reform some of the hierarchical structures in which they were disadvantaged, trying to achieve these goals partly by their actions and partly by refusing to surrender their own understandings of the international and national political economy. My initial research plans did not include these matters, but experiences with Taesong workers guided my inquiry in this direction. From the earliest days of my fieldwork, many younger managers and sawon sought out my views on the international and national political economy. Upon learning of my own dissatisfaction with American support of Chun Doo Hwan's regime, they presented me with their broader critique of American policies, capitalist methods, and Cl.iltural practices. Their comments about the United States conveyed a suspicion of American motives and a condemnation of American policies. Their disapproval of Chun Doo Hwan's administration appeared to be universal, prompted primarily by his unwillingness to yield to

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popular demands, his coercive means of control, and his interference in the economy. No one ever said anything in his favor. Their critiques of the chaebol and sympathy for South Korea's blue-collar workers, however, were made less frequently and consistently. International Political Economy The greatest difference between bourgeois representations of the international political economy and those of the younger managers and sawon was in the way they portrayed the United States and its relationship with South Korea. Unlike the bourgeoisie these members of the new middle class did not always express views in the language of liberal economists. Their comments leaned toward those of the students and many others of the middle classes who were demonstrating in the streets against American trade pressures. They more often depicted the international world system as a zero-sum game in which South Korea's interests were constantly frustrated by American foreign and trade policies. The bourgeoisie publicly spoke of competition between South Korea and "advanced industrial nations," but Taesong workers rarely mentioned any nation but the United States. And whereas the bourgeoisie described American trade pressures as "only natural" (Chapter 3), Taesong workers portrayed American demands as unreasonable and morally objectionable. They did not separate international markets from international politics, openly recognizing that participants in market transactions were not equals. Perceiving a connection between cultural, political, and economic inequalities, they sought to correct all these imbalances. Many office workers had majored or taken courses in economics, business administration, and international trade during their undergraduate years. Most sawon were conversant with Walter Rostow's (r96o) five stages of economic growth, the concept of comparative advantage, and product-cycle theory, probably because these subjects often appeared on company entrance examinations. In the early 198o's South Korean academics and students developed an increasing interest in Marxism and dependency theory (Kim Kyong-Dong 1987), which were not included in university curricula but which many students were familiar with through their own study groups (Roberts and Chun 1984: So). Workers also acquired a knowledge of international political economy from the media. Many men carried newspapers to work in the morning or read early afternoon editions during their lunch hour;

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managers, but not sawon, occasionally read them at their desks. We often talked about what was reported in the newspaper or discussed by favorite columnists. On several occasions individuals pointed to or clipped out and gave me articles they thought I would find interesting, or which they thought I should read. Unlike television, newspapers "revealed all the facts" (ta nawayo ), one section chief noted, alluding to the common understanding that the state exercised far more stringent controls over the electronic media. All of these media sources told of increasing American insistence on opening the South Korean market to American cigarettes and other agricultural goods, reducing other import restrictions, and appreciating the won, especially as the balance of trade swung increasingly in favor of South Korea. The media also told office workers of the widespread resistance and indignation American pressure had provoked. Their substantive and timely knowledge of the international political economy came not only from their formal education and the media, which were available to others of the middle classes, but also from their work at Taesong. Both the chaebol and company were extensively engaged in international trade, so work supplemented and made concrete these external sources of information. A recent appreciation of the Japanese yen compared to the won had made South Korean goods cheaper in Japan, and in the spring of 1987 upper management introduced Japanese-language training for some of its employees to increase sales to Japanese customers. In the fall of 1986, well before knowledge of South Korea's trade with China was publicly reported (Asian Wall Street Journal, Jan. 17, 1988, p. 17), Taesong office workers were able to describe the nature and extent of the trade in some detail because they were preparing many of the necessary documents.1 A large construction project at the port of Asan, on South Korea's west coast, was undertaken primarily to facilitate the growing China trade, one manager explained. A map on the wall of one office had evidently been made in China, for it showed P'yongyang rather than Seoul as the capital of Korea.2 I am grateful to Keith Ferguson for alerting me to this newspaper report. Taesong workers were evidently unaware of South Korea's much smaller volume of trade with the former Soviet Union or Eastern European countries, probably because South Korean exports to these nations did not entail the kinds of products Taesong company produced (Yoon Suk Bum 1984). In 1981 trade with the Soviet Union amounted to one-sixth of the trade with China (Yoon Suk Bum 1984: 37). According to the Far Eastern Economic Review (Sept. 20, 1990, p. 86), South Korea's trade with the former Soviet Union amounted to about $roo million in 1986 and $20o million in 1

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Given their level of involvement in the growing rapprochement between South Korea and China, it was hardly surprising that workers did not use Cold War rhetoric regarding the "threat of world communism." Though such ideas had been an integral part of workers' formal education through college (Mason et al. 1980: 359), they had apparently been abandoned well before I began my fieldwork. And rarely did I hear the expressions of anti-Japanese sentiment often voiced by other sectors of the population. Though their work experiences and media reports gave workers reason to anticipate increasing exports to both China and Japan, neither offered as much optimism regarding trade with the United States. Though the appreciation of the yen was expected to make South Korean goods cheaper than those of Japan in American markets, Taesong workers were well aware of rising American protectionism and increasing commercial conflicts between the two nations, as U.S. officials sought to reduce the balance-of-trade deficit with South Korea by increasing exports and curtailing South Korean imports. Shortly after the 1986 congressional elections in the United States, a Taesong report and newspapers both warned that protectionist legislation was likely to increase because the Democratic Party had obtained control of both houses of Congress. American trade policies were reported and criticized daily in the media. Some workers even prepared documentation to defend the company against a dumping claim made by the United States. Others I knew were appealing to state officials not to yield to American pressure to lower an import tax on one of the company's products. And everyone was aware that the chaebol had already established assembly plants in the United States to bypass import quotas for some of its other products. Without exception, Taesong workers, from newly hired sawon to older managers, portrayed American trade pressure as extremely unfair. That conflict ought not be viewed as a contest between equals, several maintained. A;, the "wealthiest nation on earth," the United States had an obligation to understand and assist less fortunate nations like South Korea. "Our country" (uri nara), several noted, had few natural resources, was handicapped by a high population density, 1987, more than half of which consisted of imports. Trade with China in 1987 was reported at $r.5 billion (Asian Wall Street Journal, Jan. 17,1988, p. 17). In the statistical tables of trade data classified by country and compiled by agencies affiliated with the South Korean state (e.g., Taehan muyok chinhiing kongsa 1988; Bank of Korea 1989: 220-21), neither the Soviet Union nor China was mentioned.

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had to export in order to survive, was still burdened with an enormous foreign debt, and had only just begun to enjoy a trade surplus in 1986. They also knew that the United States was South Korea's largest foreign market (absorbing about one-third of its exports and thereby constituting about one-ninth of its Gross National Product), but that only a small fraction of American exports were shipped to South Korea, leaving it very vulnerable to changes in American trading policy. Americans who wanted open markets failed to understand South Korea's plight, they maintained, for their markets needed protection until their companies became strong enough to compete with those of the United States. It was also said that greater recognition ought to be given to the hard work and long hours with which South Koreans had attained their economic gains. Americans themselves were responsible for their own economic difficulties but were trying to blame South Korea and other countries, some added. Major differences between the claims of the bourgeoisie and those of sawon and managers were seen in the forcefulness of the latter's expressions, their recognition of power imbalances, and their condemnation of American actions in moral terms. One young manager who had difficulties acquiring a visa at the American embassy in Seoul was particularly blunt: "Americans deserve their economic troubles because of their laziness," he said. Daily conversation imitated the habit of newspapers and company literature in applying "protectionism" (pohojuui), which had negative connotations, to the United States but not to South Korea. South Korean industries needed protection (poho ), but Americans were protectionistic. "They don't think of the [economic harm which they cause to] poor Korean farmers," said one irate director of American demands to open the agricultural market. The moral indignation of their views was comparable-though diametrically opposed to-those most often heard in the United States (Koo Hagen 1991). Whereas many Americans were pressing moral claims for "level playing fields" (Chapter 2), Taesong workers pressed theirs based on the sizes of the players. Finally, Taesong workers' experiences with foreigners, which were shaped by the international political economy, added another edge to their critique of the United States. These encounters revealed to them specific linkages between economic and cultural domination that did not appear in the public or internal statements of the ownermanagers. Unlike rural villagers, whose interactions with the international economy were largely mediated through other South Korean

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nationals, direct contact with Americans gave Taesong workers a heightened awareness of American privilege and their own disadvantaged position in the world system. Because the economy had a trade deficit with Japan and a trade surplus with the United States, Taesong employees acted primarily as buyers when they met with Japanese businessmen and as sellers with Americans.3 Sellers must try to pamper the whims of institutional buyers, perhaps even more so in East Asia than elsewhere (Graham et a!. 1989: 28r-82), and their encounters with the Japanese were evidently more pleasant. One manager vividly contrasted the kind reception he received from the Japanese with the indifferent treatment handed out by Americans. Joint ventures, formed to acquire American technology in return for labor and access to the market, similarly disadvantaged South Koreans by requiring them to speak English and follow American business practices. (They also implied a lesser status by acknowledging the superiority of American technology.) Thus, Taesong workers' most common encounters with Americans placed the workers in a discomforting position. Taesong personnel were all too aware of the tactical disadvantage of having to conduct business in a foreign language. One put the matter quite frankly when telling me of his opposition to learning J apanese. "If I speak Japanese, I will sound like a child," he complained. Others told of how an American colleague in a new joint venture responded angrily when they had been unable to decipher the intended meaning of his interoffice memo. A manager once advised me not to be so modest about my Korean-language abilities, for my saying that my Korean was poor made him and his co-workers feel that their English must be very weak. I assume that similar sentiments were the reason even men who appeared to have a better command of English than I had of Korean preferred to converse in their language. Using English, the lingua franca of Korean-American trade and joint ventures, was particularly debilitating when speaking with Americans, but Taesong workers evidently did not feel as disadvantaged when 3 Though the balances of trade with Japan and the United States were generally apparent in the documents I was asked to translate and edit, the extent of the Taesong's contribution to these balances is impossible for me to measure. Though Taesong personnel may have compiled import statistics for state agencies, they did not publicly release such information. According to export and import figures published by these agencies, South Korea had a $5 ·4 billion trade deficit with Japan and a $7.3 billion trade surplus with the United States in 1986 (National Bureau of Statistics 1990:

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speaking it with Japanese. Instead, they spoke with humor of the difficulties involved in communicating with the Japanese at all. Several months after I completed my fieldwork, South Korean newspapers published accounts of workers at a number of Korean-American joint ventures who were demanding higher wages to compensate for the strain of having to conduct their conversations in English. Taesong workers recognized that the inequalities imposed on them by the international world system went far beyond language. One manager, for example, on more than one occasion expressed indignation at the American representative sent to attend Park Chung Hee's funeral in 1979. The envoy had arrived at Seoul's Kimpo airport in casual clothes instead of a suit and smiled instead of showing a serious facial expression, which the manager regarded not merely as a faux pas but as symbolic of American attitudes toward South Korea. Similarly, in the summer of 1987 many newspapers carried accounts of the extremely long lines outside the American embassy that those wishing to acquire visas had to endure. Some men spoke of this as yet another example of American callousness. As their views of the political economy had been, workers' perceptions of these other inequities were reinforced by personal encounters with Americans. Some complained that their American business associates would not play Korean card games with them, refused to spend more than small amounts of money entertaining them, and generally did not recognize the validity of Korean ways. Some employees also had to wait more than once in the long lines outside the embassy when their visa requests had been repeatedly denied on account of what seemed to them (and myself) to be a policy of hindering South Korean marketing teams from operating in the United States. One applicant reenacted with relish how he had proudly presented himself as a buyer instead of a salesman, knowing that the action would elicit a more favorable response. Taesong managers sought to resist American cultural and politicaleconomic privileges in a variety of ways, only some of which were sanctioned by the owner-managers. They asserted the superiority of certain Korean practices and products against the onslaught of American methods and commodities. Among them the college professor who advanced the virtues of the pojaegi against the briefcase to the headquarters staff was especially well received, even if his recommendations were impractical. Throughout the following weeks, his talk came up in several informal conversations. Only one saw on said

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it was chauvinistic (kuksujuui). One of the men I knew well asked me if I had disliked the talk since he had not observed me laughing, so in order to show my appreciation for things Korean I added my own examples from the talk whenever it was recounted. A lecture by another speaker, a historian who had advocated that an ancient Korean kingdom included part of the Shandong peninsula, also arose in lunchtime conversations. One manager asked a group of his colleagues, "Isn't it looking [at Korea] through rose-colored glasses?" (Nomu chok'e ponun ke anin'ga?) "Perhaps it is, but when I hear it [I feel so proud]," said another, who sat erect and pushed his shoulders back to indicate his pride. Similar comments surrounded the positive evaluations of certain foods identified as Korean, such as posint'ang, a stew made with dog meat. The meat was a good source of nutrition and easy to digest, several men told me. On the way back from a restaurant where a few older managers had taken me to try posint'ang, my companions told me that eating it had made me a Korean. The owning family was said to be especially fond of this dish. Posint'ang was a particularly potent symbol of identity because it has old-fashioned and folksy connotations, because all but a very few Americans disliked it, and because it had prompted foreign animal-rights activists to threaten a boycott of the 1988 Olympics. In response to their demands, the state had officially forbidden serving the food in Seoul restaurants, much to the annoyance of many citizens. A few of my friends at Taesong acknowledged that they did not eat posint'ang, but none of them made a point of saying so in public. Such food preferences were communicated in muffled voices.4 Neither the bourgeoisie nor the white-collar workers rejected everything American, nor did they go as far as many students in spurning American culture and looking for alternatives in older Korean rural practices. Such a position would have entailed a rejection of a great deal of what had already become new-middle-class forms of culture (e.g., clothing, food, technical vocabulary). A few workers admitted that there were things about the United States that they liked, such as a greater openness in its domestic political sys4 The contrast between Twisongdwi villagers' and Taesong workers' attitudes toward traditional food was striking. To villagers posint'ang was a food, not a national symbol. It was served at the village's summer picnic in 1978, but villagers accepted the fact that like any other food, some people disliked it. A small group of men at the picnic, including myself, were given something else to eat instead.

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tern. The bourgeoisie, however, by pursuing American commercial linkages, imposed on their subordinates many American business methods and other practices. Some managers I came to know particularly well maintained that South Korea had absorbed too much American influence. When I tried to suggest that such cultural diversity provided them with a greater variety of resources, one argued that it just confused him. Another said it caused his head to go back and forth (moriga watta katta handa). In other words, they chose to adopt national symbols and reject American practices selectively with varying degrees of consensus. The greatest consensus in their critique of the United States appeared in their views of American interpersonal relations in business dealings, which seems particularly significant for two reasons. First, it was largely a product of their own experience and reflection, having been advanced neither by the owner-managers nor other middle-class South Koreans I knew. It did not come from textbook knowledge of American culture, from ideological indoctrination, or from popular media representations. It emerged through direct encounters with American businessmen. Second, it was a cultural understanding that was self-consciously and simultaneously moral and self-interested. Rather than an ethnocentric response to an alien cultural system that was provoked by the unreflective acceptance of previous cultural knowledge, this very salient critique was based on a rational understanding of the advancement of South Korean and their own individual interests. It sought to overcome one of the disadvantages imposed by an alien cultural system. While a few people acknowledged that they liked the independence (tongnip) of Americans, no one contested the view that Americans were selfishly individualistic (kaeinjuui) or that they lacked injong (sympathy for the plight of others). One sawon said he had read somt:;where (he couldn't recall the source) that the difference between Americans and Koreans was symbolized by their eating implements: a fork is an "aggressive" tool; chopsticks emphasize cooperation. Criticisms of Dutch treats, stingy entertainment, and refusal to play Korean card games also expressed this common understanding of Americans as too individualistic and self-centered. The critique of American interpersonal relations went to the very heart of Western capitalism. Several managers contestee the contractual and transient nature of market relationships, the grasping nature of Western capitalism, and its confrontational style. One spoke of

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his particular resentment at the copious fine print on American contracts. The proper way to do business, he maintained, was to establish a good human relationship and then work out whatever problems arose. In other words a contract established a relationship, not a binding agreement. These sentiments were expressed beyond Taesong and South Korea (Steers, Shin, and Ungson 1989: 103; Nakagawa and Yang 1989: ro-n). American businessmen in South Korea, on the other hand, have often complained about what they perceive as a lack of adherence to contractual agreements (New York Times, Mar. 28, 1986, p. JI). Contracts led to clashes in other ways. Whether oral or written, contracts are fundamental to Western capitalism, a point that escaped me until I learned the views of Taesong workers. After one Taesong manager observed that Americans had more finely honed skills in formulating contracts than he and his co-workers, I began to appreciate that Western courts have produced and continue to reproduce a well-developed system for enforcing them, that American business-school courses on business law deal exclusively with contracts, and that Western businessmen and lawyers have elaborate methods for formulating these documents. Often by ignoring the in~ equalities and the constraining circumstances under which contracts are formulated, adhering to these agreements and other promises has acquired a moral quality in business circles and well beyond, To call someone not a man of his word is damning in more than the commercial world. Among South Koreans too, obligations entailed by contracts have been openly acknowledged to pursue or defend material interests. Written contracts for buying or renting houses and apartments as well as oral ones for participating in rotating credit societies (Janelli and Yim 1988-89) have long been in widespread use in Seoul. Contractual obligations compete, however, with other moral claims. Especially when parties to a contract are not equals, the duty to make allowances for the plight of the temporarily or more long-term disadvantaged has often been invoked. A well-known short story by Yun Heung-gil (1989 [orig. 1977]: roo- 101) portrays the dilemma faced by a middle-class high school teacher and his wife when a much poorer family arrives four days early, baggage in hand, to occupy a room they rented in the couple's house after paying only half of the deposit. One particular conflict over contracts was brought to my attention on several occasions. In a joint venture between Taesong and an

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American firm, the American managers had asked for written agreements between the new company and a number of South Korean firms, most of which belonged to the Taesong conglomerate, that were to be the joint venture's initial customers. These agreements were supposed to detail the kinds of services the joint venture would provide to each company, services that in the past had been rendered through informal and tacit understandings. The young South Korean managers of the new company who were given the task of devising the agreements found the assignment daunting and confusing. They also worried that the agreements would alienate their South Korean colleagues. The documents, they pointed out, left unspecified the amounts to be charged for the various services (which were to be determined at a later date), and they thought their Taesong associates would be unlikely to commit themselves to such agreements, fearing coercion later on. When the American managers provided model agreements the American parent company used with its customers, the Taesong managers found them vague on many points and said that such documents did not recognize Korean ways of doing business. The American managers, who were intelligent men with considerable international experience and not insensitive to cultural differences, said the agreements should be "Koreanized." I found myself being queried by both sides about how to resolve the issue, but was of little help. What was not apparent to either side or to me at the time was that the problem lay not with the wording of the agreements, their particular details, or the English-language competence of the South Korean managers. It lay in the cultural understandings each group had for making allowances for the plight of others and for pursuing material interests. I should have known better. Several months earlier, other managers had been quite clear about their opposition to American contracts. Besides the manager who had complained of their detail, another said that American businessmen were too rigid and didn't make efforts to keep customers, who were constantly reneging on their promises, pleading "Please understand my situation." American businessmen were stone-hearted, inhuman (kakpakhada), and selfish, smiling freely and greeting others politely but not extending genuine friendship. Another manager offered his view with the following example: We have a proverb that says "a person who has 99 underskirts and plans to make it a round hundred asks the person who has only one for hers" (tansokkot ahiin-ahop kajin sarami paekkae ch' aeugettago, han kae kajin saram

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pogo tallagohanda). But we really don't do that. If we have 99, we let the other person keep one. Americans, on the other hand, will go after even that last item.

This idea was expressed most often by pointing out that Americans lacked injong (compassion for the plight of others) in trade and interpersonal relations. In teaching me how to play Go-stop, a popular Korean card game, for example, a section chief explained that when a player wins all of someone's money, he usually returns some of it. As I happened recently to have seen an American movie in which the hero had returned some of the loser's money so as not to leave him broke, I mentioned that this sometimes happens in the United States, too. To this, the section chief responded with surprise and amusement, "So Americans too have injong!" Other men readily agreed that Americans had little or no injong. I always received enthusiastic assent when I contrasted my perceptions of driving in the United States, where right-of-way is considered so important, with those of driving in Seoul, where drivers would tolerate someone who, needing to change lanes, cut in front of them (not too abruptly) and then with a slight wave of the hand indicated "I'm sorry." Very few had driven in the United States, but the comparison evidently corresponded with their more general understandings of themselves vis-a-vis Americans. 5 With regard to business transactions, injong was presented as both a moral stance and a prudent strategy. No attempts were made to obscure the congruity of norms and interests. A department head, for example, compared his marketing strategies to having sympathy for others. Observing that Americans were very severe in pressing the seller for the lowest price, he pointed out that such a strategy often worked to their disadvantage, as when business conditions produced a seller's market (which existed for some ofTaesong company's products during my fieldwork). Contrasting American and Southeast Asian purchasing methods, he offered the following hypothetical example: Our company might sell a product for no won to a Southeast Asian customer but get only roo won from an American buyer. However, if there were a sudden price increase of so won, it would be passed along immediately to the American. If the Southeast Asian customer said he couldn't absorb such 5 Perhaps they liked this example because it dealt with a popular criticism of automobile driving in South Korea but interpreted one of the common objects of disapproval in a positive light.

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a large price increase all at once, we might sell to him at 130 won for a while before passing on the whole price hike. Or if there was a rise in demand, and our company couldn't satisfy all its customers, we would satisfy the needs of the Southeast Asian firm rather than those of the American.

This manager, moreover, had a perceptive understanding of why Americans negotiated so vigorously: "An American manager wants to get the lowest price and have good performance results each quarter so he looks good before his superiors. A president of a smaller and privately owned American company, on the other hand, can afford to take a longer-term view." Since maintaining long-term relationships often entails expensive entertainment and gift giving as well as accepting less than the most profitable transaction, I was curious to learn how this commercial orientation was reconciled with the profit motive. The manager's unhesitating response indicated that he had thought this through as well: Koreans can distinguish perfectly well between a few-thousand-won lunch and a bribe. Moreover, they can be more flexible than Americans in accepting gifts and favors, for it is part of maintaining long-term business relationships. Of course, a big difference in price wouldn't be acceptable, and contracts eventually have to be approved by superiors, so accepting gifts does not work to the company's disadvantage.

Other managers also clearly recognized that gift giving and maintaining personal relationships furthered their material interests, sometimes cynically rather than morally. Though socializing was almost always portrayed as a way of fostering mutual understanding and easing the flow of transactions, on more than one occasion managers revealed some of the strategies for using it to elicit favors. On one atypical occasion a group of men were entertaining some guests who evidently enjoyed themselves so much that they offered to treat the Taesong employees to a second round. As we traveled from the place of the first round to that of the second, a Taesong manager quietly took me aside and explained that he was already thinking of an appropriate place for a third round. It was important to ensure that the guests received more than they paid for, he explained. Material benefits and injong were understood to be also related when making explicitly economic choices. A department head and one of his section chiefs, for example, were discussing an institutional buyer's order. At the time Taesong company did not have enough goods to satisfy all of the anticipated demand for the product the cus-

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tomer had ordered, and since the buyer was among those who paid the lowest prices, a section chief had decided to send him only one container of the merchandise. The department head, however, told him to ship three. Production was to be expanded in a few months, the department head explained, and since their division would have responsibility for selling some of the additional output, they ought not alienate any of their customers. Thus, by selling the goods at a lower price than he could have received on the open market, he surrendered an immediate profit for the sake of a relationship and long-term gains. American managers too are well aware of the material benefits derived from sustaining business relationships. Such benefits have long been part of accountants' concept of goodwill, which in many ways approximates Bourdieu's "symbolic capital"; but evidently American managers rely on such notions far less often than the new middle class at Taesong. When June Nash (1979: 191) asked the manager of a firm in New York City which customers would be cut off in a shortage, his reply illustrated a profound difference in cultural knowledgeability regarding human relations in commerce. Coincidentally, his firm and Taesong company were engaged in the same industry. I think it's appropriate to throw in some personal comments about how one goes about withdrawing from customers and essentially removing their ability to do business. The opening stages are quite easy, of course. One starts by cutting off those who have a made [sic] history of not paying bills, those who have shopped around too vigorously. There is, to be perfectly frank, a measure of retribution in this sort of thing. I enjoyed some of it. I have a number of scores that needed to be settled.

The South Korean Political Economy and the Chaebol In general, Taesong workers were more critical of both the state and conglomerates than were the bourgeoisie. Compared with other middle-class South Koreans I knew, on the other hand, their comments about the Chun Doo Hwan regime were not more critical and their views of the chaebol were more equivocal. The views expressed at different managerial levels regarding specific issues also varied. I try to preserve this variation in my account here, for I take it as part of the process whereby understandings of the domestic political economy were contested and transformed.

The state. The least ambiguous differences of opinion between the bourgeoisie and their subordinates concerned the state. Though the

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bourgeoisie publicly complained of currency contractions, reduced export loans, and the state's intervention in the economy generally, they supported Chun Doo Hwan's administration. In Chapter 3 I pointed to the chairman's public call for political "stability" (anj6ng), a well-recognized euphemism for the more. repressive practices of Chun's regime. In one of the large meeting rooms of the headquarters building, a large picture of him had been placed on the wall. And in the glossy company history compiled in 1987 and published in October of that year, after Chun had agreed to leave office and some democratic reforms were already under way, Chun was pictured six times, touring company facilities, awarding prizes to company officials, or within a photograph of a company office in which his portrait hung on a wall. Among professional managers and sawon, on the other hand, the closest anyone came to expressing support for Chun Doo Hwan were the comments of two directors who occasionally declared their opposition to the students demonstrating against his regime. One expressed his dismay that the students had taken control of the Seoul city hall and lowered its flag to half-mast during the funeral of a student demonstrator killed by police. The other, referring to South Korea's economic development, asked rhetorically, "What do the students have to complain about?" Directors, younger manager, and sawon invariably expressed the view of the owner-managers that state intervention in the economy was excessive and that it interfered specifically in the activities of their company. I noted in Chapter 4 that officials of a state agency ordered banks to cut off Taesong's credit when they thought an owner-manager owned a piece of real estate, and several other managers provided many other examples of state intervention. Though I did not think to solicit such information, my field notes include numerous instances when Taesong workers complained that the state controlled various chaebol or company activities, some of which have been included in other chapters (e.g., the scheduling of recruitment examinations). Two managers blamed the state's control of the economy for the autocratic control their own superiors exercised over them (Chapter 7), reasoning that because the government constrained the uppermost managers, these men in turn were reluctant to allow freedom to their subordinates.6 Another manager, alluding to the 6 Though they were unfamiliar with the Aston school of contingency theorists, they had deduced on their own one of the claims of this school regarding the causes of

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common knowledge that the state's control of the economy was exercised primarily through the financial system, spoke of the company's practice of entertaining bankers: "I understand that in the United States bankers often take their customers out, but here we take the bankers out. That shows the difference in relative power." Trying to explain these generally negative views of state intervention, a department head observed that the government was viewed more as an obstacle than a help because it continually made demands on the firm. I surmise that the more supportive activities of the state toward the company had become naturalized and institutionalized, so that their withdrawal was more acutely felt. Special support, on the other hand, was evidently negotiated only at the highest levels of the chaebol and state, to which the young managers had little access. A director used "tug of war" (chul tanggigi) to describe the overall relationship between government and business, adding that their relationship was actually very delicate because the government wanted the businesses to succeed even while constraining them. Younger managers' and sawon's comments about the state, however, went far beyond state intervention in the economy or the company's affairs and extended into the repressive nature of the regime. On this point, at least, their views can be sharply contrasted with those of the bourgeoisie. In contrast to their chairman's call for "stability," sawon and younger managers implied the stability of the nation was being threatened by Chun's repression. One manager said he thought the government was too unyielding toward the students' demands and that the two opposing sides might "destroy each other." Another said, "When something is pressed too hard, it breaks." Some Taesong workers were particularly concerned with how their foreign customers viewed the escalating political demonstrations, which had drawn the attention of the international media and were televised worldwide during the spring of r987. Evidently they feared that some customers might be reluctant to place orders out of concern that the company's production would be disrupted and that needed supplies would not be delivered in time to meet their own production schedules. As the demonstrations grew almost daily, a few managers sought out my assessment of the political situation and asked me how foreigners perceived these events. After I told them I did not foresee a revolution, one manager asked me to write a letter that could centralized decision making (Pugh and Hickson 1976: ro-n). I am grateful to Philip Birnbaum for directing me to the work of the Aston school.

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reassure the company's foreign customers. The letter, however, was rejected by his superiors who felt it was too optimistic and so would undermine their credibility if the situation became far worse than I had anticipated. Young managers' criticisms of the Chun regime went beyond their own immediate frustrations to those shared by many others of the middle classes. Even before the mass demonstrations began, one manager confessed that he was embarrassed to talk about South Korean politics with foreigners because the nation's political progress had not kept pace with its development in other domains. Such sentiments were widespread at that time among other middle-class Koreans I knew. Particularly after the 1986 Asian Games in Seoul, I often heard that South Korea had attained great success in the economy and other areas, such as in staging the Games, but that political progress was lacking. When I asked one young manager if he held similarly negative views of the Park Chung Hee regime, his response implicitly reaffirmed his dislike of Chun: "I respect Park Chung Hee. Toward the end [of his regime] things became bad [an allusion to the Yusin era], but he did a lot for our country." Other political expressions took the form of a joke about Go-stop, the game played with flower cards (hwat'u) in which a player who accomplished a particular feat could demand that each opponent pick any one of the cards he or she had won and surrender it. Different versions of the game had their own names, and the version mentioned most often was a fictitious one called Chun Doo Hwan Go-stop. In it the player who turned up the card that depicted a full moon (a symbol of Chun's bald head) could take whatever cards he wanted from the other players. The joke was popular throughout South Korea and circulated widely, at least among Seoul's middle classes. A description of it can also be found in Yi Hogwang (1988: 40-43, 45-46). At the time of the mass demonstrations in the spring of 1987, Taesong workers expressed sympathy for the demonstrators and several were delighted with Chun's predicament, which they portrayed as his own creation. Having put a high priority on hosting the 1988 Olympics throughout his tenure, they explained, his repression was generating the demonstrations that threatened to keep many foreigners from attending the games. Chaebol

Taesong workers' views of the chaebol are more difficult to summarize than their views of the state, for many of their comments were

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even more allusive, dealt with a greater variety of issues, and differed more widely between managerial ranks. Few workers criticized the chaebol as clearly and unambiguously as the man who complained of having to pay rso won for a cup of coffee from the vending machine in the hallway. Employees were not allowed to use their own water boilers, he noted, so they had to use a machine that was not only owned and operated by another company of the Taesong group but also charged 30 won more than campus vending machines. Another man defended the higher price by pointing out that a cup of coffee at Kimpo airport cost far more. Many comments, whether positive or negative, could have pertained to a division, a company, or the entire chaebol. We, this place, here, and superiors were relative terms, much like the Korean for kin groups (Brandt 1971: no), and their referents could only be surmised. Even the name of the company was an abbreviated form of the name of the chaebol, so that one could not always be sure which was intended. Only occasionally did comments clearly pertain to the entire conglomerate, such as when the enterprise was contrasted with its major rival among the big four. Except for attributing a general conservatism to the chaebol's top management, however, younger men did not appear to regard the Taesong conglomerate as significant to their daily lives. Their hiring process had been conducted by the conglomerate, they had participated in chaebol as well as com, pany training, and they were provided with a chaebol as well as a company magazine each month. But even in the headquarters building, workers interacted with personnel from other companies of the business group far less often than with workers of their own company, held their monthly meetings and recreation by company (or smaller subdivisions), and wore company rather than conglomerate · lapel pins. Workers apparently viewed the chaebol as personally less important than the company. Taesong workers often used the word "company" (hoesa) and otherwise expressed identification with their respective firms. 7 I have related how the younger managers at Taesong 7 I am not inclined to attach great importance to the practice of referring to Taesong as "our company" or to repeated use of the phrase "our Taesong company." Such expressions seemed to be conventions of speech. I often found myself using the phrase our university as shorthand for "the university at which I teach." Yet the frequency of such phrases is not entirely without ideological effect, as they imply identification with the enterprise.

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company's annual stockholders' meeting viewed their actions as protecting the company from "outsiders." Both they and sawon, moreover, often mentioned with some pride that their company was the "mother organization" (moch'e) of the conglomerate. This did not mean that it was a parent company in the stock-owning sense, but rather that it was the oldest firm of the group and that most of its related companies had been created as spinoffs. Its preeminent position was reflected in its being named first among the conglomerate's companies. In the chaebol's magazine, for example, the section featuring new products always presented those of Taesong company first; and on the page where its editorial board was listed, the names of those from Taesong company were at the top. After being with Taesong company workers for a few months, I had come to view its preeminence as natural and regarded workers' identification with their company as a consequence of its universally acknowledged prestige. Only after a few encounters with workers from another large company of the group, who mentioned more than once that they had larger sales, and similar encounters with those of a smaller company of the conglomerate, who mentioned their firm's rapid growth rate, did I appreciate the significance of company identification. Workers did not appear to view the group as critically as did other members of the middle classes. They very rarely used the word chaebol, for example, even in private conversations.8 Also absent from their speech were "illicit accumulation" (pujong ch'ukche), "special favors" (t'ukhye), "octopus arms" (munobal), and other terminology used to criticize the conglomerates. And rarely did they speak of a conflict between the interests of the major business groups and those of small and medium-sized companies. They usually represented their company and chaebol as acting in the best interests of South Korea, especially in exports. In fact, there was so little explicit criticism of the conglomerates that as my fieldwork ended I began to wonder if I had overestimated the extent of the negative views found in other sectors of South Korean society. I began to check newspaper editori8 The company history used the word chaebol to portray the success of the enterprise in the following passage: "Whoever thought that such a modest beginning would lead to the formation of an enormous chaebol." I am grateful to Yoon Suk Bum for sharing with me an anecdote absmt the head of one of the four major chaebol who severely scolded one of his subordinates for using that word. I saw no such incidents at Taesong, but workers knew that the term was offensive to owners and many upper managers and it was usually avoided. Looking back on my fieldwork, I realized that I avoided it as well.

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als for the preceding few years and to try other methods to make sure I hadn't lost my bearings. I even began to bring up the topic with taxi drivers. Office-worker's views of the chaebol can also be compared with the critiques often leveled against the conglomerates in the press, as outlined in Chapter 2. If perceptions of business groups represented in major newspapers were construed as one end of a continuum and bourgeois ideology as the other end, the views expressed by Taesong workers and managers of each of the following major issues would create a jagged profile.

Economic concentration. Newly hired male sawon voiced the most sustained and explicit criticisms of economic concentration as well as other aspects of the chaebol and the political economy. In addition to criticizing the absence of democracy in South Korea and political-economic privilege ("special connections") as major hindrances to progress, they also expressed dismay at the monopolization of the economy. While I was talking with a group of them shortly after their completion of company training about the high rate of economic growth, they lamented the concentration of capital and wealth in South Korea. Taiwan, with its emphasis on small and mediumsized companies, had twice the exports and higher per-capita income, one noted. Though conceding, at my suggestion, that future exports would require research and development and that research facilities in turn required large concentrations of capital, they emphasized the unequal distribution of wealth. The rich were getting richer and poor getting poorer, they observed, using the well-known phrase pinikpin puikpu. Trying to avoid criticizing South Korea, I found myself in the uncomfortable position of defending the chaebol. That these new employees so openly voiced their criticisms at a gathering of a handful of people, that each contributed his own assent, that none expressed any surprise at hearing the other's attitudes, and that they spoke so assuredly suggest that they were already aware of each other's opinions. This is hardly surprising, for before beginning their company training a few months earlier, the new entrants had been college students. These critical views were not limited to the new recruits. When the new employees were complaining about the political economy, an older sawon happened to enter the room and readily agreed with them, maintaining that because these new employees still had

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the views of students they had the clearest vision of South Korean society. Rumors persisted that the large enterprises tried to avoid hiring those who had been the most ardent student activists by asking about extracurricular activities during interviews, as reported in the press the next year (Tonga ilbo, Nov. rS, 1988, p. 15 ). But critical perceptions of the government and chaebol were so prevalent that few would have been left to hire had all those with negative views been eliminated. Some young managers told me of their involvement in student demonstrations during their college days. One older manager pointed out that new employees in past years also had the critical attitudes of students when they entered the company, but they either changed as they grew older or they left the firm. That employees as well as managers referred to the firm as a "large enterprise" (taegi6p) rather than as a chaebol, except perhaps when speaking of students' criticisms, also indicates that views of the political economy lost some of their sharpness with the passage of time in the company. Strong and vocal criticisms of the political economy evidently dissipated and employees' grievances focused more on their own immediate situation in the office. These other grievances are discussed in the next chapter.

Family ownership and management. Unlike criticism of economic concentration, disapproval of family management appeared to increase the longer one worked. Younger Taesong workers had little to say, positively or negatively, about the owner-managers of their own conglomerate, except to point out or acknowledge their alleged conservatism. Perhaps their silence was motivated by fear of reprisal, but their willing criticism of their immediate superiors, to be examined in the following chapter, risked similar consequences. The comments of older rather than younger managers sometimes implied an awareness of the opposition of interests between the new middle class and the bourgeoisie. Younger workers had fewer interactions with ownermanagers and did not see the privileged positions of the latter as a serious hindrance to their own advancement. There were only a few members of the owning-managing kin group working their way up the ranks but many openings for advancement at the lower levels. Government-business collusion. Taesong managers shared the bourgeoisie's view that government intervention in the economy was excessive, and few expressed concerns about collusion. Indeed, some

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voiced the view that their chaebol, unlike the others, was not quick enough at pursuing government incentives. Many of them related that slowness to the conglomerate's conservative managerial style.

Inequitable distribution. Regarding the distribution of wealth, the views voiced by younger managers at Taesong were distinctly closer to the media position than to that of the bourgeoisie, who sought to avoid the issue altogether by pointing to the employment opportunities their chaebol had created. In expressing support for antigovernment demonstrators, for example, Taesong's new-middle-class workers were tacitly backing blue-collar workers, for the repression of labor and unequal distribution of incomes had long been issues student demonstrators sought to redress. During the preceding few years in particular, many students had taken jobs among factory workers to "raise their consciousness," organize them, or at least learn firsthand of their conditions. Sympathy for blue-collar workers was more than implicit in the offices of the conglomerate's headquarters-even toward Taesong's own laborers. One day I happened to comment to a manager that, unlike many white-collar workers in the United States whom I have known, none of the men in Taesong's offices ever complained about his salary. His response was, "They're well paid and have nothing to complain about. It's the blue-collar workers who have reason to complain." And then there was the manager I've mentioned who suggested that perhaps Taesong's ideology emphasized technology as a public-relations device to deflect criticism of the profits made from the "exploitation" (ch'akch'wi) of its blue-collar workers. This support for the laboring class cannot be dismissed as a triumph of morality or emotional commitments over economic interests. The choice to lend at least verbal support to the demands of blue-collar workers can also be viewed as rational and self-interested. As with choices between level playing fields or the sizes of players and between contracts or injong, this one went hand in hand with material advantage. As we have seen, young Taesong men were concerned that unless some concessions were made to laborers, there would be a major social upheaval that would be detrimental to everyone. Moreover, sawon and young managers did not appear to view granting higher wages to laborers as a serious threat to their own interests. Hoisting the owners-managers on the petard of their own ideology, one sawon explained that the basis of the Taesong's com-

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petitive strength was in technology rather than low wages, so increasing the compensation of the company's blue-collar workers would not significantly hurt their enterprise. Thus, young workers and managers chose to sacrifice whatever small benefits came to them from paying low wages (i.e., arguably, faster company growth and personal promotions) in return for ensuring the viability of Taesong and the political economy-in which they enjoyed privileged positions. Shortly after the announcement of liberalizing reforms on June 29, however, I saw no further expressions of sympathy for the proletariat. While no one begrudged their higher wages, the success of the street demonstrations had an unanticipated consequence. A number of strikes soon erupted at Taesong and numerous other firms as bluecollar workers demanded not only higher wages but also the right to form their own unions free of state and company control (Kim Seungkyung 1992: 232). As a result of these labor disputes, production was disrupted, shipments delayed, plans reformulated, and agreements with customers renegotiated. Lowered estimates of exports for 1987 were widely announced in the press, and many of the white-collar workers' summer vacations were canceled for the duration of the strikes.

SEVEN

Responses from Below II: Working Conditions Patterns of domination can, in fact, accommodate a reasonably high level of practical resistance so long as that resistance is not publicly and unambiguously acknowledged. (Scott I990: 57)

understandings implicit in the expressions and T practices of sawon and younger managers also concerned the HE CULTURAL

workplace-their most immediate arena of political economy. These understandings were formed and reformed far more by day-to-day interaction in Taesong's offices than by representations of the press and academia. They were shared by general public far less than were ideas concerning the international and national political economy. And they were strikingly at odds with the views expressed by the bourgeoisie. I present here those understandings that pertain primarily to working hours and interpersonal relations, for they kept recurring in discussions of working conditions and stood out in my own observations. Most of the comments are critical. Instead of being intentionally solicited, these criticisms were frequently brought to my attention, particularly in the earlier weeks of my fieldwork. Often they were presented as corrections or counterarguments to my own interpretations. More than once I found that my cultural relativism had prompted me unwittingly to justify practices to which the sawon and younger managers objected. This criticism affected the conditions in which it was obtained and the manner in which it can be set forth here. Much of it was offered when the subordinate and I were alone; some was spoken in conversations of low volume or even written on slips of paper to prevent it

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from being overheard; most was given in short and allusive verbal texts. Thus, much of the material was gathered in fragments, and I have further fragmented it to hide identities. I have tried to show instead the dialogic (and dialectic) process of my fieldwork by pointing out how my own often naive statements and questions unintentionally induced much of the criticism. Though my interpretations are informed by workers' corrective commentaries, some of what they said was so oblique that I still have difficulty comprehending it. For example, one young manager who observed me during my early fieldwork copying down slogans from the walls and reading the company's training manuals said, "You really ought to talk to people and get their opinions rather than just look at the written material." I still wonder whether this advice was also meant to suggest that the views of the white-collar workers were not the same as those that appeared in the company's documents. The man later acknowledged that he was among those most critical of Taesong's working conditions, even labelling himself "anti," extending the usual meaning of an English loanword used in South Korea to signify political dissidents. Interactions with superiors, moreover, were downright misleading, as subordinates intended, for workers did not choose to challenge superiors unequivocally. One afternoon I happened to recount to a section chief my experience at a lunch a few hours earlier with two Americans I had met for the first time. They worked for the same organization but were stationed in different locations and did not appear to be particularly close friends; yet they spent a good portion of their lunch hour criticizing one of their higher managers. Their behavior contrasted so strongly with what I had been experiencing in Taesong offices that I told the section chief about it afterward. His response was, "Aren't they afraid of being fired?" Thus, the material in this chapter as well as the process through which it was obtained testifies to a wide disparity between public and private actions. (I found a less dramatic difference in the interactions between co-workers.) Critical conversations about superiors sometimes occurred among workers themselves, but those I heard were among close and trusted friends. Working Hours Though no one at Taesong headquarters ever applied the word "exploitation" (ch'akch'wi) to new-middle-class employees or even expressed dissatisfaction with his or her own salary, working hours

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were regularly portrayed as unreasonable and excessive. In part this grievance was supported by the media, which frequently claimed that South Koreans worked more hours per week than the people of all or most other nations. According to newspaper reports from some months earlier (Korea Herald, Feb. 9, 1986, p. 4), the average work week in the manufacturing sector amounted to 54·4 hours. The data were not separated into blue-collar and white-collar categories, but statistics published by the Ministry of Labor reported that production workers in the manufacturing sector averaged about 20 percent longer hours than administrative and managerial employees (Ministry of Labor 1985: 222-23).' Taesong's white-collar workers did indeed put in long hours. The workday formally began at 9 A.M. and ended at 6 P.M. on Monday through Friday and ran from nine to noon on Saturday, the end of each day signaled by the sound of soft music coming through the public address system. The actual number of hours worked, however, was greater, especially in the evenings. Only a few men put in extra time in the mornings. The weekly managers' meeting of one division, for example, began at 8:30 A.M. on Fridays. Some men regularly arrived before nine o'clock because they rode company buses that arrived early, and others were learning Japanese or participating in one of my English-conversation groups. But otherwise the time before the workday officially began was usually spent in conversation, reading newspapers, or drinking the milk or yogurt that could be ordered from commercial vendors and was delivered daily to individual desks. Recreation ceased at the playing of the national anthem, however. As the song ended, everyone settled down to work and the office took on a more serious air. Workers who happened to arrive after the anthem quickly went to their desks and began working, exchanging brief morning greetings only with their section mates, section chief, and department head. Though some men also worked through part of their lunch hour, especially when deadlines were approaching, most of the overtime work was done in the evening. The national anthem at 5 P.M. did not mark another alteration in the rhythm of office life, since the offi1 The Ministry obtains its data from questionnaires and interviews with company personnel. The reliability of these sources, however, is problematic. Except for over· time work by sawon on Sundays, no time sheets were kept for white-collar workers at Taesong. And compulsory attendance at company-sponsored social events (e.g., the year-end party) could arguably be included or omitted in the total number of hours worked.

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cial workday ended an hour later anyway, but all men stayed at least another hour after official quitting time as welF How much longer a man remained depended primarily on his workload. Some divisions regularly seemed to have more work than others, perhaps as a result of a higher rate of growth in the product or activity for which they were responsible, and the particular functions of some divisions required them to work even longer hours at the end of the month or at other times of the year. At least a few people in every division remained until eight-thirty or later, and at particularly busy times some men worked till midnight or beyond. Almost everyone worked at least an extra hour or two on Saturday as well. Two groups of men representing two different divisions estimated that their average quitting time on weekdays was seven-thirty and that they usually worked another six hours on Saturdays and Sundays.3 Besides this total of about 54 hours, they estimated that another three to eight were spent each week in after-hours socializing, by bachelors more often than married men. Considering that commuting usually absorbed an additional hour or more a day, few waking hours were spent at home except on Saturday evening and Sunday. Not surprisingly, few men brought work home or even carried briefcases. From observing employees in the office, one might get the impression that workers did not mind their long evening hours or perhaps that they had little else to do (Christie 1972: 142).4 Though acknowledging that they looked forward to weekends, they did not stare at wristwatches or the wall clock or make a rush for the door at quitting time. And men sometimes expressed pride in their long working hours, as when attributing economic growth to hard work. 5 2 Most women workers cleared off their desks, locked them, and departed individually and quietly sometime between six and seven o'clock. A few women workers remained after seven, either because they were working on a project with an impending deadline or because a particular position required longer hours. One director's secretary, for example, had to stay until he departed. 3 Sawon who came to work on Sunday were given additional pay. Unmarried sawon were said to enjoy Sunday work, for they could earn extra money and had fewer family obligations. Section chiefs took turns with Sunday duty, one of them having to be present to sign the overtime sheets of the sawon. A section chief humorously told me that he felt very powerful when he performed this duty, for it granted him the power to approve or disapprove padded hours claimed by sawon. 4 I am indebted to Laurel Kendall for directing my attention to Christie's work. 5 The long hours I observed in 1986 and 1987 were not said to be a temporary phenomenon resulting from the favorable business conditions that prevailed during my fieldwork. As one young manager explained, employees worked just as long in slower times in order to devise "countermeasures" (taech'aek) to improve the situation.

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Yet complaints about working hours were poignantly expressed in numerous small groups. One man lamented that he was with his young son so seldom that the son had difficulty recognizing him. On weekends when they could enjoy some time together, he said, his son seemed to wonder who the man was, and only after playing together for a while did the child realize "Ah, this is my father!" Another told me that his wife let their young child sleep in the daytime in order to see him in the evening. One man recounted how his friends had come to meet him after work but waited in vain for hours in the public coffee shop in the basement of the headquarters building. After they had waited and waited, phoning him several times, he finally had to tell them that he would be unable to meet them after all and to go off without him. Another spoke of his disappointment at being unable to meet a friend from his hometown who also worked in Seoul. Yet another told how a man was so long delayed in keeping an engagement with his wife one night that their evening was ruined. When I began my fieldwork I was often asked what my hobbies were,6 but when I returned the question several men admitted that they had no time for hobbies. One section chief explained the long hours were a carryover from the colonial era, when they had been instituted by the Japanese, "who devote themselves entirely to their companies." In fact, many South Koreans have attributed to the Japanese greater company or group orientation and less individualism (e.g., Yi Kiiil 1988: 255, 425; cf. Hayashi 1988: 36). Another section chief, however, pointed to locally generated constraints by professing that it was hard to leave when everyone else was working late. The perception that working hours were excessive and somewhat coerced was also evident in unfavorable comments about daylight saving time. Such remarks were common in the spring of 1987, when the new system was about to be adopted nationwide to practice for the following year's Olympics. (Its purpose was to increase the American prime-time viewing audience for live coverage of the events.) Young Taesong managers and other new-middle-class office workers I knew in Seoul were opposed to turning their clocks back because that would require them to come to work an hour earlier. Mistakenly assuming that they were unfamiliar with the new time system, I tried to explain to a few men that they could also leave work an hour earlier. 6 I later discovered that one of the training manuals used by these employees informed them that hobbies were among the favorite topics men liked to talk about.

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I failed to allay their objections, for few believed they would be given back the extra hour, regardless of what the clock said.7 "Can't you go home when you finish your work?" I asked the first group that told me of their opposition. One of them responded, "We have to use our nunch'i" (i.e., appraise the mood of our superior). Evidently, their overtime was coerced by heavy workloads and by managerial surveillance. Neither long working hours nor complaints about them were unique to Taes6ng. One saw6n told me that at another of the major chaebol workers regularly stayed until 10 P.M., which he thought was "ridiculous." And in the summer of 1988, when some railway workers' wives held a public demonstration demanding shorter working hours for their husbands, they pleaded "Please let us see our husbands' faces at home (namp'yon olgul chom pogo salcha)" (Chason ilbo, July 24, 1988, p. 15). A worker newly admitted to one of the major conglomerates lamented in a published letter to his mother, "There are many days when I cannot even see the faces of my family" (Kang Sunghan 1987: q8). Most section chiefs, department heads, and some, though not all, directors expressed sympathy for their subordinates because of their long hours. One young manager confessed that he felt sorry whenever he saw his subordinates working very late; another told me he thought that much of the overtime was necessitated by inefficiency. One director even urged his workers to go home by six o'clock, but one of his subordinates tartly observed that their workloads were too heavy to permit that. Other directors expressed less sympathy for the long hours. One proudly informed me that at Taes6ng, unlike other places, employees could go home whenever they finished their work. Another said that reluctance to work long hours showed a lack of commitment to the company or an unwillingness to work hard. But why were working hours rather than wages among the principal grievances? One of the most popular explanations for protests about working hours in other societies is the cultural dissonance caused by a shift from agriculture to capitalist industrialization. In his well-known study of time concepts in England, social historian E. P. Thompson (1967) maintained that the notion of time as a com7 At Taesong, at least, I saw no evidence of longer working hours as a result of daylight saving time, but the practice of adjusting the clock during the summer months was discontinued after I988. South Korea is located in the western side of its time zone.

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modity, and worker resistance to that concept, arose in England as a result of capitalist industrialization. Perceptions of time in rural South Korea have yet to be examined thoroughly, but Thompson's depiction of preindustrial time corresponds with several of my own experiences there during the early 197o's. During some periods of the year, particularly at transplanting and harvest time, villagers worked very long hours, but in the coldest winter months they had little to do. And there were social and ritual activities that villagers did not regulate by the clock. During the early days of our fieldwork in Twisongdwi, my wife and I often asked what time an event would take place, only to discover that we were too early or too late when we arrived at the appointed hour. Perceiving our inability to get in step with the rhythms of the community, a few kind villagers hit upon the idea of sending someone to call us just before an event was about to begin. Similarly, though agricultural labor was a commodity, hourly labor was not. Workers were hired either by the season (mosum) or more commonly by the day (p'ump'ari). Yet two reasons suggest that the discomfiture of Taesong workers was not primarily the consequence of a change between a preindustrial concept of time and the hours demanded of them in the office. First, Taesong workers were already well accustomed to industrial time. Even in the rural village where we had conducted our fieldwork, clocks and wristwatches were common. Almost everyone knew how to read watches and used them to start death-day rites, participate in weddings at the local town hall, and schedule a variety of other activities. Though rural villagers often spoke of starting death-day rites by the sound of a cock's crowing, which was perhaps an older practice, they actually performed them by the clock (Cho Oakla 1979: ro3; Janelli and Janelli 1982: 93): Moreover, Taesong workers had even more experience with industrial time than villagers as a result of their lengthier formal education and urban experience. In fact, office workers were aware of the differences between their time concepts and those of rural villagers. One department head gave a humorous account of returning to his rural village for a seasonal ancestor rite (sije). He asked what time it would take place, only to be informed that the ritual would begin "when the sun was up in the sky" (haega ttumyon haji). Others present at this occasion chimed in with their own experiences of similarly imprecise specifications of time (and distance) common in rural South Korea. The other reason workers did not appear distressed by indus-

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trial time is that they did not protest regular hours per se but the extra hours that left them so little time for social obligations outside the company. At first I mistakenly equated their protests with my own desire for more time to read books and newspapers, write up field notes, and attend meetings of academic societies. But whereas I wanted more time for personal and professional needs, their objections focused on the fact that their long hours hindered their social contacts outside the company. Rather than complain that overtime prevented them from pursuing personal hobbies or reading, they protested that the company was unjustified in leaving them so little time for family and friends. Taesong workers did not seem to object to working overtime when they could see the immediate need to prepare documents. They often took a certain measure of pride in the long hours they worked in the face of pressing deadlines. Many spoke fondly of having labored until the early hours of the morning. Citing family and other social obligations made their requests for shorter hours appear less self-interested and perhaps revealed a genuine sense of moral obligation to family and friends. Indeed, the ambiguity of their motives is another indication that the most effective strategies for pursuing material interests comply with moral codes (Bourdieu 1977= 22). Whatever their convictions, however, citing social obligations rather than personal needs or individual rights was predicated on a shared understanding that family and other social obligations competed with company demands. As the young employee who published the open letter to his mother put it, "Within the [organizational] group a family atmosphere is emphasized, and for that very reason the individual is taken out of a family's shell. How can this contradiction be resolved?" (Kang Siinghan 1987: q8). It is this cultural perception of a contradiction between company and family that I wish to pursue here. In an examination of how Japanese peasants initially responded to capitalist work discipline, social historian Thomas C. Smith (1988) has taken issue with the universality of Thompson's thesis. Preindustrial Japanese workers rarely objected to long working hours, Smith argues, because they already had a notion of time discipline and a cultural understanding that time was not an individual right but subject to social demands, principally' those of family and village. Instead, their grievances focused on other aspects of working conditions, as both Smith (1988: 222) and Andrew Gordon (1985) have recently shown. Smith's argument assumes that the Japanese unproblemati-

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cally transferred obligations from family and village to company. Similarly, Dorinne Kondo (1990: 199-219) has explored the family metaphor in modern Tokyo and found that Japanese workers used it to criticize superiors for not being more like parents. Complaints about working hours voiced by Taesong sawon and younger managers, on the other hand, indicated that they had not accepted the equivalence of family and company obligations, despite the constant advancement of that theme in the company's and the conglomerate's ideological apparatuses. Thus, the major dissonance they felt was not between their current working conditions and prec industrial Korean notions of time but between their job demands and extracompany social ties. At Taesong, as in Japan, no one contested the obligation to give one's time to others: at issue was balancing competing commitments. The portrayal of the company as a family had apparently not been naturalized and was resisted. Managerial Control As frequent as complaints about time were those about the top-down style of decision making that prevailed throughout the company. Sawon, like many others in the world (Scott 1990: 1rr-12),8 often complained about the personal restrictions, indignities, and humiliations that subordination imposed on them. Their critiques often went further, however, implying an opposition of interests between subordinates and their superiors or to contradictions between the actions of superiors and the interests of the company. Resentment of the control that bosses exercised was not readily apparent while I watched and listened to subordinates interact with their superiors. As with complaints about time, however, I heard it often in private conversations. One sawon complained that his section chief never listened to him. "I could understand if he had a wellreasoned opinion of his own," he said, "but even when he doesn't he still won't listen." Another criticized his section chief for pointing out the faults of his subordinates unnecessarily. Yet another complained that his section chief checked all the details of his work and was unwilling to trust him. And yet one more lamented that he had wanted to devise a computerized system for the company but was told by his section chief to stick to his assigned work. One man confided that he had devised a strategy for dealing with his section chief: He 8 I am grateful to Robert Walls for bringing Scott's (1990) study to my notice.

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2II

accumulated several documents for his approval, waited until the section chief was not busy, and then brought him all the documents at once. Evidently anticipating that I would think it more advantageous to bring the documents when the chief was busy, assuming that he would have had less time to examine them, the sawon added that it was "dangerous" to bring his section chief documents when he was already fully occupied. Many section chiefs and younger department heads expressed similar views of their superiors or the style of their decision making, though the section chiefs who most often articulated grievances about their lack of participation in decision making were generally not those whose subordinates complained." I mentioned the case of the man who happily related how he prevented his boss from objecting to a piece of English-language correspondence by telling the boss that I had prepared it. There was another who readily agreed with my observation that his superior was a good conversationalist, but then added, "He doesn't listen as well as he talks, which sometimes makes things difficult for the other person." In all cases critiques focused on the human-relations skills rather than the technical abilities of managers. Though the complaints of the young managers dealt with how their competence was dismissed, their initiatives rejected, and their actions restricted, some chose to present their grievances in terms of their company's interests. One asked my opinion of an instance in which he was told to develop contacts and formulate agreements with persons outside the firm, only to have his superior disapprove an agreement that had been reached. He posed the question in terms of what I thought would be best for the company. Some young managers lamented that the opinions of subordinates at every level were rejected because their ideas might be used to help solve the company's problems. The haranguing style used at the weekly managers' meeting, they added, was hardly an effective way to motivate people. As a result of the constant rejection of their ideas, subordinates were wary of taking initiatives that might take them beyond the scope of the tasks they had been assigned. Thus, they were constrained from showing the originality, creativity, and intelligence that could 9 There is a particular danger of illusion here. Those managers who were most forth. coming with their own complaints were perhaps perceived as being close to me, and thus their own subordinates may have been reluctant to confide in me about them.

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advance their careers and that bourgeois ideology seemed to encourage. When sawon brought me documents for help with translation, for example, they were usually reluctant to accept alterations I suggested, preferring instead to keep the translation as literal as possible. One brought for translation a piece of advertising copy that read in Korean "First in the nation ..." He was willing to accept a translation to "First in Korea ..." but not the suggestion that the phrase might best be omitted since it would probably not be persuasive to a foreign audience. Similarly, both sawon and secretaries resisted my recommendation that they abandon the practice of adding a space before a colon in English-language documents, a typing convention in South Korea. When translating or composing for directors and above, on the other hand, I enjoyed a much freer hand and found easier acceptance of my suggestions. As a result of these daily encounters, I unreflectingly developed my own practical knowledge for editing and translating. I was as literal as possible for the lower ranks and freer, with greater attention to tone, style, and nuances of meaning, when translating for men of higher ranks. Evidently it worked, for I often continued to receive requests for translation and editing services from men who were later transferred to other offices. Though their initiatives and creativity were routinely rejected, subordinates were often assigned tasks they were ill-equipped to complete. One sawon complained he was expected to formulate a plan for which he lacked information. Many of the documents I was asked to translate, in fact, included technical vocabulary not found in the best unabridged Korean dictionaries (e.g., Yi Hiiisiing 1982).10 In more than one case when a sawon asked for the translation, he acknowledged that he did not know the meaning of the technical word either. (Office workers were expected to master a large and specialized vocabulary in their initial years at Taesong.) Other sawon were of little help since the technical vocabulary often pertained to only one sawon's area of specialization. Ultimately, I had no way of finding the meaning of these terms except by asking managers, which I felt comfortable doing though sawon did not. 10 This problem is exacerbated by the massive importation of foreign concepts and discoveries in academic as welJ as commercial realms. There is, for example, a South Korean term for cultural anthropology, but it is familiar only to a limited number of people. Some South Korean anthropologists told me of a radio announcer who misread a notice of a meeting held by their Society for Cultural Anthropology (munhwa illyuhakhoe) as a meeting of the "cultured persons type[?]-study association" (munhwain yuhakhoe).

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When I asked a small group of sawon what they would do if they received an order they did not understand, one said he would take it to his desk and try to figure it out. Another said he would ask the superior for clarification, but the determined manner in which he conveyed this response indicated that he thought it was unconventional and rather brave. In explaining why the highest managers usually had graduated from the best schools, a manager placed the burden on the subordinates when he said that those who are more intelligent are able to carry out orders without needing a lot of additional instruction and are more likely to be promoted. Self-control training, after all, was supposed to inculcate the desire to try one's best to comply with rather than question orders even when no solution seemed possible. Thus, the top-down style of decision making impeded the men's chances for advancement by spurning their initiatives, assigning them tasks for which they were ill equipped, and penalizing them when they asked for clarification. Perhaps because it represented the least subtle form of direct control and close surveillance, the weekly managers' meeting described in Chapter 5 evoked some of the most pointed criticism. I saw few signs of dissatisfaction at the meeting itself, as young managers sat impassively and never uttered a word or made even a mild gesture of disagreement; but outside the meetings, their choice of words revealed their antipathy. I noted that directors and other older managers who conducted these weekly meetings spoke of them as "training" whereas subordinates described them as "getting a scolding." The younger men thereby implicitly rejected the idea that these sessions were for their benefit. One section chief observed that they were inappropriately called "meetings" (hoe), for there was no exchange of views. Yet one more complained that the boss did too much fault finding (mari mant'a). Others said that the communication was only "one-way" (an English loanword), and one noted the similarity between them and "Korean-style democracy," using a term advocated by the state during the later years of the Park Chung Hee era to designate a repressive system. And finally, one said he and the other subordinates were treated like children. All of these comments about the weekly meetings were presented beyond earshot of the managers who conducted them. So reserved · were the subordinates during the managers' meeting that I was misled by their behavior. During one of the earlier meetings that I attended, several section chiefs in turn got up and left the room, each returning after a short absence. I guessed that the coffee served at the start of

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these occasions was prompting trips to the bathroom, but two section chiefs later told me that they were so infuriated at the proceedings they had gone out for a smoke. It was a surreptitious opposition, and they laughed upon encountering each other in the hallway, realizing they had both done the same thing. While I was grateful for this revelation, I also found it disturbing for it challenged my competence as an ethnographer. After participating in village meetings, academic conferences, and a variety of other gatherings, I had learned that opposition was less often as open or confrontational as it was at similar events in the United States. Instead, conflicting points of view were often expressed indirectly by presenting alternative suggestions, by changing the tone of voice, pursing the lips, maintaining a rigid body posture, or responding reluctantly or with too much enthusiasm. Even a rudimentary knowledge of cultural cues made these signals apparent. At the weekly rnanagers' meeting, by contrast, the artifice of subordinates went far beyond the standards of politeness I had encountered elsewhere, and my inability to interpret their deliberately nonexpressive behavior was frustrating. A few months later, at another weekly managers' meeting, I was relieved to learn that my frustration was shared. A director admonished his subordinates for not expressing their views more openly and demanded, unsuccessfully, that they be more communicative. Turning to me, he asked for a statement of the importance of expressing oneself properly and also requested that I give the section chiefs some pointers on how to do so. Sensing that I was being drawn into a contest whose implications I did not fully understand and reluctant to legitimate a style of management the section chiefs found so distasteful, I hedged my response. Conceding the importance of expressing oneself well, I added, truthfully, that the men seemed quite articulate to me. Seeing that I had missed the point of the exchange, one young manager later took me aside and explained in private that the subordinates were afraid that expressing an opposing opinion would provoke the wrath of their superior. He went on to tell of an incident that preceded my research, when subordinates' thinking had similarly been solicited but the senior manager exploded in anger upon hearing the remarks of the person who took up the invitation. 11 Ethnographic studies of modern South Korean organizations are 11

One man criticized a superior for just saying what the boss wanted to hear.

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rare, but the limited evidence that does exist suggests that overt domination and disguised resistance between managers and their subordinates are widespread and of long duration. In an ethnographic study of the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI), Donald Earl Christie found nearly twenty years earlier that there was considerable resentment of managerial control among white-collar employees and that they concealed their resentment: After the men had retreated to their office, they sat complaining about the Director-General. ... he scolded his men gruffly and never really let them argue with him. "You can't talk to him," another man cried .... Actually, the "troika," [i.e., the subordinates' nickname for three upper managers] and primarily the Director-General made all the decisions .... creative people whom I have known [in the United States] would not have stood by, as the men did, having their work rewritten without offering some defense if not protest. At the FKI the men complained only in private. In public they said nothing and smiled. [1972: 147-49]

More recently, Karl Moskowitz (Asian Wall Street Journal, Mar. 2, 1987, p. 6) contrasted practices found in South Korean companies with those widely reported from Japan and made similar observations: [South] Korean companies do not have an "egalitarian" or "consensusoriented" management style. Korean companies (and all Korean organizations) have a top-down, authoritarian style in which the "consensus" is what the boss says it is, period. The responsible Korean .management decision maker does not fully trust his subordinates and is not obligated to accept, follow, or even listen to plans and recommendations his subordinates may prepare .... many of the new generation of Korean managers and company men ... find the Korean management culture frustrating and demoralizing.

As I tried to show in Chapter I, not all South Korean organizations are characterized by a top-down authoritarian style. Academic societies, alumni associations, villages, and even lineages can conduct their affairs quite differently. Moreover, there seems little cause to single out "the new generation" of South Korean managers and company men since Christie had evidently found the same phenomenon at FKI. But otherwise, Moskowitz's observations about modern South Korean companies are in agreement with Christie's and my own. The shared perception of domination and knowledgeability of how to deal with it bear some similarities to village practices. Rather than confront superiors, subordinates sought to somehow get around them through self-conscious efforts at deception. One manager spelled this

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out when he said, "There's a big difference between what we show outside and what we think inside." Another said, "We respect other people only on the outside." I sought to pursue this interpretation with an older manager by trying to look at the relationship from his perspective. It must be hard to manage subordinates whose behavior is so disparate from their thinking, I observed. How could a manager be sure that subordinates would comply with his orders? The man responded by drawing an analogy to his control of his own son: "I tell him to study hard in order to gain admission to a university," he said, "and he responds yes; but I don't know what he's really thinking." Yet this similarity between a manager and a father is the result of only a partial comparison; I shall explore the dissimilarities in the final section of this chapter. Taesong managers were not entirely unaware of the widespread dissatisfaction among subordinates. As James C. Scott (1990: 44) observed in a recent study of the resistance generated by political domination, "Dominant elites, for their part, are unlikely to be completely taken in by outward shows of deference. They expect there is more here than meets the eye (and ear) and that part or all of the performance is in bad faith." This is all the more true at Taesong, where directors themselves were once sawon. After-hours drinking was often said to be a time when such dissatisfaction was expressed, though these admissions seemed to me more likely to depend on how many people were present than on how much alcohol was consumed. Drinking and complaining about superiors, however, were coded in a folkloric expression taught to me by an older manager: "sangsanun sul anjukam" (literally, "bosses [are] the stuff from which are made the snacks which accompany drinks"). The saying alludes to the foods that are usually eaten while drinking-most popularly, dried squid, but also peanuts, fruit, or any of several other items-and to the common understanding that workers complain about their bosses when they drink. Snacks are an apt metaphor for bosses because they are "chewed" (ssipta), a slang expression for speaking ill of another (Yi Huisung 1982: 2265).12 Most older managers acknowledged subordinates' special dislike of the weekly managers' meetings and their more general complaints about being deprived of a voice in decision making. Some were even 12

ing.

I am indebted to Dawnhee Yim for pointing out this colloquial meaning of chew-

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aware of their subordinates' general dissatisfaction, though perhaps not which ones were most discontented or the extent of their displea- . sure. One director defended his own autocratic style in a lunchtime conversation with a few of his subordinate managers and me. His performance served as a rehearsal, for he repeated the same defense at the next managers' meeting. He justified his methods by citing the immaturity of his subordinates: An immature person has to be told everything: "Go out the door and walk straight ahead for 50 meters. Then turn to the right and walk another so meters. There you will see a small building. Inside that building they sell cigarettes. This is the kind of cigarettes you should buy. [He held up a package of Sol brand cigarettes so that the brand could be clearly seen.] They're called Sol and they cost soo won." A mature person, on the other hand, can be told simply, "Bring me some cigarettes, Sol." Similarly, Christie found that a major difference between the FKI and organizations for which he had worked in the United States "was the conviction and acceptance by the top executives that the men were disinterested in their work and lacked the background for it: 'They wantto do XYZ, but they don't know ABC!'" (Christie 1972: q8). After I had observed a weekly managers' meeting, both younger and older managers solicited my reactions to it, a telltale sign of its controversial nature. Their responses to my initial interpretation helped me to revise it. Motivated by a commitment to cultural relativism (and perhaps self-interest as well), I was reluctant to criticize and tried to interpret these meetings positively. Because employees were expected to spend a lifetime with the company, I noted, it was probably necessary to train them. Citing a complaint voiced more than once by an untenured colleague-"Nobody ever tells me what I'm supposed to do" -1 said that American organizations, which can more easily replace personnel by hiring from outside, could afford to take more of a sink-or-swim approach. (I used the English phrase, explaining what it meant.) I related anecdotes that I had read · recently in American business magazines about corporate restructuring and takeovers in which individuals had not been told they were unsatisfactory until being fired. This interpretation was well received by directors and older department heads. One complimented me for understanding so well what I had seen. Another jotted down the phrase sink-or-swim to add to his English vocabulary. Younger managers, on the other hand, received

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the interpretation without enthusiasm. They had been led to believe that decisions were collectively made in American corporations and seemed disappointed when I also noted that autocratic department chairpersons could be found at American universities. One rhetorically asked, "Isn't this a case of someone's else's rice cake? (nam ui tt6k)," alluding to the Korean proverb that serves as a trope for situations in which what someone else has looks better than one's own portion. Once again, by trying not to be critical I found myself advocating a political position. The wide discrepancy between employees' perceptions and their behavior before managers was also evident in their practices of resistance, which were more subtle than dramatic. (One tactic involved contesting the official family metaphor, to be discussed in the last section of this chapter.) At a divisional meeting a number of qualitycircle discussion groups had been formed and one sawon from each designated to give a report of his group's deliberations. One man delivered his report so humorously that his presentation could have been read as a mockery of the whole meeting. When he was finished, a section chief scolded him for making light of a serious matter, but another lamented his attempt to make the event "pleasant" had been quickly squelched. My own reading of the sawon's action was closer to that of the first section chief, but his intentions were ambiguous. In another instance a man working on an onerous project with an impending deadline resisted his manager's request to surrender temporarily the room where his team was working so that we could use it for a one-hour English class. The challenge lasted for a minute or two, and both took turns trying to persuade the other. (I tried to suggest another room where we could meet, but my suggestion was not accepted.) The subordinate's resistance could in no way be considered disrespectful, as he couched it in terms of furthering the best interests of their company. Ultimately, he yielded gracefully, at least to all appearances. When I invited a director, a department head, and their section chiefs out for a drink one evening, one of the section chiefs asked to be excused because it was the day for his father's ancestor rite. One of his superiors had already refused the request, but when he came and gave me the same reason, I readily acknowledged that the rite was a more pressing obligation and urged him to go home. The superior gave no indication of noticing his subordinate's departure

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or absence. On another occasion, I was invited to go on a mountain hike with a group of managers. We all had to wait an hour past the appointed time of our gathering for the arrival of one section chief. When we phoned him he said he wanted to stay home and play with his child, but his department head insisted he join us. Yet another form of resistance was quitting, but even this was not confrontational. Those who remained with the company usually interpreted a resignation as a sign of disagreement with superiors, but the men who left usually gave furthering their education, or in one case pursuing a nonbusiness career, as the reason. Some sawon were apparently voting with their feet, but I have no way of knowing whether they disliked their superiors' control, the long hours, the tedium of the work, or other aspects of company life. Not all comments about the top-down style, however, were negative. One young manager, offering an opinion contrary to the usual view, pointed out that there was an advantage when superiors did not accept recommendations. If anything goes wrong, one could say "I tried [or wanted] to warn you" and thereby avoid being held responsible for a failure. 13 But his opinion was intended to provide a balanced view rather than a justification, as he also voiced some of the criticisms cited above. Other contrary views came from managers who were getting direct experience with the American style of management in a joint venture and found its frequent memos, consultations, and meetings frustrating and inefficient. To them it showed reluctance to accept responsibility for decisions. But their comments seemed to be aimed at criticizing the methods of the American managers more than at justifying Taesong's practices. Taesong personnel generally shared a perception of decision making in the workplace and had devised strategies for acquiescence and resistance. Many of the surveillance and control practices presented in the earlier chapters can now be seen as management's own counterstrategies. Subordinates' actions, intended to keep superiors at a distance, evoked more ideological indoctrination, surveillance, and other forms of control. Their strategies were both moral and selfinterested, for they felt justified in shielding themselves from what they had come to regard as an unreasonable system. Their tactics ran 13 The Korean form used here can convey either unsuccessful actiens ("l tried to") or intentions frustrated by circumstances ("I wanted to").

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counter to the image of superior-subordinate relations in the company ideology.

Harmony by Artifice: A Cultural Innovation Attaining harmony by obscuring public expression of conflict extended beyond relations between superiors and subordinates to those among co-workers. One of my deepest impressions during the first week of my fieldwork at Taesong was the absence of overt quarreling, even of complaints about office mates. I saw none of the signs of conflict evident in many American offices, South Korean villages, or South Korean (and American) academic associations. Instead, people seemed to go out of their way to help one another and myself as well, and I felt deeply indebted to them. Whenever I approached a manager's desk and asked if he was busy, he always said no and responded to whatever I requested. Similar practices at other South Korean offices also struck Roger Leverrier, a Frenchman who has made his career in South Korea and writes for the popular media under the name of Yo T'ongch'an. A colleCtion of his writings, kindly given to me by an older manager, included the following comparison of offices in his native country with those in South Korea: At first glance, frankly, one sees [in French offices and those of the Western nations generally] that Western people appear to be people who have no leeway (yoyu). One doesn't see workers chatting together, a man joking with young female co-workers (agassidiil ), a young female worker reading a novel or weekly magazine, or people leisurely conversing with visitors who have come looking for them while having a smoke and drinking a cup of coffee. As if they are confronted by decisions weighty enough to change the course of world history, they wear serious facial expressions and give the impression of pouring all their efforts into their respective work assignments. From when they come out to work until quitting time, they seem completely oblivious to anything outside their work. Generally, the situation in [South] Korea is completely different. Although they [South Korean office workers] say they are so busy that they cannot even think straight, it seems as if they have time for jokes, and the atmosphere is not as rigid. [Yo 1987: 20]

I never saw women· workers reading weekly magazines or novels at Taesong, and only managers, not sawon, chatted leisurely with visitors while drinking coffee. But otherwise, his observations match my own. When a young manager asked what sort of impression my first few days in the office had given me, my first thought was that inter-

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personal relations (in'gan kwan'gye) appeared to be very good. This response seemed appropriate, especially since Taesong's ideology emphasized harmony. Much to my surprise, this seemingly bland observation met with a firm rebuttal. The manager asserted that relations at Taesong too were difficult, and that office workers often got angry with each other but took pains not to show these feelings. At first I was unsure how to interpret his response, for this particular man had on an earlier occasion seemed defensive and sought to deny or minimize cultural differences between South Koreans and Americans, taking such contrasts as an implicit critique of South Korean practices. A few days later, however, another young manager, who enjoyed indulging in South Korean and American contrasts, offered the same evaluation of interpersonal relations within the office. As days and weeks went by, more expressions of this view accumulated and I began to realize how widespread it was among young managers. Yet months passed before I realized the extent of practices aimed at fostering harmony, for the knowledgeability that these members of the new middle class had formulated for dealing with each other went far beyond simply not expressing anger. Just as they had learned to suppress conflict with superiors, so they had learned to conceal hostile relationships with co-workers, to avoid offending each other, and to repair whatever injuries they may have inadvertently caused. I had not encountered many of their techniques for accomplishing this elsewhere in South Korea. Sawon of the same section, for example, usually ate lunch together every day, collected their wedding contributions for a co-worker of their division and presented them in a single envelope, and never failed to greet each other in the morning and evening. All the men of a division contributed a gift whenever one of their number married, received a cup of coffee when a wife gave birth to a son, and attended funerals and other major social events at each others' homes. By contrast I could detect no special efforts toward persons from the same region, school, or kin group (with the obvious exception of the owner-managers), the three types of affiliations often said by middle-class South Koreans to cause common cleavages in their society. And I was struck by the social distance between divisions of Taesong company. When the father of a section chief of one division died, the section chiefs of the other division that shared the same floor of the headquarters building were unaware of the event several days later.

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So effectively was conflict kept from coming into the open that I erred in assuming a high degree of group solidarity during the early days of my fieldwork. But the efforts of several office workers to persuade me otherwise, as well as the rapid reformation of social ties upon transfer to another assignment, ultimately led me to appreciate the deliberate character of their interactions. When after-hours socializing followed the organization chart, men often talked about their drinking until late in the preceding night, but there was considerable reticence about gatherings that violated the chart. Close friendships with persons outside one's section or division were not openly paraded, except by a few men who regarded their current assignments as temporary absences. Indeed, I would not have discovered some of these ties except for my involvement in a few of them. The bourgeois ideology about harmony failed to acknowledge that some social ties can be promoted only at the expense of others. All of the men I questioned acknowledged frankly, and usually with a measure of pride, that their apparently good relations were the product of constant effort (noryok). Rural villagers had been more inclined toward interpreting social relationships in terms of moral character (Janelli and Janelli 1982: 26), personality characteristics such as kindheartedness (Brandt 1971: 147-8; Janelli and Janelli 'I982: 23 ), close genealogical relationships, established friendships (Chun 1984: II9-20), age, or other structural characteristics. But Taesong personnel adopted a more agency-centered perspective on relations between co-workers and were reluctant to express moral judgments about each other. As I have shown, conflict was expressed far more openly in villages. At Taesong, hidden conflict, competition, and offences against others, even inadvertent ones, were ever-present dangers that had to be overcome. Cooperation was a desirable but not natural state of affairs. No one, however, represented these efforts as hypocrisy. Only a minority wondered if all the efforts expended toward maintaining human relationships did not drain energy away from achieving other company goals. While managers placed a high value on fostering social ties and spoke of the obligation each had to repay the actions others made on his behalf, they also freely acknowledged the pragmatic value of such efforts. No one mentioned that employee evaluations were based partly on ability to get along with others, but cultivation of personal relationships was openly said to be useful for achieving practical ob-

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jectives.14 As one manager put it, spending a few years on a foreign assignment had made it more difficult for him upon his return because his absence prevented him from building ties as his cohorts had. Human ties have to be cultivated, he added. "Most business decisions," he said, "are not decided on the basis of roo percent objectivity. They also allow for a subjective judgment, and when you have a good relationship with a person, there's a greater likelihood that he will grant your request." Other men spoke of how they had been able to accomplish their assigned tasks more easily thanks to informal connections in the company. Thus, cooperating with others was simultaneously portrayed as the product of a moral obligation to return the help which one received and an acknowledged strategy for attaining practical goals. Contesting a Metaphor

I have tried to show that the official ideology of the bourgeoisie, as well as the comments of older managers, made use of a family metaphor to justify Taesong's top-down, authoritative, or overtly coercive style of management. With the exception of one older manager who expressed a contrary view, the more privileged chose to agree with junior managers and sawon about the unyielding character of their control, but tried to legitimate it primarily by representing the company as a family and making a manager's control of his subordinates analogous to a father's control over his sons. It was on the terrain of legitimation, not that of domination itself, that opposing interpretations were tendered. Against the bourgeois representation and its corollary-that the rigid control and harsh scolding were forms of training aimed at their own welfare-subordinates advanced the view that the company was like the army. Their complaints about working hours implied a rejection of the family metaphor, and several other actions and expressions resisted it also. Most Taesong workers did not explicitly challenge the family metaphor but very rarely did they invoke it. Despite its pervasiveness in the company magazines and training sessions, the persons who drew analogies between the company and the family were older managers 14 Since I did not actually examine the personnel evaluation forms, this is an assumption. Evaluation forms from other South Korean sources, however, all contain such items (e.g., Samsong ch'ulp'ansa p'yonjipkuk I987; Han'guk insa kwalli hyophoe I988).

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who acknowledged the severity and the more critical than laudatory character of their actions. Age differences between them and their youngest subordinates may have made the metaphor more appealing to them and a more appropriate legitimation of their control, but they also shared with owner-managers an interest in keeping subordinates in line. Not only was the salary of an older manager much higher, but the performance of his unit (and his own career) depended on his ability to control and extract maximum efforts from his subordinates. Younger managers, however, voiced other views. Only one of them explicitly rejected the family metaphor, going so far as to point out how the disparity of interests between a superior and subordinate affected the nature of a scolding: a father's reprimand was motivated by affection and concern for his son's welfare whereas a manager's was not. Many others also displayed an awareness of an opposition of interests between their superiors and themselves. In addition to the common complaint about how superiors demanded an excessive amount of time, subordinates also portrayed them as hindrances to their own advancement. One said that a particular manager was afraid that one of his subordinates would replace him, and others blamed delayed promotions of particular co-workers on their managers. None credited a manager with obtaining a rapid promotion for a subordinate or otherwise supporting their interests. A young manager asked me if I "too" pushed all the work onto my teaching assistants when I taught large undergraduate classes. Another oblique recognition of managerial domination came in a commentary about terms of address. A group of section chiefs pointed out to me that Japanese office workers did not use honorific suffixes when referring to their own section chief. The reason for the difference between Japanese and South Korean practices, they explained, was that the former regarded their section chief as a member of their own group. 15 By implication, South Korean sa won did not. Some of the younger managers resisted by subversion the family metaphor and the entire system of domination and ranking. Dismayed at being treated as inferiors and excluded from decision making, these younger managers adopted a kinship term of address for their own subordinates and assigned it a meaning that symbolically 15

For an anthropological discussion of this difference, see Kim Joo-Hee (1978:

72-73). Clark Sorensen kindly drew my attention to Kim's article.

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reversed their respective positions.16 Hyong means "elder brother" and thus its use by an older for a younger man is usually inappropriate, but many section chiefs used the word occasionally to address one of their own subordinates (e.g., Ma hyong instead of Ma Kihossi). The practice, explained a few section chiefs, was intended to acknowledge that the opinions of (male) sawon too were worthy of consideration. "Hyong" was not used very often, but even its occasional invocation served to undermine the company's rigid hierarchy, preventing the ranking system from becoming doxic by showing that things could be otherwise . .It also took the family metaphor and gave it a twist quite different from that intended by the owner-managers. And by acknowledging that subordinates' ideas too could benefit the company, the bourgeoisie were once again hoisted on one of their own ideological petards. Another form of resistance was to grant readily that Taesong's management was Confucian but to ascribe an alternative meaning to that term. Instead of adopting it as an emblem of Korean national identity, Confucianism was used as a symbol of national embarrassment, a code word for old-fashioned, conservative, and authoritarian rule. Sometimes uttered in disgust, it became a multivocal symbol. This alternative interpretation of Confucianism drew upon ideas that can be traced back several decades among the Korean middle classes (Robinson 1991). The most common way of contesting the family metaphor was by advancing a countermetaphor. Comparisons between the company and the army never seemed to find their way into official discourse, for just as junior managers and sawon eschewed the family metaphor; so senior managers and owner-managers avoided the military trope. Such analogies, however, were widely recognized throughout South Korean society (e.g., Jung 1987: 63). We have seen, for example, that newspapers commonly referred to the heads of chaebol as commanders in chief and that the term military culture had been coined to characterize the practices of the state and other institutions. Some of the similarities between the army and the company seemed obvious. To those mentioned throughout the preceding chapters more could be added. A duty roster was kept on the bulletin board of each division showing the daily assignment of responsibility for locking up 16 At South Korean college campuses as well, students had begun changing cultural understandings for terms of address (Frederic Roberts, personal communication).

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the division's office door and reopening it the next morning. Posted on bulletin boards in hallways was a sketch of the proper length for men's hair. Summer dress codes went into effect on a given date regardless of that day's weather. At the monthly meetings of Taesong's headquarters staff, just before the president spoke, everyone sat up, bowed their heads, and relaxed in unison as a voice barked out crisp commands. In saluting the flag, all were ordered in similar fashion to sit erect, place hands over hearts, and return them in unison. During a presentation of computer systems, one man held a large pointer at right shoulder arms and stood at attention when not pointing. The company song was in 4/4 time. Sections in many divisions were referred to by number instead of function or product line (d. 2d squad, 3rd platoon). Interoffice memos-more accurately, "interlocation" memos since few were sent between people of the same buildingwere always transmitted formally from the head of one office to the head of another, and both parties, as well as those who received copies, were designated by their positions rather than their names. In many ways my military experience served as a better guide to behavior in the office than my understandings of American bureaucracies or South Korean villages and universities. Sawon too were keenly aware of these similarities and many more. One employee held the floor for several minutes in front of a group of new recruits and myself delivering a critique of decision making in the company, portraying it as too militaristic and then extending the charge to all of South Korea. Those without military service usually quit Taesong, he claimed, because only veterans could stand it. Then he cited the weekly managers' meeting as a prime example of the military style of life that pervaded the enterprise. Most other comparisons between Taesong and the army arose on the spur of the moment. A company practice often prompted a worker or manager to recall an army experience. One manager was skeptical about the effectiveness of the self-control training given to the new recruits, noting that they had already received such training in the army and that there it had been far more strenuous and demanding. When entering the chaebol's cafeteria, where employees lined up to receive standard fare served on a metal tray with section dividers, a sawon recalled eating meals in the army and humorously described drills at which soldiers were given only 30 seconds to eat their lunch. A manual on an employee's desk had on its cover a puzzling handwritten inscription that gave the name of his division followed by "hana section" (hanakwa). Hana

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is a Korean word for the number one, but I found the inscription puzzling because sections were designated by sino-Korean numbers (i.e., ilkwa, not hanakwa). An employee explained that in the army pure Korean numbers were often substituted for their sino-Korean equivalents that are hard to distinguish over the telephone or radio. In fact, similar substitutions are often made in nonmilitary telephone conversations, but the employee drew the analogy to the army. I still wonder whether the inscription was an unreflective use of military terminology or a wry social commentary. Other military comparisons came from junior-level workers. One employee, contrasting Taesong with a noncommercial organization with which he was familiar, said, "There people ... of different levels [sawon, section chief, department head, etc.] all interact as friends; but here [pointing to the floor with his chin], it's like the army." And at the year-end company party, at which the president visited each of the divisions in turn to exchange greetings, several men commented to each other about the military style of the preparations and organization of his visit. Detailed plans had been drawn up for the layout of the refreshments, even specifying the number of centimeters between bottles of Coca-Cola. A written timetable detailed that all would assemble in place at D minus ro minutes, the candles lit at D minus 5 minutes, the champagne would be poured starting at D minus 2 minutes, and so on. "D time" referred to the arrival of the president. Some comments did not mention the army directly but criticized the militarylike ranking that pervaded the offices of Taesong. One of the sawon commented that I always returned greetings whereas some managers just responded with "uh-huh" (ung). Another asked if American subordinates were permitted to cross their legs in front of superiors, but his question seemed motivated by more than curiosity. "Our managers don't let us cross our legs," he added, "but when I become a manager I plan to allow my subordinates to do that." On another occasion I was traveling with a group of men and women sawon to a company-sponsored waterside recreation. As we approached the site, I saw a set of bleachers and, mistakenly as it turned out, said that those bleachers were our destination. Since the bleachers were not nearly large enough to accommodate all the company personnel who would be attending the event, one man surmised, "The company president and the section chiefs will sit on the seats and the sawon will sit on the ground," indicating by his tone of voice that he resented such treatment. One of the women who accompa-

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nied us then pointed to the greater disadvantages they would suffer: "And the women workers will be in the water." 17 Persons who put such efforts into constructing relationships with others were perhaps all the more sensitive to the belittling treatment that they received. Of course, both the military and family metaphors represented partial truths. Evidence can be and is brought forth by the men and women of Taesong to support each analogy. To enter into their debate abo tit whether the company is more like the army or the Korean family is to adopt a partisan position. Both representations seek to portray office life in terms that advance or challenge material advantages. Advocates of each position advance the interpretation that best accords with their respective interests and often includes a moral claim as well. These are major strategies whereby material contests between the bourgeoisie and the new middle class are pursued. 17 Women workers were often particularly critical of the ranking system, perhaps because they were at the bottom of it, had not served in the army, or had more business knowledge and experience than some men who outranked them; and many of their perceptive criticisms were conveyed to male co-workers. A woman worker was reassigned to a different section of her division because, according· to one of her male co-workers, she resented the way in which a male sawon younger than herself had tactlessly ordered her around. Women entered the company shortly after completing high school and thus began their employment when they were about six years younger than the youngest men, but some stayed in the company until they were older and far more experienced. When asked why women workers eventually resigned rather than remain employed, even though the company no longer required their resignations at marriage, one woman worker responded, "There are no positions to which we can be promoted." On yet another occasion, when I was working on a project with a man and woman, we all rode an elevator together. As I waited for the woman to leave the elevator, the male worker waited for me and mused aloud, "Because of Professor, I have to wait for a woman worker." "It's nice," retorted the woman.

Conclusions Classical organization theory suffers from "ethnocentrism": It ignores the significance of the political, social, and economic milieu in shaping organizations and influencing managerial practice. McGregor (r960: r7)

T

HE DIALECTIC through which this book emerged continued well after the fieldwork. Disturbed by the feeling that I had not adequately understood what I had seen and heard, I continued to read and reflect on my experiences at Taesong. Events in South Korea and at Taesong, news of which came to me through the media andreunions with friends made during the nine and a half months spent in their workplace, prodded me to find new meanings in some of my fieldwork. A significant liberalization of the press and other freedoms followed the June 29 declaration of political reforms announced by Roh Tae Woo, who was Chun Doo Hwan's appointed candidate for the next presidential election, though the debate over whether those changes have been adequate continues. Six months later two opposition candidates won a majority in the election but lost to Roh because they split that majority. Thus, the political party of Chun Doo Hwan remained in power, and critics soon labeled Roh's Sixth Republic the Fifth-and-a-Half Republic. In the spring of 1988, however, members of the opposition parties gained a majority of seats in National Assembly elections and formed enough of a coalition to conduct a televised inquiry into the "misdeeds" of the Chun government (ogong piri), including its relationship to the major business groups. As soon as the Olympics ended, members of the opposition parties tried to uncover whether specific favors had been given to major business groups for their political contributions or whether their large

230

CONCLUSIONS

donations had been coerced. The chairman of one of the "big four" best summed up the results of the investigation with an expression that captured much public attention. Pressed to explain his contributions and solicitation of funds from other business groups on behalf of the Chun government, he said that the funds were given "to make things comfortable," thus implying that the exchanges between the state and major business groups maintained an ongoing relationship. A Chason ilbo (Oct. 19, 1988, p. 2) editorial portrayed that relationship with a colloquial Korean trope, "good for sister and good for brother-in-law," for which "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" seems the best translation. Within a few years, however, several events suggested that relations between the state and the major conglomerates had become less cordial (Chason ilbo, Nov. 19, 1991, p. 3). In November 1991, for example, the National Tax Office demanded back taxes of $180 million from the founder of one of the four chaebol, who subsequently organized another opposition party. And in that same month Roh Tae Woo met with the leaders of a small political party, led principally by former jailed dissidents, which favored state ownership of South Korea's major industries. "It was the first meeting between a South Korean president and leftist figures since 1948," noted the Far Eastern Economic Review (Dec. 19, 1991, p. 30). About a week after Roh Tae Woo made his June 29 declaration in 1987, the Taesong chaebol moved its headquarters to a new and much larger office building on the southern side of Seoul, not far from the National Assembly. The headquarters had been in an older section of the city, closer to the presidential mansion and in front of the Seoul Railway Station built during the Japanese colonial era. The new headquarters was a high-rise in a more recently developed area with straight streets arranged in a grid pattern, upscale shops and apartments, and other trappings of South Korea's new-middle-class life-style. Designed for the group by an American company, the new headquarters building lacked Korean-style window shades or large ashtrays made of food-storage jars, but artistic sculptures of Korean as well as abstract motifs decorated its grounds. Many of the austerities reminiscent of military life were also gone. The new headquarters had wall-to-wall carpeting, hot water in the bathrooms, a private elevator for the highest managers, and banks of vending machines on each floor. The conglomerate no longer served its personnel a standard lunch in stamped metal trays but offered a variety of foods, in ceramic dishes, cafeteria-style. Taesong com-

CONCLUSIONS

231

pany employees and managers would no longer gather for a monthly meeting but would watch a televised presentation at the beginning of each month via large-screen monitors at strategic locations on each of the floors. A brief calisthenics program was shown on these screens every day at mid-afternoon, though few employees bothered to join in. Mention of the program invariably evoked the observation that office calisthenics was a Japanese practice. A few weeks after the chaebol moved to its new headquarters, and as Taesong personnel were adjusting to new lunch routines and commuting schedules, I finished my fieldwork and returned to teaching in the United States. The divisions where I had taught English and edited correspondence kindly gave me commemorative gifts, and several people treated me to dinner. I tried to repay my more outstanding obligations by taking various individuals and sections out to lunch or dinner, but the new round of gifts and entertainment was particularly generous and put me even further behind. Events at Taesong and the other conglomerates after my fieldwork continued to reform my understandings also, leading me to conclude that what I had seen was not merely domination and resistance but a bit of the history of South Korea's political economy in the making. Calls for more democratization were heard throughout South Korea, and they seem to have encouraged changes in the chaebol as well. A report in the Tonga ilbo (Nov. 18, 1989, p. 19) noted that many young workers were avoiding after-hours drinking less surreptitiously than before: Department Head "C" of the "L" Group said: "The young saw6n who recently joined the company have often refused my invitations to go out drinking after work." Until just a few years ago, going along with superiors or sonbae when they proposed to go out somewhere after work was thought only natural, but nowadays the custom has become one of "thinking about it and then deciding." And from the November 1990 issue of the chaebol's magazine I learned that practices for addressing women workers also had evidently been altered. A brief essay instructing employees on proper terms of address in the office omitted Miss plus a surname for women workers. 1 In the spring of 1991, South Korean newspapers reported 1 A few months later, the Chason ilbo (July 3, 1991, p. 10) reported a trend away from the use of Miss throughout South Korean enterprises, but gave the change a different meaning. The report advised that both Mister and Miss were increasingly perceived as foreign terms and thus better avoided.

232

CONCLUSIONS

that the Taesong chaebol had announced that office lights would be turned off each workday at 7 P.M. to encourage employees to go home before then. Evidently, the upper management of the conglomerate had significantly shifted its position on working hours. One of the friends I made as a result of fieldwork explained that those who wanted to work later would be required to submit a written application to have the lights left on.

Constructing South Korean Capitalism The bourgeois and new-middle-class practices described in the preceding chapters cannot be explained simply as inexorable expansions of Western capitalism or as inevitable outcomes of a natural propensity to truck, barter, and exchange. Critiquing those who would generalize about "the transition" to capitalism, E. P. Thompson (1967: So) argued more than two decades ago that a cultural shaping of that transition is inevitable in any society: There has never been any single type of "the transition." The stress of the transition falls upon the whole culture: resistance to change and assent to change arise from the whole culture. And this culture includes the system of power, property-relations, religious institutions, etc., inattention to which merely flattens phenomena and trivializes analysis.

Other researchers have similarly commented on how local cultures shape capitalism: The transformation of preexisting modes of production has seldom been a smooth unidirectional process (Meillassoux 1972); and far from sweeping all before it, and replacing indigenous cultural forms with its own social and ideological structures, the advancing capitalist system has clearly been determined, in significant respects, by the local systems it has sought to engulf (Foster-Carter 1978; Marks and Rathbone 1982). [Cornaro££ 1985: 2)

Many of the managerial methods and other business activities found in South Korea betrayed the making of local versions of capitalism. Practices considered essential to this social system elsewhere in the world were absent or significantly altered, while conventions often regarded as antithetical to capitalism were among the more significant features of the nation's political economy. Admittedly, these differences have partly resulted from more than local influences. South Korea's position in the world system, especially its military alliance with the United States, the historical timing of its development in terms of precedents (Amsden 1989; Gerschenkron 1962), the

CONCLUSIONS

233

expansion of international trade (Haggard and Moon 1989: 33), and the decline of American hegemony prior to the late 198o's have also affected the formation of its structure. But local causes have been significant. Rather than rely on multinational corporations or domestic individual initiative, the state assumed a substantial portion of the risk in international credit markets and fulfilled other functions elsewhere undertaken by capitalist entrepreneurs (e.g., selection of industries, export promotion). It exercised control over markets for capital funds, white- and blue-collar labor, production, imports, and consumption. Business practices of the owner-managers and new middle class at the major chaebol also testify to the local making of capitalism. Many of these practices are neither found in the capitalist enterprises of other societies nor made inevitable by constraints imposed by the state or world system. The conglomerate form of organization itself exists outside of, or on a different plane from, South Korea's formal financial and legal systems. The chaebol's family and centralized management remains in place well after control is usually turned over to professional managers and decision making dispersed to lower levels (Chandler 1977; Moskowitz 1989), even though evidence that this practice maximized their firms' profits is hard to find. Extensive efforts to justify growth and defend ownership claims to the major means of production continue. Real-estate investments were concealed due to a moral stigma, particularly on chaebol, regarding this activity. Distinctive methods for conducting stockholders' meetings and creative accounting practices maintained the controlling power of a minority of shareholders. "Cooperation" replaced contracts as a device for ensuring the advancement of material interests. And, not least of all, a partly local system of personnel management was created for the recruitment, control, and dismissal of white-collar employees.

Constructing Korean Tradition Neither personnel management nor any of the other local features of South Korean capitalism can be easily explained by "traditional" or "indigenous" practices. The Korean society of the past 40 years experienced by Taesong personnel in both rural and urban settings has been shifting. It also has enough variance in its representations to render highly problematic its relationship to modern company practices. Schools, cities, and military service yield as many Foucaultian

234

CONCLUSIONS

"similitudes" (1971) as do rural practices to those of the workplace. If the partial similarities between village and office life are assembled and then explained by the inertia of older traditions, that inertia has been peculiarly selective. The unified, top-down, chain-of-command system of control, though often ascribed to Korean tradition, seems no better grounded in rural experiences than any other feature of South Korea's capitalism. Such concentration of power can be as well represented, and was represented by the youngest subordinates, as indicative of the pervasive military influence in contemporary South Korean society. Strategies for maintaining ostensible harmony and cooperation, rather than simply learned in village settings, appear as much a result of the adoption by the new middle class of a more agency-centered view of human relationships as a consequence of Confucian ideals. That agency-centered view was encouraged in no small measure by the efforts of the bourgeoisie to inscribe such artful behavior, as well as acquiescence to the ranking system, through company training, surveillance, periodic doses of company ideology, and symbolic as well as material rewards and punishments. Some of the practices that seemed so different from those in Western societies were similar to those widely reported from Japan. The sino-Korean orthographies provided in the Romanizations show that much of the business vocabulary was taken from that island nation. This major path of transmission, however, explains a small part of present-day South Korean business practices. It cannot explain why these apparently Japanese "survivals" persist and why others continue to be introduced when the state, with considerable public support, has sought to rid South Korea of Japanese cultural influences by blocking imports of Japanese movies, magazines, and newspapers . . More important, Japanese practices were taken up at various periods of Korean history (e.g., zaibatsu organization versus daily calisthenics), and their Foucaultian (1984) genealogies continued in South Korea as the practices were reproduced or altered over the years. In consequence, many of the actions that look Japanese at first glance differ in significant ways from those found in Japan. Pointing to J apanese influences, moreover, cannot explain why some practices were adopted, others significantly modified, and others rejected. The chaebol may look like pre-World War II zaibatsu, for example, but the absence of a member bank to provide funding gave the South Korean state a means of control over these conglomerates not enjoyed by

CONCLUSIONS

235

MITIor other Japanese agencies. The low level of mobility between firms also evokes the career trajectories of many Japanese whitecollar workers, but in South Korea lifetime employment was not implicitly guaranteed. The heavy-handed use of nationalism to legitimate capitalist activity resembles past Japanese practices (Yoshino 1968: 23-29), but illicit accumulation does not appear to have ever been as important an issue for the Japanese (Hadley 1970: 15; Gordon 1985: 48). Using the family as a model for the company resembles a Japanese metaphor (Yoshino 1968: 42; Nakane 1970) until weremember that the Korean family has not been as open to the incorporation of nonagnates. Whereas Japanese workers appear to have largely accepted the family metaphor and use it against their employers, in South Korea the lower levels of white-collar workers reject it. South Korean and Japanese subordinates refer to their section chief by the same term, but only South Koreans attach the honorific suffix to indicate, according to the exegesis of Taesong workers, greater social distance. The perquisites of rank and the arrangement of desks looks Japanese (R. Clark 1979: 109-10; Rohlen 1974), but the lack of mobility between blue- and white-collar positions (Hattori 1988: 202; R. Clark 1979: 109) as well as the extent of top-down decision making with its overt coercion and exclusion of white-collar sawon and lower-level managers, contrasts more than conforms with accounts of how these ranks are played out in Japanese companies (Rohlen 1974: 24-28; R. Clark 1979: 126-34; Ouchi 1981; Asian Wall Street journal, Mar. 2, 1987, p. 6). Thus, many of the apparent similarities between Japan and South Korea turn out to be illusions that result from comparing both countries with the United States. Many Japanese and Korean observers point to significant differences between the managerial practices of their two societies (Hayashi 1988; Yoo and Lee 1987; Ch'a 1987). Neither U.S. nor Japanese capitalism should be used to judge the South Korean variety. There is little reason to conclude that the South Korean political economy is particularly unusual or its capitalist system distorted. Every capitalist system, and for that matter, every political economy, is a unique human creation that is socially constructed and culturally informed. One of the more productive of Marx's insights, found most clearly in his oft-quoted discussion of commodity fetishism (Marx 1977 [orig. 1867]: 163-77), was his deconstruction of capitalist concepts to show that capitalism was an

CONCLUSIONS

artificial or humanly made rather than a natural system-even if recent changes in Eastern Europe indicate that the alternatives erected in his name appear to have been no less contrived.

Classes Since allegedly autonomous political-economic and cultural systems, either singly or in combination, cannot adequately explain the capitalist practices of white-collar personnel at Taesong, I have tried to examine the processes whereby the bourgeoisie and their newmiddle-class subordinates contributed to the making and remaking of capitalism. By choosing to expand manufacturing through private rather than state enterprises, and by preferring foreign loans rather than foreign firms as sources of capital, South Korean state officials of the past few decades empowered the indigenous bourgeoisie and their new-middle-class subordinates. These local elites thereby became primary agents as well as beneficiaries of the nation's capitalist transformation. Furthering their common interests led them actively to mediate that transformation rather than simply acquiesce in Western capitalism or state direction. Both classes resisted, reinterpreted, and even sought to alter the conditions under which they made their choices, evading state regulations when possible, answering local criticism, and contesting the American capitalist practices and forms of symbolic domination that disadvantaged _them in international commerce. The bourgeoisie and the new middle class, however, also have opposing interests, and the playing out of their contests has been important to the genealogies of many current business practices. Just as the state has not always acceded to American demands, and just as the bourgeoisie have dodged as well as submitted to state directives, so the new middle class cannot be reduced to mere tools of the bourgeoisie. The extensive control mechanisms, surveillance techniques, and ideological themes used at the conglomerates were contingent on the resistance, compliance, and countermoves chosen by the new middle class. The conflict between the bourgeoisie and their white-collar employees, not to mention the widespread criticism of the chaebol by other middle-class fractions and the proletariat, give further reason to doubt that these institutions and their practices of control have persisted because of their own inertia or can otherwise be explained by a stable social structure and unchallenged culture self-reproduced through socialization and enculturation.

CONCLUSIONS

237

Neither the bourgeoisie nor their subordinates were without successes in their ongoing contest. Though younger workers and managers resisted the family metaphor that the bourgeoisie sought to impose, most managers over 40 appeared to find it an appealing model by which to justify their control. Perhaps, as Willis (r98r: 123) and Abercrombie, Hill, and Turner (r98o) have argued, ideology ironically served the interests of the dominant by mystifying them. Subordinates, on the other hand, also occasionally won skirmishes and eventually brought about the reformulation of some practices, but their successes did not become apparent until my fieldwork ended.2

Free Riders, Cultural Dopes, and Rational Fools The new-middle-class workers and younger managers at Taesong did not bring about changes through violence, strikes, mass demonstrations, or other dramatically confrontational forms of collective action (as far as I know), though press reports about job interviews indicated that the bourgeoisie worried about the possibility of an alliance between their white-~ollar workers and factory employees.3 Yet office personnel were not free riders, remaining inactive while the laboring class did the work of bringing about changes from which they too would benefit. Instead, their individual actions collectively contributed to political-economic and cultural alterations. They withheld cooperation by remaining silent or slipping out for a smoke at weekly managers' meetings, voiced complaints to a visiting American researcher and to each other for mutual encouragement, asked that gendered differences in forms of address be eliminated, avoided after-hours entertainment by pleading for the evening off to participate in a father's ancestor rite, extolled the advantages of pojaegi over briefcases, called younger subordinates hyong, made light of a 2 The ability of the middle class to bring about these changes was probably aided by the nature of their work. The shift from labor-intensive to knowledge-intensive industries may well have heightened the importance of new-middle-class cooperation in furthering South Korea's capitalist industrialization. Unlike the physical labor of the proletariat, the mental labor of white-collar workers was more difficult to coerce overtly (Gross and Etzioni 1985: no). 3 No one volunteered the information that they joined the street demonstrations, and I did not ask. The employees I knew had few opportunities to participate, except perhaps on weekends. On the day of one of the largest demonstrations, however, most employees were sent home early so that they could avoid the congestion on the streets that made rush-hour travel even more difficult than usual.

CONCLUSIONS

quality-circle report, asked for reassignment to another section, or just quit. These less confrontational acts of protest were not private, and thus Taesong workers who wished to maintain their alliances with their office mates by offering them support were deterred from freeriding. Workers spent more waking hours interacting with each other than with their families, and it was hard to hide from workmates whether or not one ate posint'ang, laughed heartily at nationalistic jokes, criticized American trade demands and managerial domination, or sympathized with blue-collar workers. In our conversations about the day-to-day choices and strategies through which the new middle class contributed to the creation and re-creation of the cultural practices of South Korean capitalism, the pursuit of material interests often emerged in their explanations. Thus, their testimony does not appear to contradict a major contention of rational choice theory: individuals act to advance their own interests. More difficult to reconcile with their words and actions, however, are the essentialist dichotomization between idealism and materialism and the structural determinism that rational choice theory shares with most attempts to comprehend managerial methods (Callinicos 1988: esp. 200; cf. Little 1991b; Elster 1986). Instead, material choices and actions at Taesong were predicated on a variety of contingent and shifting cultural understandings and social relationships that were also contingent and shifting. In the remaining paragraphs, I will try to draw out the implications of these choices for bypassing the idealist-materialist and structure-agency dichotomies. South Korean capitalism has been constructed and reconstructed through contests over symbolic and material resources. The ownermanagers of Taesong were attempting to pursue their material interests by advancing versions of Korean culture that served their own purposes and combated other versions that informed resistance. Rather than deny the extent of overt control, for example, they chose to acknowledge and justify it by drawing upon common but partial knowledge of how a father controls his sons. To make the fathermanager metaphor more appealing, they presented their control as though it were in the best interests of subordinates (i.e., training) and augmented stern discipline with generous fringe benefits. They also sought to present their enterprise as having been created and maintained for the benefit of the nation rather than for their own

CONCLUSIONS

239

gain. By these strategies they implicitly proposed a moral duty owed by the white-collar workers and claimed the latter's wholehearted support. Subordinates, however, were not entirely taken in by this strategy. They often advanced different cultural understandings to formulate defenses of their own. Against the bourgeois declaration that the chaebol was a family, they emphasized family obligations of their own and portrayed "paternalistic" managerial practices as militaristic. And in response to the father-knows-best avowals of their superiors, younger managers claimed that the ideas of subordinates could be used to advance the whole company's welfare. Other examples of how the use of cultural constructions and the pursuit of material interests were brought into congrjlity could be seen in other assertions of moral claims. Against Americans, with their own allegations of fairness based on level playing fields, playing by the same rules, or abiding by contracts, the new middle class pointed to the morality of injong and to disparities in world political and economic power. And the new middle class expressed sympathy for laborers and acknowledged the validity of their grievances as long as it appeared that granting concessions to blue-collar workers would, on balance, help more than harm their own material welfare. Precisely because moral claims and metaphors were weapons in the struggle to advance interests, cultural interpretations were contested. The relative importance attached to authority vis-a-vis reciprocity in the father-son relationship, the relevance of Confucianism to modern South Korean society, and the significance of level playing fields and respective sizes of players-all of these illustrate how competition over ideas has economic implications (Roseberry 1989: 26). Instead of choices between material incentives and culturally determined moral commitments, choices had to be made between alternative actions equally saturated with material consequences and cultural meanings. I do not mean to imply a cynical view of morality. Many Americans are genuinely committed to the view that trading partners ought to observe the same rules and honor contracts, and I have no reason to suspect that Taesong personnel were any less committed to injong. I myself am committed to the view that my research advances understanding, but others who have different interests can formulate alternative interpretations and find them equally compelling. The

CONCLUSIONS

self-interest and partiality, not falsity, of moral claims explains why they evoke commitment. Many have noted that culture mediates the perception of interests and informs the strategies for their pursuit (Bloch 1983: 135-36). Too often, however, this point leads only to a discussion of hegemony, false consciousness, and cultural knowledge that allegedly reveals or obscures "true" interests. Such formulations of the ideal-material issue, however, cannot account for the relationship of culture to the pursuit of material welfare among the new middle class. As members of this class, Taesong workers occupied a variety of often interestconflicting or contradictory positions, each of which was advanced by a variety of capitals (economistic, social, and cultural) (Bourdieu 1977= 62; 1990: rro-rr). Their life chances were tied to, inter alia, those of their family, company, division, chaebol, class, nation, and world. Any calculus they derived for preferring one of these identities or forms of capital over another was itself a cultural construct informed by expectations about the future responses of others (Bourdieu 1977: 4-8), other future uncertainties (Callinicos 1988: 101), perceptions of risk (Douglas and Wildavsky 1982), the legitimacy of ownership claims (Reeve 1986), the stability of international alliances, and culturally constructed principles of accounting. These were not just matters of individual deliberation, as the conversations and debates at Taesong revealed. Taesong personnel were inundated with alternative ways of construing their interests, even the best of which were partial and could not be objectively verified. Ultimately, the new middle class choose not between their culture values and material welfare but between various interests, capitals, and alliances. As Alex Callinicos (1988: 156, 205) has observed, individuals pursue interests alone and as members of families, classes, nations, companies, and other collective agents formed by those who share a common interest. These multiple identities create alternatives from which rational choices must be made. As perceptions change, so do choices. There does not appear to be any consistent rank ordering of preferences for social identities, in contrast to the segmentary lineage system portrayed for sub-Saharan African societies by Evans-Pritchard (1940: 142-50). Instead, alliances are fickle and identities shift from decade to decade, year to year, day to day, and perhaps even moment to moment, as new experiences prompt reconsiderations. Only five years elapsed between the Soviet Union's destruction of a South Korean airliner and South

CONCLUSIONS

Korean spectators' support of the Soviet Union's basketball team when it played against the United States at the Seoul Olympics. The verbal support the new middle class gave to blue-collar wage demands evaporated within days of several strikes. And the worker who not only stopped but reversed his criticism of Taesong's top-down management system when a co-worker contradicted him revealed just how mercurial such choices can be.4 Neither the bourgeoisie nor the members of the new middle class were prisoners who had to choose from among alternatives they had been handed. Instead, they considered different possibilities, devised new options, and even tried to alter the conditions under which they made their choices. The structural constraints of the world system were not entirely of their own choosing, but they were not prevented from trying to reformulate their corner of it by challenging Americans, state officials, or their own superiors. A conceptualization of their rational choices must leave room for choosing not only between alternative actions but also between alternative evaluations of possible actions in terms of the often contradictory interests of their multiple identities. Otherwise "choices" would be so determined that the pursuit of material interest would entail calculations rather than decisions-similar to the operations of programmed computers-by "rational fools" (Sen 1982) who differ from "cultural dopes" only in the nature of their alleged motivations.5 Taesong personnel have shown how human beings can be far more thoughtful agents who actively and deliberately engage in the making and remaking of cultural and political-economic structures. 4 And if the Philippines had not taken a major step toward democracy a short while earlier, if the South Korean police had not killed two students in early 1987, and if the presidency had not been up for grabs, perhaps the middle classes would not have joined the student demonstrators in the spring of 1987. 5 Similarities between such terms and Parsonian notions of social structure have recently been recognized by Giddens (1990). The prisoners' dilemma favored by so many rational choice theorists (e.g., Little 1991a: 55-57) is patterned upon the most constraining of circumstances, the prisoners being allowed to choose only from among a very narrow range of alternatives. The actions of Taesong employees, on the other hand, resemble plea bargaining, demands to see a lawyer, and challenges to the legality of the methods by which the evidence against them had been obtained.

Reference Matter

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Romanizations

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Index

In this Index an "f" after a page number indicates a separate reference on the next page, and an "ff" indicates separate references on the next two pages. A continuous discussion over two or more pages is indicated by a span of page numbers, e.g., "pp. 57-58." Passim is used for a cluster of references in close but not consecutive sequence. Abbeglen, James G., 2 Academics, 9, 14n, 21, 47, 83, 97, 171, 214, 220. See also Teachers Accounting, 90, 93-94, 124-29 passim, 240 Adoption, 91n Africa, 240 After hours, 11-12, 121, 150, 161, 17278,216,2I8-I9,222,227;avoidance of events, 174, 231, 237 Age, 17, 21, 28f, 31f, 41, 135, 140, 147, 228n; as basis of hierarchy, 23, 30-38 passim, 45,46-47,171-72,224 Agency, see Structure and agency Agency for International Development, 72 Aid, 71-72 Allgeier, Peter F., 74n Althusser, Louis, 106f Alumni associations, 44, 46-47, 51 America, see United States Americans, experiences with, 6, n, 170, 183-85, 187-91 Amsden, Alice, 62, 85n, 102n Ancestor rites, 26, 32f, 48, 50, 208 Army, see Military Asian Wall Street journal, 66 Aston School, 193n Auditing, 127ff Authority, see Ideology; Legitimacy Automobiles, 3, 13,167-68, 190 Balance of trade, 6o, 74, 105, 182££ Ballads, 40

Banks, 6on, 63, 70, 129, 234. See also Loans Base pay, 145, 147ff Beer, 114 Bendix, Reinhard, 2, 109 Birnbaum, Philip, 194n Board of directors, 129-30 Bonuses, 148, 150 Bourdieu, Pierre, 13, 41n, 102, 192 Bourgeoisie, see Class Brandt, Vincent S. R., 29, 30-31, 34f, 38n,40,177 Brazil, 73 Budgets, 133 Bureaucratic-authoritarianism, 73 Calisthenics, 231 Callinicos, Alex, 13, 240 Card playing, 185, 187, 195 Cartels, 64. See also Monopoly Catholics, 54n Chaebol, local perceptions of, 47, 54, 81-88, 10of, 195-201 Chain of command, 31, 48J Chang Chisang, 81 "Chewing," 216 Child rearing, 25, 116-17, n8-19. See also Family China, 36, 61, 73, 181-82 Cho Dong-Il, 40 Cho Oh-Kon, 40 Ch'oe Chongp'yo, 81 Ch'oe Kilsong, 35, 35n Ch'onghoeggun, 125, 132-33

INDEX

Choson dynasty, zon, 36, 68, n3, 12728 Chason ilbo, 8z, 86, 88, m4, 23m Christie, Donald Earl, 215, 217 Christmas cards, 170 Chun Doo Hwan, son, 66, 73, 136, 193, 229; local perceptions of, m, ID5, 192-95; American support of, 73, 81, 179. See also State Chun Kyung-Soo, 34, 38n Chung Kae H., 2 Cigarette imports, 66, 75, 78, r81 Clark, Rodney, z, 145 Class, 1-2, 3, 9, 14f, 21,81-88,96-99 passim, 230, 236-40 passim; in rural Korea, 22, 35-42 passim, 50, 71, zo8. See also Laborers Clifford, James, 54 Coffee, 7f, n5, 150,196, 213, zzo College, see Universities Colonial period, 35f, 39, 42, 68-yo, 79-80, 107, nzf, zo6, 230 Cornaro££, Jean, 13 Commander in chief, 96, 103, 225 Commodity fetishism, 235 Communication, direction of, 45, 175, 213 Communism, 39, yo, y8-8o, 182 Commuting, 205 Company, social construction of, 15 Comparative advantage, 57, 59, 61, 65, 75,81,122 Comparative management, 2 Comprador capitalists, So Conflict, expression of, 6, 9, zyff, 32f, 42,203,213-16,219,220-22.See also Confrontation; Social relationships, cultivation of Confrontation, 27f, 187, 214-15, 237 Confucianism, 19, 23, 26, 30, 36f, 41, 46, nz; in modern organizations, 19, 57,108-9,225,239 Congress (United States), 74, 182 Constructions, 1-2, 15, 75f, 84, 97, 140, 232-36 passim, 240; of cultural mean· ings, 13, n6-zo, 136,225, 233-36; of statistical data, s6n, 63n, 75-?6, 8?, 90,1z6-z8,15o,zo4n Contingency theory, 193n Contracts, 129n, 187,--92, 233 Cooperation, n6, n7n, 143-44. See also Harmony Corporate culture, 2

Coup d'etat, 59, 71,73 Crozier, Michel, z Cultural meanings, see under Construe· tions Cultural Nationalism, y8-8o, 109-ro Cultural relativism, 202 Cumings, Bruce, 45n, 70,74 Curb market, 64, 84, 89 Daylight savings time, zo6-7 Deal, Terrence E., z Debt, see Loans Deception, 27-28, 125-33 passim, 203, 215-16. See also Conflict, expression of Decision making, 9, 16, 24, 38, 49, 130, 210-20,233 Degh, Linda, zn Democracy, 38, 73, 213, 231 Democratic Party (United States), 182 Demonstrations, 55, 61, no, 194-95, zor, 207, 237n; by students, 45, 47, sr, J40, 199 Dependency,s8,66,?z,73,81,I8o Desks, 7, 153, r63-65, 166-67 Determinism, r9f, 23, 43n, 52, 67, m6, 238. See also Structure and agency Discursive consciousness, 27 Dismissal, n6, 152-53, 203 Dissident nationalism, 79-80 Dividends, 90-94 passim Dix, Griffin, 29, 41, n4n Document routing, 163 Doxa, 41,161 Dredge, C. Paul, n3n Drinking, see After hours Driving, see Automobiles Durkheim, Emile, 97 Dutch treats, 187 Eckert, Carter, J ., 69 Economic concentration, 63, 85-86, 102-3,110,198-99 Economics, 57-61,97, 102-3, 180 Economies of scale, 102-3 Economistic capital, 34f, 125 Education, 5, 33f, 36, 65,137,155,182, 188; employees' prior, n, ro7n, 135, 137ff, 145n, 180, zo8, 213. See also Schools; Universities Egalitarianism, zo, 34, 38-42, 142, 177, 215 Eikerneier, Dieter, 40

INDEX Employment, see Hiring English language, 137, r63, r84-85, r89, 203, 2nf; learning, 6, 12, 175, 204, 2r7f; publications, 82-83, 86, rorn, II5, r6r Entertainment, 7, 170,176,177-78, r85, 191. See also After hours Essentialism, 2. See also Idealism and materialism Ethics, see Morality Ethnography, 3, I2-I?, 2off, 36f, 39, 42, 43-44, 214-15 Europe, Eastern, trade with, r8rn Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 240 Examinations, 45, 135-40 passim, 145f Exchange rates, 6o, 64, 72, 75, ro5-6, r8r Experience, value ascribed to, 5, 140, ISI-52 Exploitation, 86f, 203-4 Exports, 54££, 8r, rn, 139, r8r-83, 197f, 2or; state promotion of, 59, 63, 72; loans for financing, roo, 105 False consciousness, 240 Family, 9, 23-30, 51-52, 177, 207, 209ro, 235, 238; as metaphor, 23, n6-2r, 2I0,2r6,223-25,228,238-39·See also Kinship group Far Eastern Economic Review, 127, r8rn,230 Father, see Family Federation of Korean Industries, 56n, 99,IOI,I04,215,2I7 Ferguson, Keith, r8rn Filial piety, 24-29, 45 Financial control, 124-28, I94· See also Banks Financial statements, 93-94, 124-28 passim Fines, 99 Firing, n6, 152-53, 203 Fischer, Michael M. ]., 13, r8, 43 FKI, see Federation of Korean Industries Folk art, n3-14 Folk drama, 4off Folklore, see Oral literature; Tradition Folklore Day, II4 Folksongs, 40 Folktales, 26, 40, 46 Formality, ro8n, 157, 159, 177 Fortune, 4, 5n, 75, 126-27 Foucault, Michel, 13, r63, 233

France, 220 Free riders, 237-38 Fringe benefits, 91, I20-2I, I 50 Funerals, 22, 26,39£, n3, 174, r85, 22r Geertz, Clifford, r6-r7, 54 Genealogy, 90-91, 93 Genealogy (Foucoultian), 45n, 69, 78, 107 General Motors (GM), ro3, 109 Gerontocracy, 31 Giddens, Anthony, 13, 27, 43n, 49, 54, 241n Gifts, 7, 120-21, 131, 134, 136,170, 176, 191,220f Gill, Stephen, 13, 54 Gilpin, Robert, 13, 54 Gini ratio, 87 Goffman, Erving, 125 Goodenough, Ward H., 6 Goodwill, 192 Gordon, Andrew, 209 Go......:stop, r85, 195 Government, see State Gramsci, Antonio, ro6 Great East Asian C(}-prosperity Sphere, 69, 75,79 Gross Domestic Product, 55-56 Gross National Product, 54, 55-56, 56n, 75-?6, 8rf, 85, 103, rsr, I83 Haggard, Stephan, 54n, 62, 72 Hahoe Iltong, 31, 33, 38, 41-42, 4rn Hair length, 226 Hardacre, Helen, 123 Harmony, 23, 30, 42, 44, ro8-9, II5-2I, 143-44,150,220-22 Hattori Tamio, 84 Henderson, Gregory, 70 Hermeneutic circle, 127 Hickson, D.]., 2 Hierarchy, see Rank; Age, as basis of hierarchy Hiring, 135-40 Hobbies, 206 Ilubae,46-47,I69,23I Husser!, Edmund, 4rn Idealism and materialism, r, 2, 13, 76, n5-r6, 223, 238-4r. See also Symbolic capital; Constructions, of statistical data; Morality, and interests

272

INDEX

240 Ideological state apparatuses, 4S,. I06 Ideology, 43-52 passim, 73, 97, 97-I23, 151, 200-201, 211-12, 225, 237. See also Confucianism Illicit wealth, So, S3f, n2, I97 Imports, 59, 64, 6S, ?I, III, II?, IS2f Impression management, IO Income of owner-managers, S7, 909I, 94· See also Profits Individualism, IS? Industrial concentration, see Economic concentration Inequality, economic, So, S7, I9S, 2oo20I Inflation, 94 Informality, I75-76, I77 Information security, roSn, II?-IS Inheritance, 26 Injong, I3, IS?-I92 Inner versus outer, see Conflict, expression of; Deception Intellectuals, 54n, 96-97. See also Academics Interest rates, 63n, 84 Interests, 76, 97-98, 2n, 23S, 240; shared, 3, 24, 26ff, I09-IO, II2, ns-r?, 2ro; opposing, 6, 14f, 25f, 29, 95-96,ro6,rro-rr,I20,r97,2IO, 224,240 International trade, see Trade, international Interviews, Ior-s, r3S-39, 140 Japan,4?,4Sn,62,6?,II2-I3,I23,I33, 209-10, 235; business practices in, 2n, 5, 4S, 70, 107, 139f, 144, 164, 206, 215,224,231, 234-35; as trading partner, 6r, 72, ros, rS2; local perceptions of, 6I, rS2, rS4, 206; zaibatsu of, 69, ror, 234; language of, 69, IOI, I3?,ISI,rS4,204,234 Japanese Colonial Period, see Colonial period Job interviews, r3S-39, I40, 237 Job transfers, 153-55, 22Sn, 237 Johnson, Chalmers, 62 Joint ventures, 4Sn, S9, 129, rSs, r8S-S9 Jokes, ro, 6r, 195 Judeo-Christianity, 24-25, 26 June 29 declaration, 201, 229f

Kang Cholgyu, Sr Kang Ship-pya, 27 Kendall, Laurel, 22, I20n, 205n Kennedy, Allen A., 2 KimChoongSoon,2 Kim Dae Jung, S6, 136 Kim Joo Hee, 224n Kim Kwang Chung, 2 Kim Shin, 2 Kim Taik-Kyoo, 31, 33, 4rn Kinship, as metaphor, 23n. See also Family, as metaphor Kinship group, 30-33, 34, n9n; control of chaebol by, S4-85, 90-91, 9rf, IOI-2, I99 Kinship terms, 31, nS, 224-25,237 Knowledgeability, 43, 129n Kondo, Dorinne K., 107, 210 Koo Hagen, S3 Kopytoff, Igor, 57n Korea Herald (Seoul), S6 Korean Association of Business Administration, 2 Korean War, 39, 71, 74 Kukje conglomerate, 64, 99 Kwangju, 73, 136 Kyongyonghak yon'gu, 2 Laborers, 35-36, 107n, r7S, 237. See also Wages Labor laws, I5I Land ownership, 26, 2S, 34-39 passim, So, S3f, SS, 127ff, 233; reform of, 22, 36,?1,99 Lapel pin, 7, 131 Latin America, 3, 62 Law, David, 13,54 Lee Du-Hyun, 4of Lee Hak Chong, 2, I2I Lee Kwang-Kyu, 24, 52 Legitimacy, 24-26,34-42, 45, 75, S3, 99, ro6; of South Korean state, 50, 62, So, S3, 105. See also Ideology Leverrier, Roger, 220 Libya, 66 Lineages, 30-33, 34, n9n Literature, 21, 24, 55, S7-S8, I88. See also Oral literature Loans, 32, 63f, 69, 72, S4, 99-Ioo,

INDEX

104-5, r83, 236; state guarantees of, s8n, 59, 63; to chaebol, 64, 83f, 94, 99-100, 105, 128f Local and international, r-2, 13, r8, 66-75, r8o-9r. See also Political economy, local perceptions of Loyalty, 132 Luedde-Neurath, Richard, 62 Lunch appointments, 169-70 McGinn, Noel F., 45n McGregor, Douglas, r6r McNamara, Dennis, 69 Mal, 65 Management by Objectives, 133 Managerial positions, monopoly of, 84-85,90-9I,92-93,IOI-2,199 Managers, older and younger, defined, I7 Managers, professional, 95, 233 Manchuria, 39, rr3 Marcus, George E., r3, 17,43 Markets, 57-6r, 68, 75, 90, 123. See also Trade, international Marriage, 46n, 74, rr9-20, 221 Marx, Karl, 97, 235 Marxism, 47, 54n, rsz, r8o Masked dance-dramas, 40, 42 Maturity, 29, 217 M.B.A. degree, 4, 146 Meaning, see Constructions, of cultural meanings Media, 42f, 64, 73f, 77n, r8o-8r, 2or, 204; state control of, so-sr, 54n, 65-66, ro6, 229. See also Newspapers Memos, r84, 226 Metaphor, 23n, 97, II5-20, 210, 2I6, 223-28, 238-39 Michell, Tony, 2on Middle class, see Class Military, 42, 44, 48-49, 68-7r, 135, 138, 158, 232; practices at chaebol, rr7, I4I-42,I67,223,225-28,230.See also Chun Doo Hwan; Park Chung Hee Ministry of Education, 49n, 137 Ministry of Finance, 66, 84, 90 Ministry of Labor, I36, I50-5J, 204 Misrecognition, 40. See also Morality, and interests MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry), 235

273

Monopoly, 66, 88, roo, ro2, rro, 123, 137, r58. See also Economic concentration; Managerial positions, monopoly of Moon Chung-in, 54n, 62, 72 Morality, 46, 74, 83, 98, r8o, 222f, 233; and interests, 14, 29, r82-83, 197-92 passim, 2oo-2or, 209, 217, 219, 223, 228, 238-40; and control724-29, 34, 36,45,122-23,238-39 Morgan, Gareth, 2 Morishima, Michio, 2 Moskowitz, Karl, 215 Movie theaters, 50-51 Multinational corporations, 3, 62, 67, 236 Nakane Chie, 2 Nash, June, 2 National anthem, rrr, 204 National Assembly, 82, 84, 229f National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), I4n Nationalism, 54, 58, 69, 75-8r, ro8-r5, r22,r85-87,235,238 Near, Janet, 2 Nepotism, see Managerial positions, monopoly of New middle class, see Class Newspapers, 50-51, 77n, 96, 135-36, rs8, 204; editorials about chaebol, 55, 8r-88 passim, 99f, ro2, 197-98, 230; advertisements in, 64, 135f, 139; language of, 78, 95, 125n, r83; reports in,82,86-87,9I,IOO-I06,r29-32 passim, 204, 23rf. See also Media New Village Movement, rr2 New Year's Day, rr4, rr8 North Korea, rs, 78 O'Donnell, Guillermo, 73 Office of Coordination and Planning, 109, rr6, 153 Official nationalism, 79-80 Official records, 26n, 84, 127-29. See also Financial statements Older managers, defined, 17 Olympics, r4n, r86, 206, 228 Open hiring, 136 Oral literature, 7, ro, 2r, 26, 4off, 46, 6r,I89-90,195,2I6,2I8 Organization theory, 2

274

INDEX

Ouchi, William G., 2, I6I Ownership claims, 240; to chaebol, IS, 83f, 87f, 90, IOI-2, 127f, I3I, I99, 230. See also Land ownership Pack, Howard, 62 Pan Ocean Company, 95, 97 Parental control, 22, 24-29. See also Family Parent company, I89, I97 Parents' Day, I2I Park Chung Hee, 47, ?I, 72-73, 8of, I36, I85, I95, 2I3; economic policies of, 59,62-63, ?I-73, 99· See also State Parsons, Talcott, 2, 24In Partial truths, I9, 24, 29f, 53-54· s6n, I20, I77, 2I6, 228 Parties, see After hours Parties, political, I82, 229 Peale, Norman Vincent, I6I Personnel evaluation, I45, 222, 223n Personnel management, I34-55 Philippines, 24m Philosophy, 3, 98, I27. See also Idealism and materialism; Structure and Agency Photographs, I?, II, 66, IIIf, II3, I93 Planning, IO?, I33-34 Pojaegi, n4, I85 Police, 5I, ?I, 24In Political economy, local perceptions of, 47,54,65,8I-88,IOO,I79-20I Political parties, I82, 229 Political stability, I05, I93 f Posint'ang, I86, 238 Postmodernism, 3, I3 Practical consciousness, 27, 38, I77 Press, see Media Prisoner's dilemma, 24In Professional managers, 96, 233 Profits, 2, 6, 57, 9I-95, I9I, 233 Promotion, 96-97, II6, I44-47, I?I, 228n Protectionism, II?, I82f Proverb, 7, I89-90, 218 Pseudonyms, I?, 87, I27 Pugh, D. S., 2 Puppet play, 40 P'yongyang, I8I Quality circle, 218 Quining, see Resignation

Rabinow, Paul, II Rank, 6, I2, 44-49 passim, I44-47, I 5758, I66-76 passim, 225, 227-28. See also Age, as basis of hierarchy Rate of return, w Rational choice theory, 3, 57, 98, 238-4I Real estate, see Land ownership Reassignment, see Job transfers Reciprocity, 25-26, 39, 222, 239 Recruit, I35, I47, ISO Recruitment, see Hiring Regional discrimination, I36, 22I Religion, 4I, so, I33n, I77· See also Ancestor rites; Confucianism Resignation, I 53-55, I99, 2I9 Resistance, 2, I3, 43, 49, 6I, 75, 236; by employees, 6, w8n, I85, 208, 2I5, 2I8-I9, 223-28, 23I, 236-37; in rural Korea, 20, 24-33 passim, 38 Retirement, I52n Rhee Syngman, 59, ?I Ricardo, David, 58 Rights, 25f, I87-92. See also Ownership claims Roh Tae Woo, 229f Rohlen, Thomas P., 2, IO?, qo, I64 Rorty, Richard, I3 Rostow, Walter, I8o Royalties, I2In Rural Korea, I9-42, 50-51, I2on, I33n, I34n, I76-77, I86, 2I4f, 222; employees' knowledge of, 2I, 208. See also Twisongdwi Run, Richard, II4n Salaries, I37, I39, I45, I47-52, 200, 203, 205n, 224. See also Wages Sales, 4, 85, 9I, 95, I90-9I, I92 Save-the-company corps, 86 Schools, II, 42-48 passim, 208. See also Education; Universities Scolding, I 57, I6o, I62, I97n, 218 Scon, James C., 216 Seating arrangements, u, 48-49, I57s8,I6?-68,I69,I76 Security, of information, I08, II?-I8 Self-control training, IO?, I42, 2I3 Sen, Amartya, I3 Shamanism, so, I77 Shin Yoo Keun, 2, 23, I34n Similitudes, 234 Sincerity, I2I, I23

INDEX

Small and medium-sized companies, 64, 85, 107, IIO, 197f Smith, Adam, 58 Smith, Robert]., 2 Smith, Thomas C., 209 Smoking, 30, r6o, 214 Social relationships, cultivation of, 79, 192, 209, 220-23, 238. See also Conflict, expressions of Sonbae, 46-47,169, 231 Songs, 26, 78, III, 204 Sorensen, Clark W., 224n Southeast Asia, 3, 190-91 South Korean flag, III Soviet Union, r8rn, 240-41 Stability, political, 105, 193 f State, 37, 6r, 74, 105, 182, 197, 234, 236; general economic intervention, 5870 passim, 192-95,199-200, 233; support of chaebol, So, 83, 89, 94, 102, 104, II2, 194, 199-200, 22930; control of chaebol, 104, 123, 126, 137, rsr, 192-95. See also Chun Doo Hwan; Park Chung Hee Status groups, see Yangban Status negotiation, 12, 31, 49, 171 Steers, Richard M., 2 Stockholders' meetings, 130-33 Stock ownership, 84, 87, 90n, 131. See also Ownership claims, to chaebol Students, 13, 198-99, 200. See also Demonstrations, by students; Education; Schools; Universities Stress, 175 Strikes, 86n, 201, 237 Structure and agency, r, 2, 2n, 13, 43n, 76, 222, 236, 238-41; in theories of political economy, 57, 6r, 67; at Taesong, 107-8,156, 164-65,169,171, 179, 192. See also Determinism Surveillance, 27, 49-50, 51, 68, r63-65 Symbolic capital, 34f, 120,125, 147, 177, 192 Table manners, ro8n Taiwan, 85, 128n, 198 Task assignments, 142,165,212-13 Taxes,6r,65,9I,I04,230 Teachers, 45-46, 47,61-62 Teamwork, 143-44. See also Harmony Technology, 6r, 72f, 8r, 89, ror, 121-22, 201

275

Television, 50-51,73, 77n. See also Media Tenant farming, 35-36 Terms of address, 31, 168-69, 175-76, 224-25, 231-32, 237 Theory X and Theory Y, r6r Theory Z, 161 Thick description, 17 Thompson, E. P., 207-8, 232 "Three lows," 6o Time, concepts of, 207-9. See also Working hours Times (London), 57n Titles, 144. See also Rank; Terms of address Tonga ilbo, 82, 88, roo, 102, 231 Tonghak Rebellion, 40 Trade, international, 58, 6o, 72, 180-84 passim; with United States, 65-66, 74-75,78, roo, ro5f, r8o-83 passim, 238; with other nations, 69, 75,105, II3, 181-82, r8rn. See also Imports; Exports Tradition, 2, 4, r6, 19, 21, II3-20, 233-36 Training, employee, 107-8, 140-44, 157, I6I-62,I67,I69,203,206n,2I3 Translation, sf, 14-15, r6I, !65, 212, 230 Trousers, II4 Twisongdwi, 7-ro passim, 20-44 passim, 48, 177, r86n, 208 Ungson, Gerardo R., 2 United States, 9, 14n, 67-73 passim, 8r, 230, 232; local perceptions of, 3, 47, 73, 179-91 passim; as trading partner, 5, 65-66,72-78 passim, 82, roo, 105f, III, r8o-83 passim; business practices in,48n,I6I,I87-92,215,217-18,2I9 Universities, 8n, 42, 47, 49n, 74, 136, 138, 198, 225n; and political activism, 45, 47, 51,61-62, 66, 199. See also Education; Schools Urbanization, 20-21, 28, 37-52 passim Urban poor, 86 Utilitarianism, 98 Vietnam, 72 Village compacts, 40 Villages, organization and control of, 33-42

INDEX

Wages, 86-87, 1oof, 103,122, 151,185, 200-201; for labor in rural Korea, 39, 42, 50, 208. See also Comparative advantage; Salaries Wallerstein, Immanuel, 13 Wall posters, 107, n7, 123, 203 Walls, Robert, 21on Weber, Max, 97 Weddings, 46n, 174, 221 Weekly managers' meetings, 156-62, 204,213-14,216-18,226 Westphal, Larry E., 62 Wharton School, 4 Willis, Paul, 98, 237 Wolf, Arthur P., 128n Wolf, Eric, 13 Women, 13, 24, 87n, 12on, 143, 207; office workers, 10-n, 23n, n9-20, 136,145n,168-69,205n,220,227-32 passim

Working hours, 52, 165-66, 183, 20310,2o4n,232 World Bank, 6o, 72 World system, 66-75,180-91, 232f, 241. See also Trade, international Yangban, 22, 29, 34-42 passim, n3 Yi Hogwang, 195 Yi Kiiil, 2 Yim Dawnhee, 7-13 passim, 35, 39f, 128n, 177, 216n Yim Suk-jay, 40, n9n Yoon Suk Bum, 197n Yoshino, Michael, 2n, 109 Yo T'ongch'an, 220 Younger managers, defined, 17 Yun Heung-gil, 188 Yusin government, 72-73, So, 195 Zaibatsu, 69, 101, 234

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data J anelli, Roger L. Making capitalism : the social and cultural construction of a South Korean conglomerate I Roger L. Janelli with Dawnhee Yim. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o-8047-I609-9 (cl.) :ISBN 0-8047-2524-I (pbk.) I. Corporate culture-Korea (South) 2. Industrial management-Korea (South) 3· Elite (Social sciences)-Korea (South) 4- Middle classes-Korea (South) 5· Capitalism-Korea (South) I. Janelli, Dawnhee Yim. II. Title. HD58.7-J36 I993 305.5'2'095f95-dC20 92-r8093 CIP