Re: Foreign factories in China



Segyehwa: Globalization and Nationalism in Korea

By Hyun Ok Park

Hyun Ok Park is visiting assistant professor in sociology and the
Business School, and a postdoctoral fellow in Korean Studies.
On the Korean peninsula today, globalization is rapidly redefining both
economic relations and nationalism, as South Korean economic
development strategies are transcending national boundaries to North
Korea and beyond.

Koreans who had been scattered across East Asia are returning to a
problematic welcome, constituting 40 percent of "foreign" migrant
workers in the South. These global and transnational features of South
Korean capitalism transcend Korea's five-decade-long national division
and ideological antagonisms, even if the political division between
South and North Korea remains intact. Border-crossing transactions
involving both capital and labor have brought globalization home to
Korea, while transforming earlier layers of ideological nationalism
into ethnicity-based nationalism. The Korean experience not only
expresses various courses and limits of globalized movements of capital
and labor, but also suggests how seemingly borderless economic
relations may beget new forms of nationalism.

Globalization and the Korean diaspora

Two decades after the achievement of vast industrialization through
export-oriented development, South Korea is making still another
"winning" adjustment to the global market and to post-cold war world
politics. This time, South Korea is a transnational investor,
establishing factories and expanding markets abroad. This expansion of
South Korean overseas investment constitutes the first process of
globalization. Before 1987, South Korean capital was strictly
controlled by an authoritarian state; in the 1990s, capital has become
the beneficiary of a democratization process that it did little to
hasten. Militant labor strikes in the late 1980s, labor shortages, and
wage increases have magnified the pressure on Korean capital to invest
abroad. Korean capital has moved labor- intensive processing or
assembling to less developed countries in Asia, the Caribbean, and
Eastern Europe. Korean investments in North America and Europe have
increased for different reasons -- often to bypass protectionist
legislation in attractive markets -- but the effects are the same: for
the first time, the South Korean state no longer retains full control
over the large conglomerates it helped create, and South Korean capital
has become global.

Concomitantly, a growing presence of foreign workers in Korea has
brought globalization home. Capital movement has not created domestic
unemployment; on the contrary, a shortage of labor has become a chronic
problem in the manufacturing sector, especially for small companies
which often act as subcontractors for larger conglomerates. The New
Labor Policy was implemented in 1992 to expand casual hourly employment
and temporary work, widening economic opportunities for married women
and foreign migrant workers. In late 1991, a group of foreign workers
was invited to visit and work in the booming field of housing
construction. According to unofficial estimates, the number of workers
from northeast China, the Philippines, and elsewhere swelled to 160,000
by the summer of 1996. Although this figure represents only six percent
of the manufacturing work force, the numbers are politically
significant, and are, furthermore, likely to continue to grow.

Under the law which limits the employment of foreigners to teach or
learn technology in South Korea, foreign migrant workers are legally
named "industry technician interns," entitled to a maximum two-year
employment period. Despite the legal titles, most foreign migrant
workers are assigned by government agencies to small, labor-intensive
factories involving low-skilled employment in high-risk settings, such
as cutting timber for the paper industry, assembling parts in
electronic companies, handling chemicals in dye factories and shoe
factories, and making clothes in dust-filled rooms.

Since their legal status as interns defines their wages at a level far
lower than those of regular workers, they often leave their original
work sites for different factories. Given that these small factories
suffer from labor shortages, the government looks the other way as
companies hire "illegal" migrant workers. Reflecting this incongruence
of the law and labor market, the number of undocumented migrant workers
in Korea has increased rapidly, comprising more than 75 percent of all
foreign migrant workers. Although labor unions have demanded that
unemployed Koreans should be brought into these jobs, and with better
work conditions and wages, the state and industries recently revealed
plans to invite more foreign workers to ease the labor shortage in
labor-intensive industries where Korea's international competitiveness
is challenged by newly industrializing countries.

Koreans from northeast China comprise roughly 40 percent of South
Korea's "foreign" workforce, and constitute the largest group of the
Korean diaspora who are recently visiting or "returning." They resume
the interrupted itinerary of the Korean transnational migration which
began during Japanese colonial rule (1910 to 1945) under which more
than three million Koreans were conscripted or lured into mines,
construction sites, factories, and agricultural fields in Japan and
other Japanese colonies including Manchuria and Sakhalin. Despite the
liberation of Korea from Japanese rule, half of the Koreans in
northeast China and most Koreans in other areas, including Sakhalin and
Japan, have remained outside the Korean peninsula until recently. The
issue of their return to Korea was excluded from post-war negotiations
between the Americans and the Soviets. The political turmoil in the
south, the rapid change in the north, and the Korean War, discouraged
their return, but even when they attempted to return their requests
were thwarted by their host countries. The predicament of overseas
Koreans in East Asia languished for decades amidst the ideological
showdown between South Korea and North Korea and their patron states.

Beyond the DMZ

Globalization has led to an unspoken reintegration across or beyond
previous ideological borders. While globalization is a world-wide
phenomena, a unique aspect of Korean globalization involves North Korea
as well as the Korean diaspora. Counterpoised to the recent tensions
surrounding North Korea's ambitious nuclear program and recurrent
rumors of North Korean plans to invade the South, South Korean
conglomerates have pursued opportunities in North Korean development
projects with such zeal that the South Korean press have called it the
"North Korea Rush."

Between 1992 and 1994, North Korea adopted a series of new economic
policies with new foreign investment laws and free trade zones in the
Rajin and Sonbon area on the northeast coast along the border with
China and Russia. Setting aside previous competition with the South,
North Korea has instead been pushing cooperation with South Korea,
recently even asking South Korea to initiate an international drive to
lend capital. South Korean investments in North Korea range widely from
textile and electronics factories, to oil pipelines which traverse
North Korea from Siberia to feed South Korea markets, to food
processing factories, to railways and communication systems, to resort
area developments.

Importantly, Korean Americans have helped link South Korean capital and
North Korean labor. Korean Americans travel to North Korea, delivering
first-hand information about families and acting as subcontractors for
South Korean companies. North Korea apparently expects Korean Americans
to invest in its new free economic zones, to connect North Korea with
foreign businesses, and to mediate between North and South Korea. These
mediating roles of Korean Americans differ from those of diasporic
Chinese whose own investments have brought an economic boom to mainland
China's coastal regions. This participation of Korean Americans in the
North Korean economy differs from the previous activity of Korean
Japanese who dominated foreign investment in North Korea, but
concentrated in agriculture. Reflecting this trend, North Korea has
recently committed itself to working on economic projects with Korean
Americans, instead of the previous emphasis on politics. As a first
step toward establishing an economic relationship with the United
States, North Korea agreed to exchange consular-level liaison offices
in Pyongyang and Washington.

A new national community

These new relationships among the two Koreas and the Korean diaspora
reconfigure nationalism in South Korea. The previous anti-communist,
anti-North Korean nationalism(1) consolidated for the last four decades
has begun to be replaced with a new language of nationalism, segyehwa.
Although segyehwa is the official term for "globalization," which in
the U.S. denotes internationalization of economic relations, this
phrase in Korea evokes strong nationalist sentiment, calling for
national unity in order to survive and gain leadership in the
international community. What segyehwa represents is a
de-territorialized national community among Koreans. It seems similar
to Benedict Anderson's "long- distance nationalism," particularly in
the ways that new technologies of communication and frequent traveling
between home and diverse sub-communities may engender a border-
transcending sense of belonging.(2) Segyehwa policies include new
approaches and policies and new attitudes toward ethnic Koreans living
abroad: kyopo (Koreans residing in foreign countries) is replaced with
tongpo (blood- kin, compatriots).(3) Kyopo signifies their separation
from those who remain in Korea; tongpo as an integrative and inclusive
concept, according to the government authorities, conjures up fraternal
ties and fellow-feeling. To undergird the tongpo concept -- to
establish firm cultural and mental roots in Korea -- the South Korean
state recently announced its plan to install a new "Committee for
Koreans Abroad."

Beneath the surface of this inclusive language in South Korea is,
however, not a homogeneous and borderless identity, but rather the
footing of a hierarchical community which reflects colonial experiences
and postcolonial developments. The political struggles over rights and
citizenship of Korean-speaking visitors -- "returnees" or workers --
reveals a logic of inclusion and exclusion in making a new nation. The
experience of Korean Chinese has undergone a significant shift from
"mutual attraction" to "accusation and humiliation."(4) From 1978 until
1988, only 441 Korean Chinese came to Korea; they were classified as
"defectors" from the Communist bloc, were naturalized as South Korean
citizens, and thereby became entitled to residence, job, and annual
monetary support. With the political liberalization in both China and
South Korea in 1985, thousands of Korean Chinese from northeast China
came to South Korea with different purposes and were met by different
welcomes. Their visits were often prompted by a "Korean dream": they
brought herb medicines to sell, or found work for one or two years.
They then returned to northeast China, where they hoped to establish
firms to trade with South Korea, or open new restaurants, karaoke bars,
or small factories. No longer defectors from communism, they were
treated by South Koreans as "home visitors" [kohyang pangmundan].
Relatives and the public in South Korea welcomed them as long-lost
relatives or blood-kin [tongjok or hyoryuk]. The South Korean
government eased entry procedures, expanding the number of Korean
Chinese visitors from 9,047 in 1988 to 20,925 in 1990.

Ironically, when South Korea and China opened full diplomatic relations
in 1992, this mutual attraction turned sour. The South Korean
government began to crack down on Korean Chinese street peddlers,
accusing them of selling bogus medicines. Many Korean Chinese went into
hiding to avoid arrest, fines, and possible deportation, but above all
to keep their "Korean dream" alive. They were driven to risky,
low-paying work, as any other illegal foreign migrant workers would be.

In the 1990s, the rights of Korean Chinese are no better than those of
other foreign migrant workers; they have been denied residential rights
and they are subject to penalties if they overstay their visas in South
Korea. In vain -- this community asserts its Korean identity. According
to a recent court ruling, Korean Chinese should be accepted as citizens
of South Korea only if they have North Korean citizenship, because the
South Korean Constitution recognizes North Koreans as citizens. After
initial ambivalence, labor unions developed policies to protect the
rights of existing foreign workers, while pressuring the state to limit
the flow of incoming foreign workers. Both labor and Christian
activists have joined foreign migrant workers in protests against the
delayed payment of wages and against abrogations of Korean labor law;
and they have also actively provided consultation on their visa status.

Hierarchical diaspora

The experience of Korean Chinese migrant workers illuminates the
paradoxical character of the intersection of state and nation in Korea.
Although many studies of nationalism focus on how ethnicity constitutes
the principle of membership in a nation-state, the relationship between
ethnicity and national membership in South Korea is multifaceted and
contradictory. As the official discourse of tongpo suggests, membership
in the Korean nation includes all of Korean ethnicity, regardless of
citizenship. In the legal realm, however, ethnicity is hardly the
criterion for rights of residency. Ethnicity suffices for membership in
the national economic community, since both labor and capital use
ethnic ties in expanding opportunities for job and investment. But the
economic community is itself hierarchical and divided.

Such contradictions help to explain the double standard in the new
South Korean labor markets, where Korean Chinese find themselves
classified between "foreign migrant" workers and "domestic" workers.
Compared with other foreign workers, Korean Chinese are more mobile --
since help from relatives and their fluency in Korean make it easier to
find jobs -- but they are as vulnerable as foreign workers to cycles in
the labor market. Since their wages are low and their work conditions
hazardous, Korean Chinese are often inclined to take cash advances
offered by companies as recruitment incentives. However, as most
factory owners retain foreign workers' passports, accepting better jobs
often means trading legal status for material advantage. Most Korean
Chinese migrants are employed in small factories where unions are often
non-existent and labor laws are not observed, are paid less than
domestic workers in the same factories, and are vulnerable to the
delayed payment of wages, with no compensation for work-related
accidents. These conditions delay the realization of their "Korean
dream," which can lead them to stay longer, change jobs more
frequently, and become long-term undocumented migrant workers.

In sharp contrast, as privileged members of the Korean diaspora, Korean
Americans are perhaps closest to realizing tongpo. Previous regulation
had placed Koreans' property rights on hold automatically when they
emigrated. Today Korean Americans may exercise the right to dispose of
land and other property, and to carry these ownership rights to the
U.S. As a part of segyehwa, the South Korean government has promised to
implement a policy to invite Korean Americans into government
departments and other international programs. Korean Americans have
even participated as candidates in national elections -- in the
fifteenth national election in April 1996, six Korean Americans won
seats in the Korean Congress.

Ironically, the expansion of South Korean capitalism is predicated on
transcending its territorial borders, while North Korea's economic
transition is based on investments by entrepreneurs who share language
and ethnicity, but whose national identity has been constructed in
direct opposition to the very existence of North Korea. As these new
economic realities transform labor markets and social relations, the
Korean diaspora is returning to South Korea as migrant workers whose
status is situated between other foreign migrant workers and domestic
workers. Just as the two legacies of colonialism and national partition
shaped the dynamics of nationalism after World War II, these conjoined
courses of globalization dispel the spatial and ideological separation
among two Koreas and the Korean diaspora, and instead engender a new
ethno-national community.

________________________________________

(1)This bifurcated nationalism of two Koreas is traced back to
different experiences of colonialism. For detailed discussion, see Hyun
Ok Park, Transforming Nationalism: From Colonial Conditions to
Globalization (forthcoming).
(2) Benedict Anderson, "The New World Disorder," New Left Review 193
(May/June 1992).
(3)According to one 1996 official report, Koreans abroad numbered 5.23
million, with 37 percent in China, 34 percent in the United States, 13
percent in Japan, 9 percent in the former Soviet territories, and 1.2
percent in Central and South America.
4()Heh-Rahn Park, "Narratives of Migration: From the Formation of
Korean Chinese Nationality in the PRC to the Emergence of Korean
Chinese Migrants in South Korea," Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Washington, 1996.

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