Manufacturing, Childcare and Salarymen: Why Korea is such a fascinating place to study

( Source )

Admin and Introduction

As a young, innocent, fledgling blogger, it’s easy to get anxious about my blog’s popularity, so it helps a great deal that shortly after I write a new post then it’s title is fed into the blogfeeds of the much more popular Pusanweb and Mongdori websites. So of course I’m very grateful to both for directing so many people to my site, and naturally worry about the day when some young punks’ new blogs :) displace mine from their front pages, but hopefully by then I’ll have some regular readers, or at least ones that aren’t actually related to me anyway. But really, I needn’t worry: these days I’m getting more hits from googlers looking for Lee Hyori then from both sites combined. Although admittedly many posts are about her, I still find it bizarre that as I begin to type this on Sunday evening that this post comes up there at about number 90 out of 367,000 webpages.

I mention all this because with some of my eye-catching post titles in the past (here for instance), then readers can be forgiven that I’ve been blatantly choosing them for maximum exposure: after all, what people say they read online is very different to what they actually read. But the truth is more mundane sorry: typing caffeine-fueled posts up late at night has given me an exaggerated impression of how amusing they actually are. Having said that though, this post’s title is not technically a lie but may be just a little misleading, because while hopefully it attracts many Korea studies geeks like myself, because of this post’s similar title then it’s more likely to attract a great deal of Lee Hyori fans too. But even if only 2 out of 100 of them keep reading and learn that…ahem…Korea’s large manufacturing sector and low birth rate are ultimately much more interesting thing’s to study than Lee Hyori’s S-line, then I’ll be happy. After all, I’m shameless man enough to admit that I found the great Korean blog Lost Nomad (now sadly defunct) while searching for, well, pictures of Lee Hyori, and one must spread the good word by any means available.

To be precise, these make Korea interesting because of the ultimately dire economic situation that they place Korea in. I’d argue that Koreans have a window of only about ten years to make radical changes in the economy and society before the Korean economy begins to seriously decline, and potentially even experience a lost decade comparable to Japan (although it’s quite arguable that Korea already has: see here and here), which makes Korea so interesting now, not in a dry academic sense. But having made such a bold assertion, freshman-like in its histrionics, I can only give the most basic of introductions to the issue of manufacturing here though, because even I have limits on what I consider bloggable while I hope to be eventually be able to quickly condense thesis-length issues into short pithy articles for general consumption, I’m not quite there yet. Moreover, I’d be very surprised (but happy) if any Lee Hyori fans ask for more details on it.

Korea’s Disproportionately Large Manufacturing Sector

( Source: Dax Melmer)

In a nutshell, Victor Cha, for one, argued in 2005 that, relative to its per capita income levels and highly skilled labor force, “South Korea is an advanced industrial society still abnormally weighted in the direction of a manufacturing-based economy.” In a similar article the next year, John Lie and Myoungkyu Park went into more detail and mentioned that the Korea’s center of economic gravity is in heavy manufacturing: automobile production, shipbuilding, steel, chemicals, and consumer electronics, although “light industries and self-owned businesses – the 1970s mainstays such as textiles and clothing, footwear, and food processing – still command a significant part of employment, trade and investment.” Yet, as all 3 authors point out, even reunification with North Korea can’t prevent China bridging its technological gap with South Korea, and of course Korea’s comparative advantage in labor costs evaporated a very long time ago.

That Korea produces more oily, greasy, medium-tech machine parts than sexy semiconductors may be suprising to many, but actually only a select few chaebol like Samsung are producing the glittery techno exports that gives Korea its modern image and high growth rate. By comparison, the domestic economy is a stagnant uncompetitive tariff-protected backwater, but even most Korean exporting companies cannot compete technologically with their Japanese counterparts. Consequently, while the source is sitting somewhere in my 10 boxes of old MA notes sorry, Korea has been described as being caught in a pincer grip between cheap Chinese labor and Japanese technological superiority, and it has to evolve into a modern service-based economy (like most developed countries) if it is to survive at all. However, according to Lie and Park, “the current policy mind-set remains substantially the same as the one that relied on export-orientated industrialization to lift Korea out of poverty.” In other words, Korean policymakers still think that the path to economic growth still lies in producing copies of German toasters much more cheaply than the Germans (used to) do themselves, just like in the good old days.

( Source: Dan Orgill)

This claim isn’t subtle enough: according to one of my MA lecturers Christopher Dent, from the ‘70s onward the majority of Korean economic students started getting their MBAs from the US instead of Japan, and are thus raving liberal right-wingers by Korean standards. Moreover, with all the nationalist finger pointing after the Asian Financial Crisis, most Koreans seem to have overlooked that a significant proportion of the neoliberal restructuring conditions, which the Korean government had to accept to receive the IMF bailout package, were in fact included at the behest of these “Young Turks,” who gained prominence 10 years ago when their older colleagues were suitably chastised. And knowing that the upper echelons of the Korean state are relatively right wing and neoliberal (not to be confused with the 386 generation of the Roh Moo Hyun administration), but that the older lower levels, and the public at large, still very much crave the old guaranteed employment, chaebol-led developmentalist state economy of pre-1997 (not unreasonably given that Korea went from having one of the lowest proportions of irregular workers on short-term contracts in the OECD to one of the highest in only 10 years), explains a lot about domestic politics in Korea these days. This tension permeates everything.

( Source: Scribblings of the Metropolitician )

(Edit: But the public’s support for the old days can be overstated. Job-wise sure, but closed markets and expensive, monotonous consumer goods? A lack of Korean ability can mean that incidents like this one above give the impression that the Korean public are universally very reactionary and fiercely economic nationalists, but just as many can see the negative economic effects and are a little tired of interest groups defending their uncompetitive industries: see here for instance. And for the record, I’ve actually been intellectually anti-free trade, at least for a country’s developing industries, ever since I read this 14 years ago, but I can still acknowledge that without it established industries can become monopolistic, and my stomach is a little tired of Korean supermarkets packed full with…well, not much at all, and expensive at that)

This is why the problems with the Korean education system are so pressing: rote learning was fine for figuring out the plastics and electronic components used in German toasters, but this absolutely discourages innovation, and Korean do-as-you’re-told-and-don’t-stand-out societal norms discourage the sort of mavericks who are prepared to thumb their noses at academia and the chaebol salaryman rat race, drop out of college, and develop companies in their garages that will take over the world. Of course, like I’ve said many times before, Koreans are aware of the problems of their education system and are trying to reform it; all the students I see getting on the subway at Busan National University of Education next to my work, for instance, are all carrying English textbooks on teaching that my trainee teacher sister in New Zealand may well be using too, but it’ll be a good 15 years or more for them to be in positions of authority in schools and institutes and begin replacing universal rote-learning with the teaching methods they learned at University, which will be much too late. Regardless though, well before then then the population will have begun shrinking and the economy will have run out of workers, for Korea has one of the lowest birthrates in the world (see here and here for stats).

( Source: Russ Butner)

Korea’s Looming Demographic Crisis

People who’ve read this far may be let down, for any freshman sociology student is aware of similar problems in all developed countries, but the problem is much much more acute and urgent in Korea than in most readers of this blog’s home countries, and, in an ironic repeat of Korea’s miracle development, will soon result in wrenching changes to Korean society.  So, to gently warm you up to my argument that Korea’s “rich country curse” is only superficially similar to that of say, France or New Zealand, please consider the translation of the Korean article that inspired this post in the first place:

( Source: Unknown )

어린이집 원장, 먹다남은 음식으로 급식 ‘물의‘

Kindergarten owner under fire for feeding leftovers to preschoolers  30 August 2007

교사들 “원생들 구토, 설사증세 시달려”…원장 이 모씨 현재 잠적

Teachers say “Students are vomiting and have diarrhea…”. Meanwhile, the owner (X) has gone into hiding.

서울의 한 어린이집 원장이 먹다남은 음식으로 급식을 해왔다는 주장이 제기돼 물의를 빚고 있다. 이 어린이집 교사들은 불량급식으로 아이들이 잦은 복통과 설사에 시달려왔다고 밝혔다. 어린이집 불량급식 파문이 또 불거졌다.

Complaints had been laid by parents against X for feeding students leftovers, brought to their attention by teachers working there. There have been many incidents like this in the past few years, and this has sent ripples throughout Korea.

민주노동당 서울시당은 오늘(30일) 서울 마포구청 앞에서 기자회견을 갖고 관내의 한 어린이집 원장이 먹다 남은 반찬으로 음식을 만들어 몇 달 동안 아이들에게 급식해왔다며 처벌을 요구했다.

On the 30^th of August, the Seoul Branch of the Democratic Labor Party held a press conference and organized a demonstration about this in front of the Mapu-Gu council offices (see the video at original link), which has jurisdiction over the kindergarten. They demanded that the owner receive an appropriate punishment.

민노당과 이 어린이집 교사들은 기자회견에서 이 어린이집 원장 이 모(61)씨가 식단표도 무시한 채 지난 6월 점심식사를 주고 남은 호박나물과 감자볶음을 오후 주먹밥에 섞어 제공했다고 주장했다.

At the press conference, the Democratic Labor Party and the teachers said that X (61) ignored the set schedule for meals, and in June added zucchinis and fried potatoes, leftover from lunch, to the children’s afternoon riceball snacks.

심지어 금요일 점심 때 나온 두부조림을 3일이 지난 뒤인 월요일 국에 섞어 넣어 아이들에게 먹였다고 이들은 밝혔다.

On top of that, X added tofu served on a Friday to the Monday meal, 3 whole days later.

이 때문에 3살 난 김 모 군은 구토와 설사증세에 시달리다 며칠 동안 어린이집에 나오지 못했고 간식으로 나온 미숫가루를 마신 어린이 4명도 고열과 두통에 시달리다 병원치료를 받았다고 주장했다.

Because of this, a 3 year-old boy started vomiting and came down with severe diarrhea, and couldn’t attend the kindergarten for several days. In addition, 4 more students developed high fevers and stomachaches from drinking roast grain tea for a snack, and had to be treated at hospital.

셋째 아이를 이 어린이집에 보냈던 김동희 씨(40)는 “얘기를 들어보니까 너무 황당해서 말이 안 나올 정도였다. 먹인 것 또 먹이고, 애가 아픈데 얘가 그렇게 아픈게 처음이에요. 근데 그게 한 두번이 아니거든요”라고 말했다.

Mrs. Kim Dong Hee (40), who sent her third child to the kindergarten and who also got very sick, said “Once I heard about this I was speechless. My child has never been this sick before, but has been like several times since attending this kindergarten.”

이밖에도 이 어린이집은 규정을 어기고 0세부터 3세까지 아동을 한꺼번에 같은 반에 배치하거나 다니지도 않는 어린이를 서류 상으로 올려놓고 보육 보조금을 허위로 청구했다고 민노당은 주장했다.

Apart from this, this kindergarten also violated a law that children up to three years of age (two in ‘Western’ age) had to be separated from older children, and falsely inflated its rolls to receive more subsidies from the government.

현재 원장 이 모씨는 학부모들에게 ‘어린이집을 폐쇄하니 다른 곳을 알아보라’는 말만 남기고 잠적한 상태다.

For now, before disappearing X locked the doors to the kindergarten, denying access to parents and former teachers, and wrote on a sign they should send their children elsewhere.

하지만 어린이집을 관할하는 마포구청은 내부 고발을 접수하고도 신속하게 현장방문을 하지 않아 음식물 역학조사를 할 시기도 놓친데다 오히려 교사에게 관련 동영상과 녹취자료를 요구했던 것으로 드러나 책임있는 행정처리에 소홀했다는 지적이 제기되고 있다.

Despite everything, even though the Mapo-Gu Council office received an application for the kindergarten to be inspected some time ago, they were not quick enough in responding and are so unable now to check teachers’ and parents’ claims. Rather than taking responsibility, civil servants merely asked for teachers to secretly videotape and voicerecord X preparing and serving the unhygienic food.

(See here if you want to know what the Democratic Labor Party supporting the parents is, and for a great blog about Korean domestic politics in general)

( Source: Christian Bjork )

I found the above article while looking for virtually anything that could display my lefty, feminist credentials more interesting than 4-line articles on teenage prostitution to translate, so it’s admittedly brief, merely a short news report (but they’re getting longer over time, yes?). I concede that to an observer not in Korea it may not be noteworthy at all, for of course these sorts of things can happen in developed countries too: just last week at a kindergarten in Stamford, Connecticut for instance (story and video here). But, while I admit it’s been seven years since I left New Zealand, so I’ve no idea how frequent or how much of a concern incidents are like for parents these back there for instance, I can tell you that the last few years in Korea have seen a number of food scares in general, and especially at large institutions that order food in bulk like schools and kindergartens (see here for instance). Based on that, I strongly suspect that there are less New Zealand parents than Korean ones with sentiments like these:

“Why do I have to choose my sister-in-law, in spite of higher costs and long commuting distance? I can absolutely trust that she won’t provide him with unhygienic instant foods and let him sleep in the dirt.” (Mrs. Nam)

“I’m really wondering what the government does…I am not satisfied with the quality of my son’s nursery, especially because it’s terribly crowded…they let the children watch videos, almost all day…doesn’t the government have to control the service quality?” (Mrs. Ku)

“The most urgent problem is the severe lack of facilities that you can trust. Quality control is an absolute state responsibility.” (Mrs. Ju)

(These quotes are from this simply brilliant journal article on childcare in Korea that I’ve had sitting around for the last 3 years, and which translation I just did inspired me to read it again (and write an essay a post that is over 5000 words and has taken me nearly a &^%$ing week!) You can assume that virtually all the following is from the article or inspired by it).

Legal provisions for virtually everything about childcare in Korea – maternity leave, employer-provided creche facilities, kindergarten inspections…and so on, are very similar to those in developed countries. But despite these, only 7% of Korean children under 3 years of age are in formal childcare, against 40% in Canada for example (admittedly at the opposite extreme), and only 26% of children from 3 years of age to mandatory school age (I’m not certain, but this might be 7 in Korea, not 6), against 90% or more in most OECD countries. Admittedly those statistics are from 2001, an age ago in Korea, but I very much doubt any improvement in percentages since then would be greater than single figures. Clearly then, legislation is not enforced. How and why not?

First, let us dispel the notion that Korea is a developing country that lacks an inadequate civil service. My weekly read The Economist magazine notwithstanding, which is great in general but still strangely myopic about East Asian economic history, 90% of books and journal articles about Korean economics acknowledge that Korea’s strong, interventionist state played a huge role in its miraculous economic development. Indeed, by coincidence my weekly reading for my MA this week means I have five articles sitting on my desk to throw supporting quotes at you from if you like. Yet not being a very sexy, advancing field by comparison, the Ministry of Health and Welfare here, which monitors conditions at kindergartens, has severe staffing shortages, with civil servants covering on average more than 50 facilities, and in the cities as many as 350: anonymously, they admit that they can’t visit facilities even once a year. Koreans work like maniacs, a point I’ll return to later, and can achieve a great deal if they choose to do so. So why is there such a lack of political will?

Second, let us dispel the short answer that Korea is well known as a patriarchal society, ideologically buttressed by Confucianism; Korea may be a fascinating place to study, but it is well known as definitely not all that great for women (or children!) to actually live in. But if you think about this, no matter how much you may have written something like it in your undergraduate essays (hey, me too), actually this CNN soundbite-esque answer explains nothing. For instance, consider why such a high proportion of working mothers are prepared to entrust their children to their parents-in-laws in different cities instead? There’s the concerns about quality I mentioned, but I’m sure thousands of commentators have instead said it’s because Koreans are so ‘familial,’ and grandparents are used to this role in extended Confucian families…yada yada yada…consider this then:

“After childcare leave for 10 months, there wasn’t any way to take care of him but to ask my mother-in-law who lives in Sunchun, which is more than 6 hours away…I usually see him once or twice a month…whenever I miss him terribly, I listen to nursery rhymes and cry.” (Mrs. Park)

“My mother-in-law has been looking after my daughter from 3 months onwards….naturally, my daughter doesn’t like me as much as her grandma…I often feel myself an outsider between my daughter and her grandmother…On the journey back, I often cry, asking myself ‘why should I live like this?’…If there were reliable childcare facilities, I could live with her.” (Mrs. Ji)

Generalizations about Korea just don’t cut it for me anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as guilty as anyone, and have given as many drunken rants about Korea as the next expat…hell, probably more considering my self-proclaimed Korean expert status…but once you have Korean friends then you don’t keep them very long if you’re full of soundbites about Korea, even if they’re in Korean. So, let’s cut the holier-than-thou, never actually heard it from any Koreans crap, yes? Yes, that was a much a reminder to myself as an exhortation to readers.

The Rise and Fall of the Salaryman

( Source: Unknown )

Back to the few readers I still have left by this stage then. I’m going to assume both of you know what a Japanese “salaryman” is, and the huge keiretsu that he works in. What you may not know is that this stereotypical image of Japanese employment is in fact completely false, as 9 in 10 Japanese people work in companies of less than 300 people; that statistic is from this brilliant book by Yoshio Sugimoto, who, if you’re interested, also goes on to give an interesting discussion about why the powers that be choose to promote this salaryman image of Japan to the world instead of the reality. This is relevant because, despite the association of the word with Japan, most Korean men before the financial crisis did have lifetime, male-breadwinner, corporatist-welfare,  재벌/chaebol jobs that are the equivalent of the Japanese keiretsu. And, although I said earlier that since then Korea then has gone from having the lowest rate of part-time, short-term and irregular work in the OECD to the highest, producing a pervasive insecurity amongst the Korean public that is in itself is fascinating to study, working for chaebol and adopting the attendant salaryman lifestyle is still necessary for anyone who wants to get ahead in Korea. Partially also because they provide one of the few jobs for life still available in Korea these days (the others are in the civil service, the entrance exams of which about 30% of Korean 20-30 year olds, including my sister-in-law, will be studying for at any one moment), I realize as I type this that this may mean that the loyalty and dedication of the salaryman to his work is arguably very much a Korean ideal, to be aspired to for workers at smaller companies also. Certainly it has been so at all the rather smaller than chaebol-sized companies I’ve taught in before my present job. Consequently, I’ll look at chaebol first: where do career-women with babies fit in?

Well, they don’t. Korea’s legal limit of 44 hours a week is but a fiction, even official statistics, which would understate things, acknowledging that they are on average 51 for men and 49 for women (update: just found this, which says that Koreans effectively have the longest hours in the world). Also bear in mind that bear in mind that most Korean workers don’t have contracts, which makes overtime, and the regular after-work drinking sessions that I mentioned in my very first post, pretty standard, with 8am starts and 12pm finishes common.  Naturally it is very difficult for women to be mothers with hours like these (or fathers to be fathers for that matter), as these statements reveal:

“Emerging situations (prolonged meetings, working during national holidays) in my office mean a ‘war’ over care arrangements…I have to call here and there, asking people to look after my kids…my sisters, auns, friends and even neighbours, all come into it…It’s terribly stressful for me to organize childcare.” (Mrs. Do)

“Every single day is a terrible war…I always feel guilty towards my daughter…sometimes I’m too exhausted to take off my clothes…despite that I can’t give up [my job] because I have to do it .” (Mrs. Lee)

( Source: Unknown )

Only the relatively well-off can afford the expensive, trusted kindergartens and/or nannies, which reinforces class divisions. Moreover, they receive little practical or moral assistance from their workplaces: of the former, since 1995 the Infant Care Act has required employers with more than 300 women employees to establish on-site childcare facilities, but by the next year only 5% had done so, and not a single company fined for failing to do so (again, those stats are quite old, but I’d be surprised if Asian financial crisis cash-strapped (when it suits them) chaebol have had a change of heart since). Of the latter, consider these statements:

“Costs for female workers generated from pregnancy, maternity leave and so on can’t be neglected…I think [women's] productivity is 70% that of men’s.” (Mr. Seo)

“Can managements trust those who want to focus on the family rather than work…it’s natural to restrain their promotion…It’s the way things are!” (Mr. Hahn)

Legally, before 2001 Korean women received 8 weeks of maternity leave, with 100% of average wages paid for by their employers. Since 2001, they can also take an additional 4 weeks off, with 100% of their average wages paid for by their employers and or employment insurance (not like unemployment benefit: it is organized by the government, but is drawn from funds they contribute to it while working). After that, if they have been working for longer than 6 months previously, they can take an additional year off and receive 200,000 won (about the cost of 4 nights drinking for me) a month from employment insurance; there is also a provision banning dismissal from work due to this leave. But with sentiments like the above, and lack of political will, you can imagine what happens to a women’s career in practice: it is not unknown for women to be working until midnight almost right up to the expected birth date, and then pressured to come back as soon as possible afterwards. Regardless of this, Korean workplaces but especially chaebol still very much rely on years worked for promoting people, so career-minded women cannot afford to take extended periods of time off.

For women who don’t work in chaebol, the vast majority, things are much worse: there are no provisions for employer-provided creches at workplaces with less than 300 women for instance, and part-time and irregular workers, like I said now the majority of all workers, are not entitled to an additional year off.

Three consequences

( Source: Unknown )

1. Korean womens’ M-line

In Korea, usually only men have “M-lines,” but then I don’t mean actually mean that; I mean Korea’s M-shaped curve of labor market participation. Basically, Scandinavia is the ideal (of course) with women’s participation rising rapidly in their twenties and then plateauing until women start retiring; Korea is at the opposite extreme, with it also rising in their twenties, then dropping like a stone when they get married, then rising again as their children get older before falling again as they too retire. Most other Western countries are in between. In other words, many Korean women are human (shock, horror!), and are still choosing to have children and raise them as best they can, but which in Korea pretty much seems to mean giving up their jobs, or at least career prospects.

( Source: Unknown )

2. There’s not enough babies!

I am of course aware of the argument that the present world population is already environmentally unsustainable, but I think I can be forgiven for not going into that right now. In the meantime, just as many Korean women are strangely not content to follow their mother’s footsteps and spend 20 years of their life watching their husbands go to work while they look after the children…and so, like the stats earlier showed, they’re simply not having them. And good on them: if I was an assertive Korean woman hoping to make it in the world, I’d be crazy to have kids. I hope I’ve persuaded readers that the most commonly cited reason for the low birth rate, the high costs of afterschool education, is complete crap. I challenge anyone to find just one woman who let worries about institute fees 15 years in the future dissuade her from having a child…good luck!

( Source: Unknown )

3. It sucks to be a woman in Korea

I already said that, but to show you just how bad it is, consider Korea’s abysmally low Gender Empowerment Measure. Things here are not like back home.

Implications

1. The Korean Government is aware of the problem, and is doing oh-so-much about it.

Why yes…my subway travels are filled with joyful slogans telling me that children are our future, and that if I my wife and I have a third, we will get a one-off payment of a whole 200,000 won for doing so. Remember I mentioned that Korean economic policymakers are still stuck in the ideological straitjackets of 15 years ago? Do they really think that all of Korea’s problems will go away if women are given an amount of money that would cover a whole 4 nights of drinking for me? Bizarrely, Koreans haven’t been breeding like rabbits in response. See here for more details. As this – surprise surprise – is not having the desired effect, two things are going to have to happen, at – oh, goody – almost exactly the same time the manufacturing crisis is going to hit:

2a. Korea is going to have to get a lot more immigrants, and quickly

This is already happening in the rapidly depopulating countryside, where over 3 in 10 marriages are now to non-Koreans. As the few people still reading this will be well aware of that, I think I can be forgiven for not posting links illustrating that. But before anyone thinks that an expansion in immigrant numbers will be smooth, consider things like this that occurred just today. To be fair, the populist, xenophobic Korean media is not representative of Koreans as whole (see here), and many so-called multicultural Brits, for instance, are also having problems with a few thousand Polish plumbers and bell-boys. But Korea’s needs will be much greater.

2b. Accepted gender roles in Korea are going to change

This is self-explanatory, and no matter how much I’ve emphasized how bad things are for women, and how much I’m beginning to rant this far into the post, I must concede that things do already seem to be changing for the better. More cynically, giving half the workforce a greater chance at participation is a more palatable alternative to large-scale immigration for any country.

Conclusion

Ineloquent, much too long, ranty, and in severe need of an edit in the cold light of day, but I hope I’ve conveyed some of the zeitgeist of Korea as it is today, and why I find the place so fascinating: even if you’re not interested in Korea per se, despite it’s idiosyncrasies it is very much a laboratory for many Western countries that will soon have similar issues of dealing with its low birth rate. Anyway, as my Korean gets better, I’ll definitely be focusing on seeing if this is discussed in media and/or if ordinary Koreans are indeed aware of it.

( Source: Unknown )