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This study considers South Korean economic development from the perspective of young female factory workers, who grapple with defining their roles in respect to marriage and motherhood. Kim explores the women's individual and collective struggles to improve their positions and examines their links with other political forces within the labor movement. She analyzes how female workers envision their place in society, how they cope with economic and social marginalization in their daily lives, and how they develop strategies for a better future.
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This study complements the burgeoning literature on South Korean economic development by considering it from the perspective of young female factory workers in the Masan Free Export Zone, the group whose cheap labor underwrote the initial phases of Korea's economic growth and that continues to be the most poorly paid segment of the Korean labor force. In approaching development from this position, Professor Kim explores the opportunity and exploitation that industrial development has presented to female workers and humanizes the notion of the "Korean economic miracle" by examining its impact on their lives. The author also endeavors to provide an understanding of the ways in which these women both accommodate and resist the dominating forces of global capitalism and patriarchy. This ethnography looks at the conflicts and ambivalences of young women as they participate in the industrial workforce and simultaneously grapple with defining their roles with respect to marriage and motherhood within conventional family structures. The book explores the women's individual and collective struggles to improve their positions and examines their links with other political forces within the labor movement. The author analyzes how female workers envision their place in society, how they cope with economic and social marginalization in their daily lives, and how they develop strategies for a better future. In exploring these questions, the book considers the heterogeneity of female workers and the complexities of their experience as women and as workers. Class Struggle or Family Struggle? Class Struggle or Family Struggle? The Lives of Women Factory Workers in South Korea SEUNG-KYUNG KIM University of Maryland, College Park mm CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521570626 © Seung-kyung Kim 1997 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1997 Reprinted 2000 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Kim, Seung-kyung, 1954Class struggle or family struggle? : the lives of women factory workers in South Korea / Seung-kyung Kim. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-521-57062-X (hardback) 1. Women - Employment - Korea (South) 2. Work and family - Korea (South) I. Title. HD6068.2.K6K55 1997 331.4'87'095195 - dc20 96-35843 CIP ISBN 978-0-521-57062-6 hardback Transferred to digital printing 2008 For Anna, Ellen, and John Contents List of Tables and Figures Preface: Field, Subject, Author Acknowledgments Language Note page viii ix xxi xxiv 1 Women Caught between Global Capitalism and South Korean Patriarchy 2 The Process of Production in the Masan Free Export Zone 3 The Myth of Socia