Family breakdown and invisible homeless women: Neoliberal governance during the Asian debt crisis in South Korea, 1997-2001

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Volumn 14, Issue 1, 2006, Pages

  Song, Jesook ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34547308561     PISSN: 10679847     EISSN: 15278271     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/10679847-14-1-37     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. See Rayna Rapp, "Family and Class in Contemporary America: Notes toward an Understanding of Ideology," in Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions, ed. Barrie Thorne and Marilyn Yalom (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992), 49-69. Rapp urges us to make a distinction between families and households, as they are commonly conflated. While households are "the empirically measurable units" and "the entities in which people actually live," family is an analytical term for the composition of the nuclear family and the network of kin relations. My discussion of family builds upon Rapp's definition
2. Haepi endû (Happy End), dir. Chi-uh Chông, Myông Film, South Korea, 1999
3. Nam Jung Hyun, "Puju chônsangsô" ("Letter to Father"), in Nam Jung Hyun/ Ch'ôn Sûng Se Punji/ Hwanggu ûi Pimyông oe, Han'guk Sosôl Munhak Taegye 43 (1964; Seoul: Dong-a Chulpansa, 1996), 141-68
4. The culmination of the Democratization Movement in 1987 entailed historic mass protests calling for the end of nearly three decades of military dictatorship (1960-87). In the aftermath of 1987, when mass protests achieved electoral democracy, South Korea experienced a growth of popular civil movements for women's rights, sexual identities, environmental issues, and economic justice. In turn, middle-class citizens came to be more appreciated as the movements' main supporters. See Hagen Koo, Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001). Koo's interpretation of the legitimization of the middle class as deserving social protection from the civil organization derives from white-collar workers' contribution to the Democratization Movement in 1987, when their unprecedented joining of a dissident group was much welcomed by long-standing dissident forces, such as blue-collar workers and student, civil, and political activists. Civil organizations that emerged during the post-1987 era became major social engineers
5. Progressive women's organizations, such as the hotline for domestic violence, Yôsong ûi Chônhwa (Telephone for Women), the hotline for sexual harassment, Sôngpongnyôk Sangdamso (Counseling Center against Sexual Violence), and the Korean women's link, Han'guk Yôsông Minuhoe (Korean Democratic Friends for Women), became very active in the early 1990s. Feminism at this time contributed to the recognition of women's individuality based on sexual autonomy, which is distinct from the previous era's feminism, which focused on collectivity in association with antiauthoritarian and labor movements. See Seungsook Moon, "Carving Out Space: Civil Society and the Women's Movement in South Korea," Journal of Asian Studies 61 (2002): 473-500
6. Seung-Kyung Kim, "Women's Movement and Women Workers' Subjectivity in South Korea" (paper presented at the Korea Workshop, Urbana-Champaign, University of Illinois, March 2003)
7. Examples include Cho Ch'ang-In, Kasi kogi (Needle Fish) (Seoul: Palgûn Sesang, 2001)
8. Yi Na-Mi, Uri ga sarang han namja (Men Who We Loved) (Seoul: Haenaem, 1999)
9. and Sûlpûn yuhok (Sad Temptation), writ. No Hi-Kyung, dir. Yun Hûng-Sik, Seoul Broadcasting System, December 26, 1999. In 1999 the Korean Social and Cultural Institute held a public discussion with the title "Crisis of Korean Middle Class and Family Breakdown - Causes and Solutions." The Seoul city government also held a memorial seminar for women's week relating to family breakdown in April 2000
10. Seung-Kyung Kim and John Finch, "Living with Rhetoric, Living against Rhetoric: Korean Families and the IMF Economic Crisis," Korean Studies 26 (2002): 120-39. Kim and Finch show that conservative assumptions about gender roles in the family are challenged by practices of middle- and working-class households
11. "Kusimnyôndae dûrô tobae ro chûngga han yihon" ("Divorce Doubled over the 1990s"), Hankyoreh sinmun, June 11, 1998
12. Kim U-sôk, "Kajông i munôjigo itta" ("The Family is Collapsing"), JoongAng Ilbo, August 18, 1998
13. Yi Tae-hyi, "Ajôssi ka ani e yo, ton i e yo: 15 sal ûi wonjokyoje ch'ungkyôk" ("He's Not an Elder, but Money: Shocking Teen Prostitution"), Hankyoreh sinmun, November 18, 1999. The last article starts, "After running away, girls work part-time in a gas station or coffee shop, and later become prostitutes through Internet chat rooms, charging $80 a night, but sometimes ending up robbed by adult male clients."
14. Han Sang-jin, "Tongyangkwôn munhwa wa inkwôn chôngch'aek" ("Eastern Culture and Human Rights Policies"), Korea Economic Daily, December 11, 2000. It is interesting to note that same-sex partnership was introduced as a problem caused by the IMF-led westernization of South Korea when, for the first time, a South Korean actor was outed as being gay by a tabloid newspaper report in September 2000. Editorials characterized same-sex loving people as having a social disease that originated in Western countries and contagiously spread to South Korea
15. Yun Chong-yôl, "Hwanghon yihon bulhô" ("Elderly Divorce Disapproved"), Hanguk ilbo, December 8, 1999. Hwanghon yihon literally refers to "divorce at golden sunset." The duration of a day is a common allegory for life: morning signifies the period of youth, and evening, the elder. Hwanghon (golden sunset) is a romantic, euphemistic way of referring to the elderly. It is a paradox to place "golden sunset" and "divorce" together, as divorce is not a respected action at all, especially within the context of the elderly phase of life. The synthesis of these words may have been used for rhetorical effect to emphasize normative expectations to stay together in the elderly period of life
16. Kim Chun-hyôn, "12 wol 3 il ûn che 2 ûi kukch'i il" ("December 3 Is the Second National Humiliation Day"), Han'guk kyôngje sinmun (Korea Economic Daily), December 4, 1997
17. See the explanation of nationalist discourse in Kim and Finch, "Living with Rhetoric, Living against Rhetoric," 122-27
18. Timothy Lane, quoted in Nahid Aslangeigui and Gale Summerfield, "The Asian Crisis, Gender, and the International Financial Architecture," Feminist Economics 6, no.3 (2000): 81-103
19. Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002)
20. Notably, there are tensions between the World Bank and the IMF. Both institutes were founded under the Keynesian influence with the common mission of global liberalization and division of task: the IMF for short-term capital and the World Bank for long-term capital and development-poverty management. Regarding inner changes at the World Bank and its tension with the IMF, see Michael Goldman, "The Birth of a Discipline: Producing Authoritative Green Knowledge: World Bank-Style" (paper presented at the Transnational Studies Seminar, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, September 2000)
21. Jacques Polak, The World Bank and the IMF: A Changing Relationship (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1994)
22. Chang Philhwa, "Impact of Economic and Financial Crisis on Women in South Korea" (paper presented at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation [APEC] Ministerial Meeting on Women, Manila, Philippines, October 15-16, 1998), 1-32
23. Stephan Haggard, Daniel Pinkston, and Jungkun Seo, "Reforming Korea Inc.: The Politics of Structural Adjustment under Kim Dae Jung," Asian Perspective 23 (1999): 201-35
24. Kim Hyun Mee, "Han'guk ûi kûndaesông kwa yôsông ûi nodongkwôn" ("Modernity and Women's Labor Rights in South Korea"), Han'guk yôsônghak (Journal of Korean Women's Studies) 16 (2000): 37-64
25. Cho Sun Kyung further argues that there was already almost a 20 percent unemployment rate even before the crisis (a higher percentage than earlier reported due to not counting women at home and students who wanted to work). Cho Sun Kyong, Yôsônghaego ûi silt'ae wa chôngch'aek kwaje (Women's Layoff and Suggestions for Policy Making) (Seoul: Presidential Commission on Women's Affairs, 1999)
26. Byung-Kook Kim, "The Politics of Crisis and a Crisis of Politics: The Presidency of Kim Dae-Jung," in Korea Briefing 1997-1999, ed. Kongdan Oh (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2000), 35-74
27. Kim Dae Jung, Mass-Participatory Economy: Korea's Road to World Economic Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Center for International Affairs, 1996)
28. Kim Dae Jung, Kungnan kûkpok ûi kil: Kim Tae Jung taet'ongnyông ch'uiim 6-kaewôl yônsôlmun (Ways of Overcoming National Crisis: President Kim Dae Jung's Speeches in the First Six Months after His Inauguration) (Seoul: Taet'ongnyông pisôsil, 1998)
29. I consider the establishment of and agreements in the Tripartite Committee as one of the major markers of neoliberalism introduced by the Kim Dae Jung government. Rather than regulating a decision by force of the state machinery, the Tripartite Committee symbolizes liberal governance dedicated to finding a reasonable way to resolve the critical issue of unemployment through mediating a negotiated consensus among equally invited social forces. In other words, the state administration's method of operation changed from acting as regulator with direct interventions to acting as mediator of diverse social and political forces for significant decisions to govern society. See also Huck-ju Kwon, "Transforming the Developmental Welfare States in East Asia" (paper presented at the International Sociological Association Research Committees 19: Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy, University of Toronto, August 21-24, 2003)
30. Experts and academics were actively involved in government committees, such as the Presidential Committee for Elevating Life Quality (Sal ûi Chil Hyangsang Wiwonhoe), the Seoul Policy on Homelessness Commission (Nosukcha Taech'aek Hyôpûihoe), and the Seoul Committee for Unemployment Policy (Sirôp Taech'aek Wiwonhoe). See note 24 regarding the development of the policy on homelessness. Regarding the complex interests of experts and academicians and the ambivalent ways in which they were involved, see Jesook Song, "Shifting Technologies: Neoliberalization of the Welfare State in South Korea, 1997-2001" (PhD diss., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2003), 80-249
31. Halla Chonghap Sahoe Pokchikwan, "Perspectives on Nosukcha" OASIS, December 11, 1998
32. The Seoul policy on homelessness implemented during the crisis consisted of two shelter systems: one House of Freedom and about 120 Houses of Hope. The former was a large shelter that any homeless people who wanted to get government benefits should go to first. The shelters were managed by a quasi-governmental agency called the Homeless Rehabilitation Center. There, the center welfare workers classified homeless people as to whether they were qualified to go to the other shelters through the standard of employability and rehabilitating capacity. The other shelters were run mostly by religious groups or private welfare agencies. It was a significant process to be classified to go to the other ones because those shelters were the only place providing an opportunity to work in the public works programs (affording a basic income) and receive free home food. Most of the decisions regarding policies on homelessness were executed by either the Seoul Policy on Homelessness Commission or the Seoul City Committee for Unemployment Policy. Both are so-called temporary institutes with government-civic partnership (min'gwan hyômnyôk kigwan). For a more detailed explanation about the policy on homelessness and tensions involving social actors during the crisis, see Song, "Shifting Technologies," 120-78
33. also, regarding changes of welfare policy in general, see Kwon, "Transforming the Developmental Welfare States in East Asia."
34. "Hûndûlli nûn sahoe: chungsanch'ûng ûi mollak" ("Faltering Society: The Middle Class is Collapsing"), Korea Economic Daily, June 1, 1998
35. For an analysis of family norms in relation to the policy on homelessness and the shelter system in New York City, see Ida Susser, "Creating Family Forms: The Exclusion of Men and Teenage Boys from Families in the New York City Shelter System, 1987-1991," in Theorizing the City: The New Urban Anthropology Reader, ed. S. M. Low (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999)
36. Hankyoreh Sinmun, June 22, 1998
37. The Homeless Rehabilitation Center Report (Seoul: Homeless Rehabilitation Center, 1999)
38. Salimtô Newsletter (Fall, 1999). The cover page features a picture depicting a homeless shelter hosting collective marriage ceremonies for homeless people. The newsletter also reported anecdotes about each couple's success
39. Chang Kyung Sop, "Compressed Modernity and Its Discontents: South Korean Society in Transition," Economy and Society 28 (1999): 30-55
40. Yoon Taek-Lim, "Kyôngje wigi wa kajok" ("Economic Crisis and Family"), in Kan'guk kyôngje wigi ûi munhwa punsôk (Cultural Analyses of the Korean Economic Crisis), ed. E. H. Kim, H. H. Hahm, and T. L. Yoon (Seoul: Hyônmin Sisûtem, 1999), 187-228
41. Governance of family has been a crucial task of neoliberal projects to produce independent social members, that is, those who do not depend on the state. See Ann Anagnost, "Scenes of Misrecognition: Maternal Citizenship in the Age of Transnational Adoption," positions: east asia cultures critique 8 (2000): 389-421
42. Judith Stacey, "Families against 'The Family': The Transatlantic Passage of the Politics of Family Values," Radical Philosophy 89 (2000): 2-7
43. In responding to various social problems, such as juvenile delinquency and hygienic issues, Western welfare states shifted their role from regulator to mediator by encouraging liberal values of human beings (free civilians with self-responsibility) and supporting the normative family as the self-regulating unit morally liable for unruly social members. See Jacques Donzelot, The Policing of Families, trans. R. Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1979)
44. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon, 1999)
45. Disciplining family is not a new governing ideology to contemporary South Koreans. It has been pivotal in managing Koreans' national loyalty under the realm of Confucian ideology most conspicuously since the late Chosôn period of the seventeenth century. See Jahyun Kim Haboush, "The Confucianization of Korean Society," The East Asian Region: Confucian Heritage and Its Modern Adaptation, ed. G. Rozman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991)
46. Martina Deuchler, The Confucian Transformation of Korea: A Study of Society and Ideology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992)
47. In addition, the South Korean family was equally encouraged as the basic unit of survival and social mobility throughout the Japanese colonial era (1919-45), the Korean War period (1950-52), and developmental regimes (1960-87). See Huck-ju Kwon, The Welfare State in Korea: The Politics of Legitimation (New York: St. Martin's, 1999)
48. Bob Jessop, "The Transition to Post-Fordism and the Schumpeterian Workfare State," in Towards a Post-Fordist Welfare State? ed. R. Burrows and B. Loader (London: Routledge, 1994), 13-37
49. Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore, "Exporting Workfare/Importing Welfare-to-Work: Exploring the Politics of Third Way Policy Transfer," Political Geography 20 (2001): 427-60
50. Winifred Poster and Zakia Salime, "The Limits of Micro-Credit: Transnational Feminism and USAID Activities in the United States and Morocco," in Women's Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics, ed. N. A. Naples and N. Desai (New York: Routledge, 2002), 189-219
51. Kwang-Yeong Shin, "The Discourse of Crisis and the Crisis of Discourse," Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1 (2000): 427-42
52. Richard Snyder, "After Neo-liberalism: The Politics of Reregulation in Mexico," World Politics 51 (2002): 173-204
53. See John Clark's succinct paper about vast arrangements of different contexts using "neoliberalism" and the limitations of using it ubiquitously. John Clark, Changing Welfare, Changing States (London: Sage, 2004)
54. Lesley Gill, Teetering on the Rim: Global Restructuring, Daily Life, and the Armed Retreat of the Bolivian State (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 11-18
55. Jessop, "The Transition to Post-Fordism," 14
56. Joseph Wong, "Mainstreaming the Idea of Welfare: Democratization and Ideational Change in Taiwan and Korea" (paper presented at the International Sociological Association Research Committees 19: Poverty, Social Welfare, and Social Policy, University of Toronto, August 21-24, 2003)
57. Cho Hee-Yeon, Han'guk ûi minjujuûi wa sahoe undong (Democracy and Social Movements in Korea) (Seoul: Tangdae, 1998)
58. Hagen Koo, Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001)
59. Kyung-Ae Park, "Political Representation and South Korean Women," Journal of Asian Studies 58 (1999): 432-48
60. Seo Tong Jin, Nuga song chôngch'ihak ûi turyôwô harya? (Who Would Be Afraid of Sexuality Politics?) (Seoul: Munyemadang, 1996)
61. Bang-Soon Yoon, "Korean Women in the Global Economy: Industrialization and Gender Politics in South Korea," Yonsei Journal of Women's Studies 4 (1996): 140-80
62. Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat, States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001)
63. Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999)