Resisting Neoliberalism in South Korea, Remaking the Practices of Protest - Sponsored by the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea (ASCK)

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

Is it possible to will an alternative subjectivity to that which is constituted by neoliberalism, an ideology whose drive for intense and accelerated capital accumulation has disembedded people from conditions of social bonding to transform them into competing atomized individuals? This session considers precedents of resistance and solidarity that social movements in South Korea have developed in response to neoliberal policies and political repression. As South Korean workers and citizens have been increasingly forced into circumstances of precarity by neoliberal restructuring, they have stood up in opposition to policies and business practices that threaten not only their economic security but also the very possibility of social solidarity. Their resistance has taken various forms: from long-term occupations of construction cranes and other symbolic sites, to collective convergence upon such spaces of struggle via the “Hope Bus” movement, to participation in religious and spiritual rituals such as fasting, candlelight vigils, and samboilbae (three steps and a bow). On the one hand, such forms of protest embrace “the prolonged embodiment of emotional, physical, and financial hardship”; on the other hand, they offer adaptive and viable avenues of showing support and building solidarity under conditions increasingly hostile to such organizing due to the social suffering imposed by austerity. What they share in common is that their repertoire of collective action has moved beyond workplace strikes or mass street demonstrations toward “affective practices” and lived experiences that open venues for generating and circulating collective class identifications, which in turn create new possibilities for social change.

Area of Study

• Korea

Session Organizers

• Jae-Jung Suh, International Christian University

• Namhee Lee, University of California, Los Angeles

• Nan Kim, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Chair

• Jae-Jung Suh, International Christian University

Individual Presentations

• Protesting Publics and Labour Precarity in South Korea - Jennifer Jihye Chun, University of Toronto

• Social Media, Civil Society and Labor Activism: The South Korean Hope Bus Movement - Simone Chun, Northeastern University

• Acting as If: Affective Practice and Mood in Korean Labor Protest - Jong Bum Kwon, Webster University 

Discussant

• Martin Hart-Landsberg, Lewis & Clark College