Building ships, building a nation : Korea's democratic unionism under Park Chung Hee / Hwasook Nam.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nam, Hwasook, 1959-

Series:

Korean studies of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.

Korean studies of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Korea Shipbuilding and Engineering Corporation--Management--History.

Korea Shipbuilding and Engineering Corporation.

Shipbuilding industry--Employees--Labor unions--Korea (South)--History--20th century.

Shipbuilding industry.

Labor movement--Korea (South)--History--20th century.

Labor movement.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (394 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Seattle : University of Washington Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Building Ships, Building a Nation examines the rise and fall, during the rule of Park Chung Hee (1961-79), of the combative labor union at the Korea Shipbuilding and Engineering Corporation (KSEC), which was Korea's largest shipyard until Hyundai appeared on the scene in the early 1970s. Drawing on the union's extraordinary and extensive archive, Hwasook Nam focuses on the perceptions, attitudes, and discourses of the mostly male heavy-industry workers at the shipyard and on the historical and sociopolitical sources of their militancy. Inspired by legacies of labor activism from the colonial and immediate postcolonial periods, KSEC union workers fought for equality, dignity, and a voice for labor as they struggled to secure a living wage that would support families. The standard view of the South Korean labor movement sees little connection between the immediate postwar era and the period since the 1970s and largely denies positive legacies coming from the period of Japanese colonialism in Korea. Contrary to this conventional view, Nam charts the importance of these historical legacies and argues that the massive mobilization of workers in the postwar years, even though it ended in defeat, had a major impact on the labor movement in the following decades.

Contents:

Worker militancy in the postwar years

Anticommunism, labor rights, and organized labor: the early 1950s

KSEC workers in the 1950s

The KSEC union in the political upheavals of 1960-61

Consolidation of a democratic union

Rationalization and resistance

Development versus democracy: the late 1960s

Privatization and the suppression of labor, 1968-69

Shipbuilding workers under authoritarian rule: the 1970s

Shipbuilding for the world market and resurging labor militancy.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 345-361) and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9780295800271

0295800275

OCLC:

775447001