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South Korea Social Classes in Contemporary South Korea
Rapid economic growth, industrialization, and urbanization
have caused a profound transformation in the class structure of
South Korean society since the end of the Korean War. One of the
most important changes has been the emergence of a "new" middle
class consisting of civil servants, salaried white-collar workers
in large private companies, and professionals with specialized
training, such as engineers, health care professionals,
university professors, architects, and journalists. The number of
factory workers also has grown impressively. According to figures
provided by Kim Kyong-Dong, a sociologist at Seoul National
University, the portion of the population that can be labeled
"new middle class" (excluding self-employed professionals) grew
from 6.6 percent to 17.7 percent between 1960 and 1980. The
proportion of industrial workers expanded from 8.9 percent to
22.6 percent of the labor force during the same period.
Independent farmers and members of the rural lower class,
including agricultural laborers, experienced corresponding
declines in percentage: together, they accounted for 64 percent
of the population in 1960 but only 31.3 percent in 1980.
The urban lower class, consisting to a great extent of recent
arrivals from rural parts of the country living in squatter
areas, composed an estimated 6.6 percent of the population in
1960 and 5.9 percent in 1980. An "old" middle class consisting of
shopkeepers and small business proprietors in urban and rural
areas, self-employed professionals, and self-employed craftsmen
grew modestly from 13 percent to 20.8 percent of the population
between 1960 and 1980. Kim's figures also include what he
euphemistically calls an "upper-middle" class--the country's
economic and social elites, whose numbers grew from 0.9 percent
to 1.8 percent of the population between 1960 and 1980.
Another way of viewing contemporary South Korean society is
to consider the sources of social inequality. In a 1988 article,
Korea specialist David I. Steinberg focused on several of these
sources, which include the disparity in living standards between
urban and rural areas--the main motivation behind sustained urban
migration. Although the Saemaul Movement was successful in
narrowing the gap between rural and urban incomes during the mid1970s , disparities subsequently reemerged. Steinberg also noted
that despite the land reform of the late 1940s, tenancy has
grown, and that by 1981 as many as 46 percent of all farmers were
"full or partial tenants."
Discrimination on both the community and individual levels
against the people of North Cholla and South Cholla provinces
remains a second important source of inequality. Disparities in
per capita income between Seoul and the provinces of North and
South Kyongsang had virtually disappeared by the early 1980s, but
per capita incomes in the capital were still 1.8 times those in
the Cholla region in 1983. As in most other Asian (and most
Western) countries, gender differences remain another source of
major inequalities
(see Changing Role of Women
, this ch.).
Government control of the financial system has created
substantial inequalities between the favored chaebol,
which at least until the late 1980s had access to credit at low
rates, and capital-starved smaller businesses that had to rely on
nonbank sources of credit. Official support of the chaebol
as the engines of South Korean economic growth and
industrialization was clearly reflected in the differences
between salaries and working conditions of employees in large and
small enterprises. Also, the Park and Chun regimes' hostile
policies toward labor unions kept workers' wages low--and
internationally competitive. In Steinberg's words, "the Korean
worker has been asked to suffer for the good of society as a
whole . . . ." Activists who tried to organize independent unions
were harassed, arrested, imprisoned, and frequently tortured by
the authorities. During the liberalization that began in 1987,
however, the government permitted the establishment of
independent labor unions and assumed a new attitude, at times
approaching neutrality in labor-management disputes
(see Interest Groups
, ch. 4).
Education remained the single most important factor affecting
social mobility in the 1990s. With the exception of the military,
whose top echelons were educated at the Korea Military Academy,
the postwar elites of South Korea shared one characteristic: they
were graduates of the most prestigious universities. There was a
well-defined hierarchy of such schools, starting with Seoul
National University at the top and followed by Yonse University
and Korea University (known as Koryo in Korean). Ehwa Woman's
University was the top institution for women
(see Education
, this
ch.).
A survey conducted in the mid-1970s by the Korea Development
Institute, a research organization funded by the government but
having considerable operational independence, revealed that 25
percent of a sample of entrepreneurs and 35 percent of a sample
of higher civil servants had attended Seoul National University.
The university's control of entry into the government and
business elites is comparable to that exercised by the University
of Tokyo in Japan. One major difference, however, is that for a
Japanese student an extended period of study or residence abroad
is not considered advisable because it interrupts one's career
"track" within a single bureaucracy or corporation; many
prominent South Koreans, however, obtain advanced degrees at
universities in the United States and in Western Europe.
The social importance of education is one of the major
continuities between traditional and contemporary Korea. People
at the top require blue-ribbon educational backgrounds, not only
because education gives them the cultural sophistication and
technical expertise needed to manage large, complex
organizations, but also because subordinates will not work
diligently for an uneducated person--especially if subordinates
are educated themselves. "Old school ties" are also increasingly
necessary for advancement in a highly competitive society. At the
bottom of the steep higher-education pyramid are low-prestige
"diploma mills" whose graduates have little chance of breaking
into elite circles. Yet graduation even from these institutions
confers a sort of middle-class status.
Despite impressive increases in university enrollments, the
central importance of education credentials for social
advancement has tended to widen the gap between the middle and
lower classes. Income distribution is more unequal than in Japan
or Taiwan, with pronounced disparities between college and
secondary-school graduates. Many workers know that their
comparatively low wages make it virtually impossible for them to
give their children a college education, a heavy financial burden
even for middle-class families.
In the workplace, men and women with a middle-school or
secondary-school education are often treated with open contempt
by university graduate managers. The latter address them with
rude or abrupt words whose impact is amplified by the statussensitive nature of the Korean language
(see The Korean Language
, this ch.). The result has been bitter resentment and increasing
labor militancy bordering on political opposition to the status
quo.
During the 1980s, the concept of minjung (the masses)
became prominent in the thinking and rhetoric of radical
students, militant labor unionists, activists identified with the
Christian churches, and progressive but generally non-Marxist
intellectuals. Although its meaning is vague, minjung
encompasses not only the urban proletariat in the Marxist sense
but also the groups, including farmers, small bourgeoisie,
students, and skilled craftsmen, who allegedly have been
exploited by the country's numerically small ruling class (the
military elite, top bureaucrats, and big business). National
elites were viewed as collaborating with foreign (particularly
United States and Japanese) capitalists in order to create a
situation of permanent dependence on foreign capital. The
emphasis on neocolonialist themes by minjung spokespeople
drew deeply on South Korean populist, nationalist, and xenophobic
sentiments to place the origin of social evils outside the Korean
race.
Data as of June 1990
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