So Korean economic development and the historical restructuring of production have resulted in spectacular domestic power struggles that are particular to the case studied, but are evidence of a more complicated scenario and network at the global level. The struggle between social forces represents a process of organisation and production of the global reconfigurations of capitalism and resistance. In applying a transnational historical materialist methodology, several aspects must be covered to analyse the impact of global hegemonic struggles on Korean development.
The first couple of chapters of this volume introduce the rather abstract ideas of passive revolution and what it involves. Chapter 1 offers a history of IR theory in conjunction with historical events, to show that theory is not just an academic experiment, but results from people’s trials and tribulations, wars, and times of jubilation. As this book intends to add to the IR and IPE, I note that this literature is often written with a prescriptive tone that makes assumptions about the inevitability of neoliberal capitalist development models, but the epistemology of ‘post- positivism’ challenges these ideas. The chapter expands on the neo- Gramscian terms I use to explain Korean economic and social develop- ment, which are hegemony, the transnational capitalist network (TCN), and passive revolution. I apply an unconventional range of terms to the Korean case study to demonstrate an innovative claim to a non- hegemonic status of this nation.
Chapter 2 then provides a global history of historic blocs for the analysis of expansion of world order. Applying elements of the second of Cox’s two matrices, Chapter 2 looks at a history of world orders, forms of state, elite activities and the formation of powerful ideas that have fed into the establishment of specifically delineated modes of production.
In Chapter 3, I identify how Korea has been affected by global struggles and how production was restructured by elite-led passive revolutions throughout each form of state, from the Japanese colonialist government to the more recent ‘democratic’ knowledge economy. I link Korea’s stages of development to the historical periods Cox (1987) names Mixed Imperialisms, Pax Americana, and Neoliberalism. Because Korean modern history begins after the period of Pax Britannica, I contextualise development from Japanese occupation which occurred during the period of globally Mixed Imperialisms, a period that overlaps with Pax Americana. Pax Americana is then divided into two phases of effects upon South Korea. The first is a period of American occupation, and the second is the period of Korean developmental dictatorships.
Establishing the conditions for passive revolution, the chapter identifies whether these have been in place within South Korea. The chapter is a portrayal of the lack of consolidated hegemony in this semi-peripheral nation.
Along this historical timeline, I discuss both elite-led production restructuring and trasformismo, because these factors are indicative of governments’ efforts to force accumulation strategies forward via passive revolution. Labour relations over time show that workers have never been
completely pacified or consensual to state-led economic development initiatives despite elite projects of trasformismo, which include appeals to workers’ ‘common sense’ of how development should occur in their nation. Elites within Korea have attempted over time to rearticulate workers’ needs for such things as job stability and the legality of union status by using the technique of trasformismo, which has gradually given workers an increased responsibility for their own employability.
Trasformismo is noted by the molecular changes imposed upon workers’
lives and work environment. For this, I look at training programmes as one form of trasformismo that corresponds with elite groups’ interest in hegemonic control through the articulation of skills norms to workers.
Other forms of trasformismo can occur in an appeal for nationalism, a celebration of a work ethic, sympathetic policy-making, and other forms of concessions that rearticulate workers’ needs for a tolerable work environment and protection throughout the accelerated development trajectory that Korea has experienced. In particular, the need has been emphasised for workers to prepare themselves to be employable after the economic crisis eliminated millions of jobs. Trasformismo is consistently observed throughout Korean history in various guises, but the overarch- ing goal of the elite initiative is the same: to keep workers from a complete revolution that could overthrow the capitalist system of development Korean elites so rapidly and effectively embraced.
Finally, the fourth chapter is constructed around the first configuration of forces (see Figure 1), which I call ‘matrices’ for action, or ‘reciprocal relationships’ (Cox 1981: 138). Matrices offer a rigorous conceptual tool for the analysis of national responses to international hegemonic pressures and increasingly transnational relations in the battle for hegemony in the period of neoliberalism. Chapter 4 is a contemporary case study of post- 1997 crisis recovery and looks at the material, institutional and ideational restructuring occurring with IMF guidance. The chapter continues the discussion of passive revolution and gauges whether, despite democratis- ation, Korea is yet a nation in the siege of passive revolution. Korean elites have established increased relationships with international organisations for the restructuring of the Korean economy, during this time period, expanding the role of the TCN for Korean development. The chapter looks at the impact that the government’s choice to build Korea’s compatibility as a knowledge economy has had on VET and expectations placed on workers during reformist restructuring. Relations at this level require a process of incorporation at the superstructural level: ideologies at
this level require subjectivity of participants who ‘should’ become complete benefactors of those values that support a hegemonic system in order for the stabilisation of hegemony.
Here, Korea is seen as a participant to a certain extent in a global hegemonic project of neoliberalism, in that it has absorbed much of the ideologies of neoliberal capitalism and is accelerating this process in the era of restructuring following the economic crisis. Restructuring has involved deregulation of inward foreign direct investment (FDI), and financial, corporate and other institutional restructuring at the suggestion of the IMF that demands restructuring of the labour force itself. It has also involved the introduction of a new variety of skills within VET programmes simultaneous to the launch of KRIVET, a government- funded and directed research institute that manages VET curricula and qualification programmes. Looking at the three categories within Cox’s matrix gives a systematic portrayal of one nation’s response to the expansion of global capitalism.
In 1997 the ‘great labour struggle’ embodied its nickname and several attempts were made to bring labour into agreement with the accelerated reform initiatives taken on by the government, in cooperation with transnational agents. Chapter 4 does not neglect the subject of resistance to economic restructuring via an analysis of the boycott of President Kim Dae Jung’s Tripartite Commission, ongoing strikes and worker resistance to vocational training, which were introduced as part of the restructuring package at that time. The ‘common sense’ of decisions made to execute those plans in cooperation with international surveillance mechanisms must be convincing for their facilitation. However, restructuring has not been ‘hegemonically’ incorporated, because the government has applied tactics of trasformismo to counteract worker uprisings. Chapter 4 therefore unravels this process with empirical research on these initiatives.
Ultimately, my story of Korean development aims to paint a picture of a nation’s responses and the incorporation of new norms and the state’s requirements of the Korean population, for the incorporation into the global neoliberal hegemony, which has been conducted within non- hegemonic national circumstances of passive revolution. This analysis aims to throw light on a relatively untouched area of analysis within the Gramscian and the IPE literature alike.
The fifth chapter then concludes that the ascendance of liberal expansion of particular norms in a global context is in line with the second of Cox’s matrices. Cox’s matrices represent the configurations of forces in
the positioning of groups in a struggle for hegemonic power. Matrices are useful as an analytical tool toward understanding of how ideology is propagated through the various levels of material capabilities and institutions, and thus how historical blocs are formed. Activities that are represented by first matrix, including institution-building, the development of powerful ideas affecting the day-to-day, and the emergence and development of material capabilities can be seen as influential upon as well as reflective of historic structures that are represented by the second matrix. The first matrix clarifies to what extent hegemony ‘is’ an incontestable concept in the contemporary age.
Workers’ sacrifice to production in the semi-periphery is an oft told story, but production is usually viewed within very limited parameters.
Cox claims that:
Production … is to be understood in the broadest sense. It is not confined to the production of physical goods used or consumed. It covers the production and reproduction of physical goods used or consumed. It covers the production and reproduction of knowledge and of the social relations, morals and institutions that are pre- requisites to the production of physical goods.
(Cox 1989: 39) So the innovations of the following chapters do not restrict analyses to one aspect of production, but look at power relationships as the first stage of the process of production. Passive revolution is an ongoing struggle for control over production of goods and services, and requires production and re-production of particular ideologies and forms of knowledge for its own longevity. To prevent the oppressed from enacting a complete revolution, elites have led their own revolution, which over time in Korea has guided production and economic development.