TY - JOUR
T1 - Chaebol and the Turn to Services
T2 - The Rise of a Korean Service Economy and the Dynamics of Self-Employment and Wage Work
AU - Shin, Solee I.
AU - Kim, Lanu
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the NUS FASS Startup Grant (WBS: R-111-000-150-133). The authors would like to thank the editor and three anonymous reviewers for the Journal of Contemporary Asia, Joonwoo Son, Kate Stovel, Bernd Wurpts, Stephanie Lee, Jennifer Branstad, Jake Rosenfeld, Sang-Hyop Lee and Gary Hamilton for helpful comments and suggestions on previous versions of this manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, © 2019 Journal of Contemporary Asia.
PY - 2020/5/26
Y1 - 2020/5/26
N2 - This article examines the growing insecurity for the Korean self-employed who were once responsible for a large proportion of domestic service operations. Since the 1980s, changing regional and domestic economic circumstances, the restructuring of regional and chaebol manufacturing operations and liberalisation of the domestic service economy had led to enterprise diversification into the distributive sectors and the systematisation of the domestic service economy. Conducting a historical analysis of service sector development and decomposing the Korean Economically Active Population survey (1989–2011), this article charts the process of Korea’s distributive sector development and its effect on the self-employed. It argues that chaebol systematisation of Korea’s service sector consolidated the domestic economy after 1997 and exerted pressure on the country’s self-employed. Large businesses formalised the service sector, displaced the self-employed, and instead generated mostly non-regular wage work, proletarianising a significant segment of the service workforce.
AB - This article examines the growing insecurity for the Korean self-employed who were once responsible for a large proportion of domestic service operations. Since the 1980s, changing regional and domestic economic circumstances, the restructuring of regional and chaebol manufacturing operations and liberalisation of the domestic service economy had led to enterprise diversification into the distributive sectors and the systematisation of the domestic service economy. Conducting a historical analysis of service sector development and decomposing the Korean Economically Active Population survey (1989–2011), this article charts the process of Korea’s distributive sector development and its effect on the self-employed. It argues that chaebol systematisation of Korea’s service sector consolidated the domestic economy after 1997 and exerted pressure on the country’s self-employed. Large businesses formalised the service sector, displaced the self-employed, and instead generated mostly non-regular wage work, proletarianising a significant segment of the service workforce.
KW - Self-employment
KW - chaebol
KW - retail
KW - service sector development
KW - wage labour
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U2 - 10.1080/00472336.2019.1565130
DO - 10.1080/00472336.2019.1565130
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85083740273
VL - 50
SP - 433
EP - 456
JO - Journal of Contemporary Asia
JF - Journal of Contemporary Asia
SN - 0047-2336
IS - 3
ER -