Rewarding Frugality: Ascetic Nationalism in Developing South Korea

This article considers frugality as an important political praxis in South Korea’s Park Chung Hee period (1961–79), examining “frugality awards” that encouraged bureaucrats and citizens to practice “ascetic nationalism” in daily life contexts. The authoritarian state attempted to institutionalize frugality, as spending less and saving more became a visual indicator of one’s dedication, sacrifice, and alignment with the state’s collective vision of fastpaced economic growth. Seemingly mundane activities such as switching off lights and making fewer phone calls became a cultural prescription of the state, with award recommendations evaluating how a civil servant, his family, and their neighbors performed these activities. To become frugal, people strove to control their immediate environment, manage resources, and perform thrift. Administering frugality became a “fingertip” project of the authoritarian state. The state’s collective claims on frugality existed in ambivalent relation to capitalist forces, however, as one of the incentives to perform frugality became collecting the reward money, compromising its goals from the inside out.