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Why Does Inequality in South Korea Continue to Rise?*

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Why Does Inequality in South Korea Continue to Rise?* Why Does Inequality in South Korea Continue to Rise?* Kwang-Yeong Shin Chung-Ang University Ju Kong Chung-Ang University This paper explores the causes of the increasing inequality in family income in South Korea, identifying globalization, population change, and family system change as major causes. Globalization, as an exogenous socio-economic factor, including the 1997 financial crisis and the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, has drastically transformed South Korea’s economic system and labor market, triggering the dissolution of the patriarchal family system through mass unemployment and increased precarious employment. Changes in the population and the family system, as endogenous socio-economic dynamics, have led to the rise of the single family through divorce and population ageing. These changes have contributed to the rapid increase in family income inequality because single families are vulnerable to the social risk of poverty and the elderly cohort has the highest rate of poverty due to underdeveloped social safety nets in South Korea. In the 2000s, these factors have simultaneously led to inequality in South Korea continuing to rise. Keywords: Inequality, poverty, globalization, divorce revolution, ageing * An early version of this paper was presented at the conference on Polarization in Divided Societies: Korea in a Global Context, held at the Central European University in Budapest, September 2-4, 2013, and at the Integrative Sessions RC/National Associations of the XVIII World Congress of Sociology in Yokohama, Japan, on July 16, 2014. I appreciate the comments made on the paper by the participants at both conferences and by the anonymous reviewers of the KJS. Direct all correspondence to Kwang-Yeong Shin, Department of Sociology, Chung-Ang University, 84 Seukseok-ro, Dongjak-gu, Seoul, 156-756, Korea (Email: [email protected], Telephone: 822-820-5180). Korean Journal of Sociology | December 2014, Vol. 48, No. 6 | 31-48 32 Korean Journal of Sociology INTRODUCTION This paper explores the rise in economic inequality in South Korea, with a focus on changes in the distribution of income between individuals and families after the 1997 financial crisis. In South Korea, a major U-turn in inequality has been evident since the early 1990s. The Gini coefficients for household income inequality and individual wage inequality had both decreased steadily up until the early 1990s, but then rose rapidly from 1992 onward, five years before the financial crisis in 1997 (see Figure 1). The 1997 financial crisis exacerbated the rising trend in income inequality through neoliberal economic reforms, policy measures to resolve the financial-cum-economic crisis, being implemented by the Korean government under the guidance of the IMF(Cho 2007; Heo and Kim 2000) . Another financial crisis in 2008, triggered by the subprime mortgage crisis in the U.S., made rolling back the increasing inequality more difficult. Furthermore, due to an inadequate social welfare system, social changes such as population ageing, the fastest in the world, and family dissolution that weakens Confucian patriarchy have contributed to the drastic rise in family income inequality in the 2000s. Although rising inequality since the late 20th century is not unique to South Korea (for example, see Blank 2011; Mann and Riley 2007; OECD 2011; Therborn 2006), the country has received much attention due to its dramatic increases in both inequality and the poverty rate in the 2000s (OECD 2012b:111-142; Ryu 2012; Shin 2013a). Like other newly industrialized countries in East Asia, South Korea has frequently been cited as an example of rapid economic growth with relatively low levels of inequality (Aghion et al. 1999; Amsden 1989; Birddall et Figure 1. Trends in Gini coefficients,1982-2010 Source | Ryu (2012:2). Why Does Inequality in South Korea Continue to Rise? 33 al. 1995; Wade 1990). Although South Korea has fully recovered from the economic crisis in terms of GDP per capita and dollar reserves, symptoms of social crisis such as the world’s highest rate of suicide and a rise in violent crime have been observed as aftermaths of the neoliberal economic reforms undertaken by both liberal and conservative governments. As a consequence, political discourses on inequality, called “discourses on social polarization,” are now significant public issues. The rise in inequality is an outcome of the complex economic, political, and social changes occurring in contemporary South Korea, reflecting the intersection of globalization with transformations in the population and the family system. In the following section, we will discuss the long-term trend in the Gini coefficient before and after the financial crises, with reference to the turning point in the U-shaped curve observed in the early 1990s. In the third section, the effects of the financial crisis and the subsequent neoliberal economic reforms on the distribution of income will be examined, including the rise of precarious work and the sharp increase in poverty resulting from deregulation of the labor market and increasing numbers of working poor. The fourth section deals with family and population transformation due to ageing and family dissolution, with the generation of new social risks and further poverty in the 2000s. These endogenous social factors, representing enormous social transformation in contemporary Korea and intensified by the neoliberal economic reforms, have contributed to the increased inequality and poverty. In the final section, we discuss the shortcomings of the government’s policies for preventing a worsening of income inequality in South Korea in the 2000s, as these continue to be based on old ideas relating to the redistribution effects of economic growth. TWO CRISES AND LABOR MARKET INEQUALITY The First Crisis in 1997 A year after Korea became a member of the OECD in 1996, the country experienced a financial crisis that began with a drastic plunge in the Korean won against the U.S. dollar in the foreign exchange market. The Korean government requested help from the IMF’s rescue fund to avoid its economy becoming insolvent. The IMF provided rescue funding to the Korean government that was conditional on the immediate implementation of neoliberal economic reforms, including liberalization of the financial market, privatization of the public sector, labor market flexibility, and reform of the governance structure of chaebol companies, aimed at dismantling the economic institutions, norms, and culture that had developed in the period of rapid economic growth under the authoritarian regime. The IMF’s bailout package, which was supported by the IMF, the World Bank, the Asia Development Bank, and the G7, fundamentally transformed the Korean economy, demolishing almost half of the 50 largest 34 Korean Journal of Sociology Figure 2. Trend in the Rate of Unemployment, 1985-1999 Source | Bank of Korea (1999:8). chaebols and creating more than one million newly unemployed in 1998. It was, in short, an attempt to abolish an economic system that was associated with crony capitalism, in which state intervention played a key role in the management of firms in the private sector, and to reinvigorate market forces that would be open to global financial capital.1 The post-crisis neoliberal reforms imposed by the IMF constituted a type of shock therapy in which market liberalization and deregulation of the labor market were introduced simultaneously, without consideration of their social effects on the distribution of income. The large chaebol companies were immediately restructured through corporate reorganization and major deals to swap affiliates between chaebols to achieve specialization of production. The restructuring was accompanied by massive layoffs to downsize the companies. By 1998, there were more than 100 thousand newly unemployed each month, resulting in a total unemployed figure of almost two million. Figure 2 shows the trend in the unemployment rate and the non-accelerating wage rate of unemployment (NAWRU), which adjusts the unemployment rate according to changes in the business cycle. The rate of unemployment skyrocketed immediately following the financial crisis, rising from 2.1 percent in October 1997 to 8.8 percent in February 1998. Even after adjusting for the business cycle, the rate of unemployment as measured by the NAWRU also rose rapidly. The size of the labor force decreased by more than 2.5 million, from 21,373,000 in February 1997 to 18,873,000 in February 1999. Those who were not in the labor force, due to 1 For a more detailed explanation of the nature of the economic system developed under the authoritarian regime, see Shin (1999). Why Does Inequality in South Korea Continue to Rise? 35 Table 1. Trends in the Rate of Unemployment by Age Group (%) 1985 1990 1995 1997 1998 1991–1995 Below 25 years 10.0 9.0 6.3 7.7 15.9 16.9 (1.7) (3.3) (-2.8) (-4.6) (-21.4) (-6.6) Above 25 years 2.8 1.7 1.4 1.9 5.8 6.8 (4.0) (3.0) (3.4) (2.1) (-3.4) (-1.6) Total 4.0 2.5 2.0 2.6 6.8 7.8 (3.7) (3.0) (2.7) (1.4) (-5.3) (-2.1) Note | ( ) refers to the rate of change compared with the previous year. Source | Bank of Korea (1999:7). the failure to obtain a job, were not even included in the government’s unemployment rate calculations; if these people were to be included, the number of people who were out of work would exceed four million. Elderly workers and female workers were the main layoff targets. Under the seniority wage system, older workers with higher wages were most vulnerable to mass layoff as employers tried to reduce labor costs. Female workers were vulnerable because the male bread-winner model was strongly supported by employers. Those who were dismissed from the labor market had three choices: unemployment, self-employment, and remaining out of the economically active population.
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