SOCIAL REPRODUCTION IN SOUTH KOREA: THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN THE FIELDS OF EDUCATION, LABOR, AND HOUSING

This dissertation seeks to address the question of how the state has contributed to social reproduction in South Korea. Korea has achieved rapid economic growth and the transition to electoral democracy. However, many Koreans call their country “Hell-Joseon” because they think that the contemporary Korean society is hell-like and class-based. There used to be a chain of strategies for Koreans to climb the social hierarchy. They poured their resources to send their children to prestigious universities. Then, these college graduates had a higher probability of getting stable and well-paying jobs. Finally, the families could (re)produce more wealth by investing the newly acquired economic capital, especially in the housing market. This social mobility, however, has gradually disappeared since the 1990s. Against this background, I investigate how the state’s policies in the education, labor, and housing fields has contributed to the disappearance of social mobility and making of contemporary Koreans, using Bourdieu’s theory on social reproduction and the state. Main findings of this dissertation are as follows: As the state set economic growth as the supreme goal, policies in the three fields also purported to increase economic growth and headed in a way that the social actors with more economic capital would be at an advantage. With the abolition of the private education ban and changes of entrance systems to higher education, economic capital, mostly stored in the form of housing and other real estates in Korea, has become an important resource to win the field of education. The state’s policies about labor union, wage, and labor flexibilization led to less employment protection and less income for average Koreans. However, the increase of housing price has been much faster than the increase of income, as the state approached housing as a commodity to sell and implemented policies to facilitate sales of apartment units. The ownership of housing in certain areas strongly has affected the volume of economic capital and probability of social success. As a result, social mobility has gradually disappeared and Koreans, who embody the dominant’s ideas of competition, economic stability, and discrimination about the socially disadvantaged, have been reproduced through their strategic practices to win and survive through the fields’ transformation.