Hagen Koo
Biographic Data
| ID | 3633950 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hagen Koo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hagen |
| FAMILY NAME | Koo |
| SIGNATURE | KOO H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 278 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Privilege and Anxiety: The Korean Middle Class in the Global Era
"Privilege and Anxiety is about the transformation of the Korean middle class over the past four decades. The Korean middle class grew rapidly during the period of industrial development and provided a social base for the political stability and democratic transition in the 1980s. But it began to decline abruptly from the mid-1990s and is now widely believed to be in deep economic and social crisis. Hagen Koo argues that, rather than focusing on …
Privilege and Anxiety: The Korean Middle Class in the Global Era
This book examines what has happened to the Korean middle class in the era of neoliberal globalization and demonstrates that global economic change brought more profound changes than mere economic decline and shrinking size to this class. Globalization has inserted an axis of polarization into the middle class, separating a small minority that benefits from the globalized economy from the large majority that suffers from it. This internal differe…
Rising Inequality and Shifting Class Boundaries in South Korea in the Neo-Liberal Era
Having maintained a relatively equitable pattern of income distribution throughout the period of rapid economic development, South Korea has experienced a drastic increase of inequality over the past two decades. This article examines Korea's income distribution pattern and identifies several structural cleavages and mechanisms in the economy that account for the rising inequality and then considers various class structural implications of this c…
Strong State and Contentious Society
The Interplay of State, Social Class, and World System in East Asian Development: The Cases of South Korea and Taiwan
5. The Interplay of State, Social Class, and World System in East Asian Development: The Cases of South Korea and Taiwan was published in The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialism on page 165
State and Society in Contemporary Korea
Rethinking Working-Class Formation in South Korea: A Reflective Essay
The Global Middle Class: How Is It Made, What Does It Represent
One important phenomenon to be observed in the world today is the rapid growth of the middle classes in emerging economies, especially in Asia. This development called for a new concept, the global middle class. The purpose of this paper is twofold: one is to examine the ways this term is currently used and clarify its meaning, and the other is to examine one empirical case of South Korea and highlight important processes involved in the making o…
Working Class Formation in Taiwan: Fractured Solidarity in State-Owned Enterprises, 1945-2012
Social contradictions of the Korean state
The Korean Stratification System: Continuity and Change
The Changing Faces of Inequality in South Korea in the Age of Globalization
The social and cultural landscape of inequality in South Korea has changed significantly in the recent period. This article investigates the emerging pattern of social inequality in South Korea since the financial crisis in 1997–1998, focusing on changes in three major areas of social life: work, consumption, and education. The general trend of change has been increasing job insecurity for white-collar workers, the rise of consumption as a domina…
Wild geese fathers' and a globalised family strategy for education in Korea
This article examines one interesting form of global householding practised among Korean middle-class families: transnational families split across oceans for the purpose of children's early education, called kirogi families. Based on statistical data and interviews with a small sample of kirogi fathers, this study describes the rapid growth in the numbers of Korean students going abroad for early English education and examines the main motivatio…
Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation
Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation
Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation
Forty years of rapid industrialization have transformed millions of South Korean peasants and their sons and daughters into urban factory workers. Hagen Koo explores the experiences of this first generation of industrial workers and describes its struggles to improve working conditions in the factory and to search for justice in society. The working class in South Korea was born in a cultural and political environment extremely hostile to its dev…
The Dilemmas of Empowered Labor in Korea: Korean Workers in the Face of Global Capitalism
In January 1997, one decade after the eruption of a huge wave of worker protests in the summer of 1987, Korean workers caught the world's attention again by staging a massive nationwide strike in protest against newly passed labor laws. The controversial new laws were designed to give employers more power to lay off employees, make it easier to hire temporary workers or strike replacements, and put off allowing multiple unions to be formed at a g…
Modernity in South Korea: An Alternative Narrative
A large literature on South Korean economic development has presented one dominant narrative on Korean modernity, essentially that of a smooth and peaceful process of modernity brought about by the immutable logic of the market and by a gradual expansion of the middle class and civil society. This essay presents another narrative which stresses the role of social struggles in this process. Korea's transition to modernity has been marked by a high…
State and Society in Contemporary Korea
Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation.Peter Evans
State and Society in Contemporary Korea
Industrial Transformation and Proletarianization in Taivvan
The rapid industrialization that has occurred in Taiwan over the past three decades has been accompanied by an extraordinary scale and pace of proletarianization. This paper analyzes the pattern of Taiwan's proletarianization and examines the demographic and social characteristics of the newly emerged working class in Taiwan. Distinctive features of Taiwan's industrialization are its geographically dispersed pattern of development and the predomi…
Middle classes, democratization, and class formation: The case of South Korea
Emerging Class Order and Social Conflict in South Korea
Labor in the political economy of East Asian Industrialization
As with the Japanese "miracle," the rapid growth of the East Asian newly industrializing countries (NICs)—South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore—has spawned a new literature seeking the taproot of economic success. While neoclassical economists have focused on the pursuit of export-led growth and market-oriented policies that "got the prices right," a new revisionism has demonstrated the extent of state intervention in Singapore, Taiwan, a…
Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation
Forty years of rapid industrialization have transformed millions of South Korean peasants and their sons and daughters into urban factory workers. Hagen Koo explores the experiences of this first generation of industrial workers and describes its struggles to improve working conditions in the factory and to search for justice in society. The working class in South Korea was born in a cultural and political environment extremely hostile to its dev…
Wild geese fathers' and a globalised family strategy for education in Korea
This article examines one interesting form of global householding practised among Korean middle-class families: transnational families split across oceans for the purpose of children's early education, called kirogi families. Based on statistical data and interviews with a small sample of kirogi fathers, this study describes the rapid growth in the numbers of Korean students going abroad for early English education and examines the main motivatio…
The Changing Faces of Inequality in South Korea in the Age of Globalization
The social and cultural landscape of inequality in South Korea has changed significantly in the recent period. This article investigates the emerging pattern of social inequality in South Korea since the financial crisis in 1997–1998, focusing on changes in three major areas of social life: work, consumption, and education. The general trend of change has been increasing job insecurity for white-collar workers, the rise of consumption as a domina…
The Global Middle Class: How Is It Made, What Does It Represent
One important phenomenon to be observed in the world today is the rapid growth of the middle classes in emerging economies, especially in Asia. This development called for a new concept, the global middle class. The purpose of this paper is twofold: one is to examine the ways this term is currently used and clarify its meaning, and the other is to examine one empirical case of South Korea and highlight important processes involved in the making o…
Middle classes, democratization, and class formation: The case of South Korea
The political economy of income distribution in South Korea: The impact of the state's industrialization policies
The Dilemmas of Empowered Labor in Korea: Korean Workers in the Face of Global Capitalism
In January 1997, one decade after the eruption of a huge wave of worker protests in the summer of 1987, Korean workers caught the world's attention again by staging a massive nationwide strike in protest against newly passed labor laws. The controversial new laws were designed to give employers more power to lay off employees, make it easier to hire temporary workers or strike replacements, and put off allowing multiple unions to be formed at a g…
Class and Income Inequality in Korea
This paper seeks to contribute to recent efforts to improve status attainment models by introducing class categories or labor market segmentation. The research reported here replicates and extends Wright and Perrone's (1977) analysis of class categories and income inequality in the United States in the context of a rapidly industrializing society. The results confirm that Marxist class categories are as consequential as occupational status in exp…
Rising Inequality and Shifting Class Boundaries in South Korea in the Neo-Liberal Era
Having maintained a relatively equitable pattern of income distribution throughout the period of rapid economic development, South Korea has experienced a drastic increase of inequality over the past two decades. This article examines Korea's income distribution pattern and identifies several structural cleavages and mechanisms in the economy that account for the rising inequality and then considers various class structural implications of this c…
Modernity in South Korea: An Alternative Narrative
A large literature on South Korean economic development has presented one dominant narrative on Korean modernity, essentially that of a smooth and peaceful process of modernity brought about by the immutable logic of the market and by a gradual expansion of the middle class and civil society. This essay presents another narrative which stresses the role of social struggles in this process. Korea's transition to modernity has been marked by a high…
Labor in the political economy of East Asian Industrialization
As with the Japanese "miracle," the rapid growth of the East Asian newly industrializing countries (NICs)—South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore—has spawned a new literature seeking the taproot of economic success. While neoclassical economists have focused on the pursuit of export-led growth and market-oriented policies that "got the prices right," a new revisionism has demonstrated the extent of state intervention in Singapore, Taiwan, a…
Small Entrepreneurship in a Developing Society: Patterns of Labor Absorption and Social Mobility
Observing a plethora of small entrepreneurial activities in the cities of developing countries, this paper examines the social significance of these occupational activities. The data gathered from a Korean city suggest that small entrepreneurship provides occupational niches to marginal migrant workers as well as an alternative to the bureaucratic channel of upward social mobility for a significant proportion of urban residents. These findings ar…
Economic Development and Women's Work in a Newly Industrializing Country: The Case of Korea
Migration, the Urban Informal Sector, and Earnings in the Philippines
This study investigates several issues pertaining to the urban informal sector and cityward migration in Philippine cities. The analysis of cross-sectional national demographic data reveals the four major patterns. First, the pattern of migrants' participation in the urban labor market varies greatly between male and female migrants. The widely held notion that migrants tend to enter the urban occupational structure through the informal sector se…
Rethinking Working-Class Formation in South Korea: A Reflective Essay
Industrial Transformation and Proletarianization in Taivvan
The rapid industrialization that has occurred in Taiwan over the past three decades has been accompanied by an extraordinary scale and pace of proletarianization. This paper analyzes the pattern of Taiwan's proletarianization and examines the demographic and social characteristics of the newly emerged working class in Taiwan. Distinctive features of Taiwan's industrialization are its geographically dispersed pattern of development and the predomi…
World System, Class, and State in Third World Development: Toward an Integrative Framework of Political Economy
The currently popular political economy approach to Third World development is divided in terms of three primary foci of analysis: (1) dependency or the world economic system; (2) the internal class structure and class struggles; and (3) the peripheral capitalist state. This article examines the basic ideas involved in these three approaches and seeks to integrate them into a single framework. The basic assumption of this framework is that the pa…
Centre-Periphery Relations and Marginalization: Empirical Analysis of the Dependency Model of Inequality in Peripheral Nations
Small Entrepreneurship in a Developing Society: Patterns of Labor Absorption and Social Mobility
Observing a plethora of small entrepreneurial activities in the cities of developing countries, this paper examines the social significance of these occupational activities. The data gathered from a Korean city suggest that small entrepreneurship provides occupational niches to marginal migrant workers as well as an alternative to the bureaucratic channel of upward social mobility for a significant proportion of urban residents. These findings ar…
Rural-Urban Migration and Social Mobility in Third World Metropolises: A Cross-National Study
Two implicit models have provided the major frameworks for rural-urban migration research in developing societies: one model, the underprivilege model, predicts that rural migrants enter the bottom rungs of the urban occupational structure and suffer inequality in status attainment in the city; the other model, the push up model, suggests that the influx of rural migrants provides a structural impetus to upward social mobility for the urban nativ…
Occupational Mobility and Kinship Assistance: A Study of Chinese Immigrants in Chicago
Class and Income Inequality in Korea
This paper seeks to contribute to recent efforts to improve status attainment models by introducing class categories or labor market segmentation. The research reported here replicates and extends Wright and Perrone's (1977) analysis of class categories and income inequality in the United States in the context of a rapidly industrializing society. The results confirm that Marxist class categories are as consequential as occupational status in exp…
Access to Power: Politics and the Urban Poor in Developing Nations
Centre-Periphery Relations and Marginalization: Empirical Analysis of the Dependency Model of Inequality in Peripheral Nations
Economic Development and Women's Work in a Newly Industrializing Country: The Case of Korea
Migration, the Urban Informal Sector, and Earnings in the Philippines
This study investigates several issues pertaining to the urban informal sector and cityward migration in Philippine cities. The analysis of cross-sectional national demographic data reveals the four major patterns. First, the pattern of migrants' participation in the urban labor market varies greatly between male and female migrants. The widely held notion that migrants tend to enter the urban occupational structure through the informal sector se…
The political economy of income distribution in South Korea: The impact of the state's industrialization policies
World System, Class, and State in Third World Development: Toward an Integrative Framework of Political Economy
The currently popular political economy approach to Third World development is divided in terms of three primary foci of analysis: (1) dependency or the world economic system; (2) the internal class structure and class struggles; and (3) the peripheral capitalist state. This article examines the basic ideas involved in these three approaches and seeks to integrate them into a single framework. The basic assumption of this framework is that the pa…
Emerging Class Order and Social Conflict in South Korea
Labor in the political economy of East Asian Industrialization
As with the Japanese "miracle," the rapid growth of the East Asian newly industrializing countries (NICs)—South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore—has spawned a new literature seeking the taproot of economic success. While neoclassical economists have focused on the pursuit of export-led growth and market-oriented policies that "got the prices right," a new revisionism has demonstrated the extent of state intervention in Singapore, Taiwan, a…
Middle classes, democratization, and class formation: The case of South Korea
Industrial Transformation and Proletarianization in Taivvan
The rapid industrialization that has occurred in Taiwan over the past three decades has been accompanied by an extraordinary scale and pace of proletarianization. This paper analyzes the pattern of Taiwan's proletarianization and examines the demographic and social characteristics of the newly emerged working class in Taiwan. Distinctive features of Taiwan's industrialization are its geographically dispersed pattern of development and the predomi…
State and Society in Contemporary Korea
State and Society in Contemporary Korea
Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation.Peter Evans
Modernity in South Korea: An Alternative Narrative
A large literature on South Korean economic development has presented one dominant narrative on Korean modernity, essentially that of a smooth and peaceful process of modernity brought about by the immutable logic of the market and by a gradual expansion of the middle class and civil society. This essay presents another narrative which stresses the role of social struggles in this process. Korea's transition to modernity has been marked by a high…
The Dilemmas of Empowered Labor in Korea: Korean Workers in the Face of Global Capitalism
In January 1997, one decade after the eruption of a huge wave of worker protests in the summer of 1987, Korean workers caught the world's attention again by staging a massive nationwide strike in protest against newly passed labor laws. The controversial new laws were designed to give employers more power to lay off employees, make it easier to hire temporary workers or strike replacements, and put off allowing multiple unions to be formed at a g…
Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation
Forty years of rapid industrialization have transformed millions of South Korean peasants and their sons and daughters into urban factory workers. Hagen Koo explores the experiences of this first generation of industrial workers and describes its struggles to improve working conditions in the factory and to search for justice in society. The working class in South Korea was born in a cultural and political environment extremely hostile to its dev…
Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation
Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation
Wild geese fathers' and a globalised family strategy for education in Korea
This article examines one interesting form of global householding practised among Korean middle-class families: transnational families split across oceans for the purpose of children's early education, called kirogi families. Based on statistical data and interviews with a small sample of kirogi fathers, this study describes the rapid growth in the numbers of Korean students going abroad for early English education and examines the main motivatio…
The Korean Stratification System: Continuity and Change
The Changing Faces of Inequality in South Korea in the Age of Globalization
The social and cultural landscape of inequality in South Korea has changed significantly in the recent period. This article investigates the emerging pattern of social inequality in South Korea since the financial crisis in 1997–1998, focusing on changes in three major areas of social life: work, consumption, and education. The general trend of change has been increasing job insecurity for white-collar workers, the rise of consumption as a domina…
Political science (29 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Economics (17 works) · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Development economics (11 works) · Geography (10 works) · Politics (10 works) · Asian Industrial and Economic Development (9 works)