Neo-Liberal Methods of Labour Repression: Privatised Violence and Dispossessive Litigation in Korea

Delegating violence in democracies: embedded developmentalism and persistence of labor repression in South Korea

“…The Park government continued underscoring voluntary industrial relations (nosajayul) and lawful bargaining (chunpo ˘pgyoso ˘p) while pushing through a series of neo-liberal labor reform packages including the loosening of lay-off conditions and extending of minimum terms for temporary employment, which made the demands of the workers in disputes illegal (No, 2014). 16 Although the blatant violence of PSSCs declined due to the revised Security Services Industries Act in 2013 17 and the political pressure for police intervention (Hankyoreh, 27 September 2016: 12), however, labor disputes, particularly in small-and-medium-sized firms, have been mainly handled by PSSCs contracted with employers who want to avoid direct negotiations with the protesters while responding to them with dispossessive litigation (Lee, 2021). 18 The number of lawsuits employers filed against unionists increased continuously, and 10.3% of them experienced physical violence by the company (Pak et al, 2020).…”

“…Some further find that it has been primarily driven by profit-seeking private actors, which would eventually undermine the basis of state authority (Markusen, 2003; Verkuil, 2007). This view captures the wave of neo-liberal privatization since the 1990s and how it has influenced the transformation of industrial relations (Lee, 2021).…”