Korean Suicide Protest as Anomic Response to Labour Disempowerment

Abstract

The article argues that the growth of worker protest suicide in the 2000s in South Korea is relatedto current neo-liberal political-economic conditions in Korea, including: 1) the growing crisis facingincreasingly irregular and part-time workers, and 2) the construction of an anti-labour legal regimegiving Korean workers few legal options for collective engagement in workplace actions. Legalobstacles facing labour activists include both business and state actors increasingly usingcompensation lawsuits and provisional seizure tactics to seize the assets of unions and strikingworkers. As the Korean labour movement finds itself increasingly marginalised by the cripplinganti-labour legal innovations of the last two decades, labour resistance has increasingly manifestedin extreme forms of individualistic protests, such as worker suicide. Though products of anomicdespair, these suicides retain the capacity to inspire collective labour action and to leverage change.KEYWORDS: labour movement; protest suicide; provisional seizure; neo-liberalism; Korea

Expected Sacrifices and Inescapable Oppressions: A Durkheimian Lens in Analyzing Historical Cases of Suicide in Korea

“…In 21st century South Korea, Ben Park contends that South Koreans of all ages experience anomie due to the uncertainty and tension that is caused by the lessening influence of traditional collective values in society, in favor of individualism. 14 In contrast, fatalistic suicides are suicides by those who suffer from excessive regulation and discipline. 15 cultural expectations of womanhood denote fatalism.…”