Korean Workers

Download Korean Workers PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501731777
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Korean Workers by : Hagen Koo

Download or read book Korean Workers written by Hagen Koo and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 development, Koo says. Korean workers forged their collective identity much more rapidly, however, than did their counterparts in other newly industrialized countries in East Asia. This book investigates how South Korea's once-docile and submissive workers reinvented themselves so quickly into a class with a distinct identity and consciousness. Based on sources ranging from workers' personal writings to union reports to in-depth interviews, this book is a penetrating analysis of the South Korean working-class experience. Koo reveals how culture and politics simultaneously suppressed and facilitated class formation in South Korea. With chapters exploring the roles of women, students, and church organizations in the struggle, the book reflects Koo's broader interest in the social and cultural dimensions of industrial transformation.

The Proletarian Gamble

Download The Proletarian Gamble PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822392291
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Proletarian Gamble by : Ken C. Kawashima

Download or read book The Proletarian Gamble written by Ken C. Kawashima and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-17 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Koreans constituted the largest colonial labor force in imperial Japan during the 1920s and 1930s. Caught between the Scylla of agricultural destitution in Korea and the Charybdis of industrial depression in Japan, migrant Korean peasants arrived on Japanese soil amid extreme instability in the labor and housing markets. In The Proletarian Gamble, Ken C. Kawashima maintains that contingent labor is a defining characteristic of capitalist commodity economies. He scrutinizes how the labor power of Korean workers in Japan was commodified, and how these workers both fought against the racist and contingent conditions of exchange and combated institutionalized racism. Kawashima draws on previously unseen archival materials from interwar Japan as he describes how Korean migrants struggled against various recruitment practices, unfair and discriminatory wages, sudden firings, racist housing practices, and excessive bureaucratic red tape. Demonstrating that there was no single Korean “minority,” he reveals how Koreans exploited fellow Koreans and how the stratification of their communities worked to the advantage of state and capital. However, Kawashima also describes how, when migrant workers did organize—as when they became involved in Rōsō (the largest Korean communist labor union in Japan) and in Zenkyō (the Japanese communist labor union)—their diverse struggles were united toward a common goal. In The Proletarian Gamble, his analysis of the Korean migrant workers' experiences opens into a much broader rethinking of the fundamental nature of capitalist commodity economies and the analytical categories of the proletariat, surplus populations, commodification, and state power.

Chinese Labor in a Korean Factory

Download Chinese Labor in a Korean Factory PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0804786127
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (47 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Chinese Labor in a Korean Factory by : Jaesok Kim

Download or read book Chinese Labor in a Korean Factory written by Jaesok Kim and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-10 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chinese Labor in a Korean Factorydraws on fieldwork in a multinational corporation (MNC) in Qingdao, China, and delves deep into the power dynamics at play between Korean management, Chinese migrant workers, local-level Chinese government officials, and Chinese local gangs. Anthropologist Jaesok Kim examines how governments, to attract MNCs, relinquish parts of their legal rights over these entities, while MNCs also give up portions of their rights as proxies of global capitalism by complying with local government guidelines to ensure infrastructure and cheap labor. This ethnography demonstrates how a particular MNC struggled with the pressure to be increasingly profitable while negotiating the clash of Korean and Chinese cultures, traditions, and classes on the factory floor of a garment corporation. Chinese Labor in a Korean Factory pays particular attention to common features of post-socialist countries. By analyzing the contentious collaboration between foreign management, factory workers, government officials, and gangs, this study contributes not only to the research on the politics of resistance but also to how global and local forces interact in concrete and surprising ways.

Korean Business Etiquette

Download Korean Business Etiquette PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Tuttle Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1462900674
Total Pages : 169 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (629 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Korean Business Etiquette by : Boye Lafayette De Mente

Download or read book Korean Business Etiquette written by Boye Lafayette De Mente and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2011-06-14 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Korean companies and technology have suddenly conquered the world. Samsung, Hyundai and LG are industry leaders and the global brands. Korean culture in the form of K-Pop music videos and "Korean Wave" films and TV dramas are watched everywhere from Tel Aviv to Singapore to Rio. Korean gourmet food trucks ply the streets of New York and LA, and kimchi has found a place on the shelves of well-stocked supermarkets around the world. With just a fraction of Japan's land area, less than half its population, and no natural resources--how have Korean companies managed to conquer the world in such a short period of time? What is the "secret sauce" of Korean business practices and companies that makes them so successful? To find out, readers need more than statistics and company profiles. Learning the basics about Korean culture, about Korean social etiquette and Korean business culture, will enable you to understand for the first time how Koreans think and why they work so effectively to achieve their goals. This understanding will enhance your own effectiveness in doing business with Koreans, or in competing with them--whether in Korea or elsewhere.

Heroes and Toilers

Download Heroes and Toilers PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231546092
Total Pages : 295 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Heroes and Toilers by : Cheehyung Harrison Kim

Download or read book Heroes and Toilers written by Cheehyung Harrison Kim and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In search of national unity and state control in the decade following the Korean War, North Korea turned to labor. Mandating rapid industrial growth, the government stressed order and consistency in everyday life at both work and home. In Heroes and Toilers, Cheehyung Harrison Kim offers an unprecedented account of life and labor in postwar North Korea that brings together the roles of governance and resistance. Kim traces the state’s pursuit of progress through industrialism and examines how ordinary people challenged it every step of the way. Even more than coercion or violence, he argues, work was crucial to state control. Industrial labor was both mode of production and mode of governance, characterized by repetitive work, mass mobilization, labor heroes, and the insistence on convergence between living and working. At the same time, workers challenged and reconfigured state power to accommodate their circumstances—coming late to work, switching jobs, fighting with bosses, and profiting from the black market, as well as following approved paths to secure their livelihood, resolve conflict, and find happiness. Heroes and Toilers is a groundbreaking analysis of postwar North Korea that avoids the pitfalls of exoticism and exceptionalism to offer a new answer to the fundamental question of North Korea’s historical development.

Women in the Sky

Download Women in the Sky PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501758276
Total Pages : 426 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Women in the Sky by : Hwasook Nam

Download or read book Women in the Sky written by Hwasook Nam and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-15 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women in the Sky examines Korean women factory workers' century-long activism, from the 1920s to the present, with a focus on gender politics both in the labor movement and in the larger society. It highlights several key moments in colonial and postcolonial Korean history when factory women commanded the attention of the wider public, including the early-1930s rubber shoe workers' general strike in Pyongyang, the early-1950s textile workers' struggle in South Korea, the 1970s democratic union movement led by female factory workers, and women workers' activism against neoliberal restructuring in recent decades. Hwasook Nam asks why women workers in South Korea have been relegated to the periphery in activist and mainstream narratives despite a century of persistent militant struggle and indisputable contributions to the labor movement and successful democracy movement. Women in the Sky opens and closes with stories of high-altitude sit-ins—a phenomenon unique to South Korea—beginning with the rubber shoe worker Kang Churyong's sit-in in 1931 and ending with numerous others in today's South Korean labor movement, including that of Kim Jin-Sook. In Women in the Sky, Nam seeks to understand and rectify the vast gap between the crucial roles women industrial workers played in the process of Korea's modernization and their relative invisibility as key players in social and historical narratives. By using gender and class as analytical categories, Nam presents a comprehensive study and rethinking of the twentieth-century nation-building history of Korea through the lens of female industrial worker activism.

The Korean Workers' Party

Download The Korean Workers' Party PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Hoover Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 188 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Korean Workers' Party by : Chong-Sik Lee

Download or read book The Korean Workers' Party written by Chong-Sik Lee and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on 1978 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Work and Leisure Policy for Korean Workers

Download Work and Leisure Policy for Korean Workers PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1443870269
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (438 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Work and Leisure Policy for Korean Workers by : KyungHee Kim

Download or read book Work and Leisure Policy for Korean Workers written by KyungHee Kim and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-10-21 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Working hours in Korea are considerably longer than those of most other countries throughout the world. The 40 hour workweek was eventually introduced in 2005, meaning that many people were finally no longer legally obliged to work on Saturdays or Sundays. Despite expectations that this legislation would have a remarkable impact on both society and each individual, Korea is still one of the highest ranked OECD countries in terms of the length of working hours. The reduced working hours have been filled with ‘overwork’ on weekdays or weekends. Given the large amount of time Koreans dedicate to work, concerns regarding leisure time and expenditure on leisure products are becoming increasingly significant. This book evolved from the initial questions ‘why do Koreans work so hard for long hours?’ and ‘don’t the Korean working population want to spend time on leisure?’, and comes to the conclusion that the lengthy working hours have a major impact on the ability of average Koreans to participate in leisure activities. In the process of solving its initial research questions, this book explores the historical formation of the working class, the labour market, and the relationship between work and leisure and leisure policy. It also conducts various forms of empirical research, such as questionnaire survey and interviews, and uses a range of different research methods, including case studies, comparative historical analysis and secondary data analysis. As such, this book will undoubtedly appeal to anyone wishing to understand more about Korean society, and to anyone with an interest in how a wide variety of research methods are brought together in real world research.

Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalization

Download Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalization PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1134112327
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (341 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalization by : Kevin Gray

Download or read book Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalization written by Kevin Gray and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2013-03-07 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most remarkable aspects of South Korea’s transition from impoverished post-colonial nation to fully-fledged industrialized democracy has been the growth of its independent and dynamic labour movement. Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalisation examines current trends and transformations within the Korean labour movement since the 1990s. It has been a common assumption that the ‘third wave’ of democratisation, the end of the Cold War, and the spread of neoliberal globalisation in the latter part of the 20th century have helped to create an environment in which organised labour is better placed to overcome bureaucratic national unionism and transform itself into a potential counter-globalisation movement. However, Kevin Gray argues that despite the apparent continued phenomena of labour militancy and the rhetoric of anti-neoliberalism, the mainstream independent labour movement in Korea has become increasingly institutionalised and bureaucratised into the new capitalist democracy. This process is demonstrated by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions’ experience of participation in various forms of policy making forums. Gray suggests that as a result, the KCTU has failed to mount an effective challenge against processes of neoliberal restructuring and concomitant social polarisation. The Korean experience provides an excellent case study for understanding the relationship between organised labour and globalisation. Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalisation will appeal to students and scholars of Korean studies and International Political Economy, as well as Asian politics and economics.

Organizing at the Margins

Download Organizing at the Margins PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : ILR Press
ISBN 13 : 0801458455
Total Pages : 245 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Organizing at the Margins by : Jennifer Jihye Chun

Download or read book Organizing at the Margins written by Jennifer Jihye Chun and published by ILR Press. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The realities of globalization have produced a surprising reversal in the focus and strategies of labor movements around the world. After years of neglect and exclusion, labor organizers are recognizing both the needs and the importance of immigrants and women employed in the growing ranks of low-paid and insecure service jobs. In Organizing at the Margins, Jennifer Jihye Chun focuses on this shift as it takes place in two countries: South Korea and the United States. Using comparative historical inquiry and in-depth case studies, she shows how labor movements in countries with different histories and structures of economic development, class formation, and cultural politics embark on similar trajectories of change. Chun shows that as the base of worker power shifts from those who hold high-paying, industrial jobs to the formerly "unorganizable," labor movements in both countries are employing new strategies and vocabularies to challenge the assault of neoliberal globalization on workers' rights and livelihoods. Deftly combining theory and ethnography, she argues that by cultivating alternative sources of "symbolic leverage" that root workers' demands in the collective morality of broad-based communities, as opposed to the narrow confines of workplace disputes, workers in the lowest tiers are transforming the power relations that sustain downgraded forms of work. Her case studies of janitors and personal service workers in the United States and South Korea offer a surprising comparison between converging labor movements in two very different countries as they refashion their relation to historically disadvantaged sectors of the workforce and expand the moral and material boundaries of union membership in a globalizing world.

To Live to Work

Download To Live to Work PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis To Live to Work by : Janice C. H. Kim

Download or read book To Live to Work written by Janice C. H. Kim and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linking economic and social historical research methods with special reference to the evolution of the industrial labor force, To Live to Work offers an account of the popular expansion of gender, labor, and political consciousnesses among working women in colonial Korea. While Korea's rapid industrial development throughout the twentieth century is one focus of this work, equal emphasis is given to interpreting the social and cultural consequences of modernization, such as the growth of cities and the rise of male and female labor forces. Special attention is given to the partitions in the labor market along the lines of gender, age, class, and nationality.

Militants or Partisans

Download Militants or Partisans PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0804781745
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (47 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Militants or Partisans by : Yoonkyung Lee

Download or read book Militants or Partisans written by Yoonkyung Lee and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The exceptional experiences of South Korea and Taiwan in combining high growth and liberal democracy in a relatively short and similar timetable have brought scholarly attention to their economic and political transformations. This new work looks specifically at the operation of workers and unions in the decades since labor-repressive authoritarian rule ended, bringing Taiwan, in particular, into the literature on comparative labor politics. South Korean labor unions are commonly described as militant and confrontational, for they often take to the streets in raucous protest. Taiwanese unions are seen as moderate and practical, primarily working through formal political processes to lobby their agendas. In exploring how and why these post-democratization states have come to breed such different types of labor politics, Yoonkyung Lee traces the roots of their differences to how unions and political parties operated under authoritarianism, and points to ways in which those legacies continue to be perpetuated. By pairing two cases with many similarities, Lee persuasively uncovers factors that explain the significant variation at play.

Working Better with Age

Download Working Better with Age PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Org. for Economic Cooperation & Development
ISBN 13 : 9789264201859
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (18 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Working Better with Age by : OECD

Download or read book Working Better with Age written by OECD and published by Org. for Economic Cooperation & Development. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Currently, Japan has the highest old-age dependency ratio of all OECD countries, with a ratio in 2017 of over 50 persons aged 65 and above for every 100 persons aged 20 to 64. This ratio is projected to rise to 79 per hundred in 2050. The rapid population ageing in Japan is a major challenge for achieving further increases in living standards and ensuring the financial sustainability of public social expenditure. However, with the right policies in place, there is an opportunity to cope with this challenge by extending working lives and making better use of older workers' knowledge and skills. This report investigates policy issues and discusses actions to retain and incentivise the elderly to work more by further reforming retirement policies and seniority-wages, investing in skills to improve productivity and keeping up with labour market changes through training policy, and ensuring good working conditions for better health with tackling long-hours working culture.

Making and Faking Kinship

Download Making and Faking Kinship PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801462827
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Making and Faking Kinship by : Caren Freeman

Download or read book Making and Faking Kinship written by Caren Freeman and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-22 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years leading up to and directly following rapprochement with China in 1992, the South Korean government looked to ethnic Korean (Chosǒnjok) brides and laborers from northeastern China to restore productivity to its industries and countryside. South Korean officials and the media celebrated these overtures not only as a pragmatic solution to population problems but also as a patriotic project of reuniting ethnic Koreans after nearly fifty years of Cold War separation. As Caren Freeman's fieldwork in China and South Korea shows, the attempt to bridge the geopolitical divide in the name of Korean kinship proved more difficult than any of the parties involved could have imagined. Discriminatory treatment, artificially suppressed wages, clashing gender logics, and the criminalization of so-called runaway brides and undocumented workers tarnished the myth of ethnic homogeneity and exposed the contradictions at the heart of South Korea's transnational kin-making project. Unlike migrant brides who could acquire citizenship, migrant workers were denied the rights of long-term settlement, and stringent quotas restricted their entry. As a result, many Chosǒnjok migrants arranged paper marriages and fabricated familial ties to South Korean citizens to bypass the state apparatus of border control. Making and Faking Kinship depicts acts of "counterfeit kinship," false documents, and the leaving behind of spouses and children as strategies implemented by disenfranchised people to gain mobility within the region's changing political economy.

Migrant Conversions

Download Migrant Conversions PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520341171
Total Pages : 186 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (23 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Migrant Conversions by : Erica Vogel

Download or read book Migrant Conversions written by Erica Vogel and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Peruvian migrant workers began arriving in South Korea in large numbers in the mid 1990s, eventually becoming one of the largest groups of non-Asians in the country. Migrant Conversions shows how despite facing unstable income and legal exclusion, migrants come to see Korea as an ideal destination. Some even see it as part of their divine destiny. Faced with looming departures, Peruvians develop cosmopolitan plans to transform themselves from economic migrants into pastors, lovers, and leaders. Set against the backdrop of 2008’s global financial crisis, Vogel explores the intersections of three types of conversions— money, religious beliefs and cosmopolitan plans—to argue that conversions are how migrants negotiate the meaning of their lives in a constantly changing transnational context. At the convergence of cosmopolitan projects spearheaded by the state, churches, and other migrants, Peruvians change the value and meaning of their migrations. Yet, in attempting to make themselves at home in the world and give their families more opportunities, they also create potential losses. As Peruvians help carve out social spaces, they create complex and uneven connections between Peru and Korea that challenge a global hierarchy of nations and migrants. Exploring how migrants, churches and nations change through processes of conversion reveals how globalization continues to impact people’s lives and ideas about their futures and pasts long after they have stopped moving, or that particular global moment has come to an end.

They Are Not Machines

Download They Are Not Machines PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351879529
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (518 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis They Are Not Machines by : Chun Soonok

Download or read book They Are Not Machines written by Chun Soonok and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-29 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The multi-faceted tensions created in developing countries between a burgeoning popular desire for democracy and the harsh imperatives of modernisation and industrialisation are nowhere more evident than in the so-called 'Asian tiger' nations. Of all those nascent economies, South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s stands pre-eminent for the magnitude and speed of its development and the extraordinarily oppressive and inhumane conditions that its labour force, mainly women and young girls, were compelled to endure. The author of this book was one of those young girls who suffered in the warren of sweat-shop garment factories in the slums of central Seoul. With little or no support from male co-workers, and despite their political naivety and the traditionally subordinate status of Korean females, the women textile and garment workers confronted the ruling authority at all levels. The author's mother was one of their leaders, and her eldest brother sacrificed his life for their cause. Despite appalling state-directed violence, betrayal by erstwhile colleagues, the chicanery and mendacity of employers' cooperatives and countless other setbacks, these uneducated and overworked women finally succeeded in forming the first fully democratic trade union in the history of Korea. Based on compelling personal accounts this is the first published account of the women's struggle, and it throws much light on the process of modernisation and industrialisation in Korea and beyond.

Building Ships, Building a Nation

Download Building Ships, Building a Nation PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295800275
Total Pages : 394 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (958 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Building Ships, Building a Nation by : Hwasook B. Nam

Download or read book Building Ships, Building a Nation written by Hwasook B. Nam and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-11-15 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building Ships, Building a Nation examines the rise and fall, during the rule of Park Chung Hee (1961-79), of the combative labor union at the Korea Shipbuilding and Engineering Corporation (KSEC), which was Korea's largest shipyard until Hyundai appeared on the scene in the early 1970s. Drawing on the union's extraordinary and extensive archive, Hwasook Nam focuses on the perceptions, attitudes, and discourses of the mostly male heavy-industry workers at the shipyard and on the historical and sociopolitical sources of their militancy. Inspired by legacies of labor activism from the colonial and immediate postcolonial periods, KSEC union workers fought for equality, dignity, and a voice for labor as they struggled to secure a living wage that would support families. The standard view of the South Korean labor movement sees little connection between the immediate postwar era and the period since the 1970s and largely denies positive legacies coming from the period of Japanese colonialism in Korea. Contrary to this conventional view, Nam charts the importance of these historical legacies and argues that the massive mobilization of workers in the postwar years, even though it ended in defeat, had a major impact on the labor movement in the following decades.