Sociologist and political scientist Yoonkyung Lee provides a much-needed comparative study of Korean and Taiwanese labor politics in this book. Korea and Taiwan share similar postcolonial experiences, a successful high-growth economy under authoritarian rule followed by democratic transition beginning in the late 1980s. Labor politics in these two countries, however, show a clear divergence into what the author conceptualizes as “militant unionism” in South Korea and “partisan unionism” in Taiwan (p. 13). The study focuses on the successes and failures of the two varieties of unionism in democratic reform politics after 1987.
After laying out theoretical points in the introduction and chapter 2, Lee examines the historical origins and political processes that have produced this divergence in Korea and Taiwan (chapter 3), and analyzes political party-union linkages, the central thrust of her argument, in chapter 4. Chapter 5 examines the outcome of union mobilization, focusing on four major areas of contention: “recognition of union rights, wage increases, workweek reductions, and job security/anti-privatization” (p. 103). A concise summary of the book's arguments and theoretical contribution follows in the conclusion.
Lee situates her work in a broader context of labor militancy studies and scholarship on democracy and democratic representation, and seeks to “bring Asian workers back” as an important “political actor” in the politics of democratic transition (pp. 4, 141). Refuting “structural” and “organizational” explanations of the divergent behaviors of union movements, Lee presents “a political perspective” that highlights the pivotal role democratic institutions, especially political parties, play in channeling workers’ grievances into democratic political processes. Students of democracy, she argues, should also recognize the centrality of labor politics, especially in a polity transitioning from authoritarian rule into democracy.
According to Lee's political account, in South Korea the authoritarian legacy of exclusion and the absence of partisan representation of worker interests drove unions into confrontational strategies outside formal political processes. In Taiwan, the salience of the mainlander-Taiwanese ethnic division in politics produced a particular control strategy of the Guomindang government that was geared toward incorporation of the populace. The result was a dualistic economic and political system that allowed political space at local levels and encouraged unionization, especially at large state-owned enterprises. Taiwanese workers, perceiving workplace grievances primarily as an “ethnic injustice” issue, became accustomed to solving their problems through partisan connections.
Comparing the actual union gains of Korean “militants” and Taiwanese “partisans” in the two decades following democratization, Lee raises an important and thought-provoking question: “whether union militancy is a fair representation of union strength” (p. 7). Her answer is no. Korean workers, despite fierce struggles, have not achieved much in terms of policy concessions on key issues of job security and labor market flexibility. Meanwhile, the much less combative Taiwanese workers obtained significant protective measures through party politics. Seen that way, continued labor militancy in Korea appears as a reflection of “party failures and democratic imperfections” (p. 8).
Using statistical data, Lee convincingly demolishes certain myths about the differences between Korean and Taiwanese union movements and instead shows “remarkable similarities” in the structural and organizational conditions of the two union movements (chapter 2). She makes a convincing case that the divergence between the two movements can be explained in large part by different authoritarian legacies, which produced strong party-union linkages in Taiwan and a lack of such linkages in Korea. Lee hammers home the importance of partisan politics throughout the book, but I ended up wanting to balance her political account with other important elements not discussed in the book, including the impact of global economic forces, the particularities of domestic economic structure, and cultural factors, including status issues, which may have shaped interests, perceptions, and strategies of state, party, and union actors in Korea and Taiwan as much as party politics.
Authoritarian legacies and resulting party patronage systems are certainly important in shaping post-authoritarian labor politics, as Lee shows, but the question is to what degree they determined the strength of the partnership between major parties and union movements. In addition to various institutional factors, Lee's explanation of Korean parties’ failure to adopt labor's cause centers on the power of regionalism, which prevented workers from engaging in class voting behavior. Here a more extensive discussion of the political and social context that helped marginalize the class issue in electoral politics might have been helpful. In the same vein, a discussion of structural factors, including the nature and intensity of the neoliberal constraints each country has faced, might have enhanced the power of the author's political explanation.
The weakest part of the book is the historical account of the Korean labor movement offered in the early chapters, which tends to flatten a rich and dynamic history into a rather simple notion of exclusion and repression. The exclusionary politics of the 1970s and 1980s is applied to the whole span of the post-Korean War period, and interesting similarities between the incorporation-oriented Guomindang control strategy the author describes and the Rhee era (1948–60), and, to a lesser extent, Park Chung Hee-era labor policies, are left unexplored. Park Chung Hee's labor control policy and party and mobilization politics evolved in more complicated ways than the author's narration does justice to, as recent studies of Korean labor history have shown.
Overall, however, the book serves as a good primer on the labor and democratic politics of Korea and Taiwan and makes a valuable contribution to Asian area studies, as well as the studies of labor and democracy in general.
