Changes in the South Korean academic labor market and labor struggle

This study examines the characteristics of and changes in the Korean academic labor market and labor struggle. The strategies of three agents (government, capital, and universities) and the resulting response of labor drive the evolution of the academic labor market, which can be analyzed based on market stratification, employment status (tenured vs non-tenured and full-time vs part-time), wage level, and availability of performance-based systems. The growth of Korean universities starting in the late 1970s, forcing universities to recruit larger numbers of low wage part-time lecturers and resulting in the segmentation of the academic labor market. Following the 1987 democratization movement, part-time lecturers established organizations that called for improvements in labor conditions, but few things changed. After the 1997 financial crisis, capital and the government implemented a neoliberal agenda and the government and universities made wages flexible, and the new category of non-tenured full-time faculty started to replace tenured full-time faculty, creating a three-tiered labor market. This aggravated the hardship that part-time lecturers had faced and drove them to engage in the labor struggle. The Korean example shows that the academic labor market emerges, evolves, and changes through strategic interaction and strife among the parties involved, and reminds us of the importance of workers’ organizational capabilities and counterstrategies.