From the financial crisis to the next eleven: limits and contradictions in the Korean process of capital accumulation

Abstract

This paper examines the South Korean economic crisis of 1997–1998 and the subsequent recovery. For this, it first analyses the specific characteristics and long-term development of the process capital accumulation there. The paper claims that, as in the rest of East Asia, capital accumulation in Korea has, since the mid-1960s, revolved around the production of specific industrial goods for world markets using the relatively cheap and disciplined local workforce for simplified labour-processes as appendage of the machine or in manual assembly operations. This modality of accumulation resulted from changes in the forms of production of relative surplus-value on a global scale through the development of computerisation and robotisation, and the concomitant transformation in the productive attributes of the collective worker of large-scale industry. The 1997–1998 financial-cum-economic crisis, as well as the foundations and characteristics of the subsequent recovery, are understood as manifestations of the contradictory dynamics of this specific form of capitalist development.