International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS)

What became known as the Asian Debt Crisis, a four-year period beginning in November 1997, had profound effects on South Korean society--unprecedented mass lay-offs, homelessness, and nationwide socio-economic chaos. The ensuing International Monetary Fund bailout of the economy was seen as the nation's worst humiliation since the Japanese occupation in 1910 and the later U.S. occupation after the Korean War. In the present work, Jesook Song shows that the reforms initiated by the Kim Dae Jung government in response to this crisis created the first welfare state in the nation's history; and, unlike most other welfare states, South Korea's was based on neoliberal principles without ever having passed through a more traditional state welfare system in the classic liberal sense. Moreover, these reforms gave rise to a welfare system that attempted to discriminate between "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, discriminations that often reflected gender biases. Song demonstrates the deep extent to which neoliberal ideas became embedded in the daily lives and routine practices of liberal individuals.

Song tracks the use of neoliberal concepts throughout society, among them, "the IMF homeless" (a reflection of rising unemployment), "family breakdown" (a widespread sense of moral deterioration), "new intellectuals" (a new generation of workers with high-tech information skills who had become redundant in the job market but had the potential to lead a transformed post-crisis nation), and "venture capital/venture companies" (referring to new investment and business opportunities with high risk, high return). With the breakdowns caused by the crisis, this new vocabulary of neoliberal terms and concepts operated as a kind of governing technology of reform. Through interviews with government managers, social reform activists, and homeless people, Song examines major sites of homelessness and outlines the construction of the government's homeless policy, which favored assistance to men over women. She examines how non-governmental sectors (mass media, popular culture, and academic experts) represented the homeless and established "family breakdown" as a technique of crisis management that privileged the male breadwinner over the "irresponsible" female housewife to the degree that homeless women became invisible to the public and to policy makers. Interviews with un(der)employed young adults show how they were not only subjects of governmental actions but also active participants in the process of promoting welfare citizenship for deserving youth.