The increase of ultra-short-time workers and the spread of 'Fragmented Work' in Korea

A gender analysis of changes in labour policy and the structure of irregular employment from the 'Asian Financial Crisis' of 1998 to 2022

South Korea is one of the most socially polarised societies in the world. This polarisation, which entrenched during the rapid economic growth known as the 'Miracle on the Han River', has gained further momentum with the rapid de-regularisation of labour since the ' Asian Financial Crisis' of 1998, and has now become one of the most serious problems facing Korean society. The de-regularisation of labour has led to a rapid increase in the number of precarious workers with insecure employment, low wages, long working hours, and other poor working conditions, and at the same time, a rapid expansion of informal employment, which is excluded from the protection of the labour law, the social system, and the labour unions.

This seminar examines, from a gender perspective, how drastic changes in the structure of irregular employment have been brought about by the changes of Korea's labour policies from 2000 to 2022 with a focus on the ultra-short-time worker, the most precarious and informal type of employment.

Speaker:

Professor Nobuko Yokota received the Global Korea Scholarship from the Korean government and studied at the Graduate School of Economics of Seoul National University from 1991 to 1995. She was awarded her PhD from the Graduate School of Economics, Seoul National University, in 2001. Since 2016, she has been a professor at the School of Sociology and the Graduate School of Sociology, Kwansei Gakuin University.

Professor Yokota has been examining the informal and precarious employment of female workers on the margins of the labour market in Korea for more than 30 years. However, believing it important to broaden her field of enquiry in order to understand East Asian movements in comparison with the organisation of women in precarious employment elsewhere in the world, she came to ANU to conduct her sabbatical here over 2023-24.

Professor Yokota is particularly interested in a comparative analysis of Australia’s new labour movement, which developed in collaboration with social movements that have protested non-class issues such as gender, ethnic discrimination and environmental matters since the 1960s and 1970s.

This event is in-person only.