not so radically different from student cohorts in the past. Personal development of the educated in South Korea has long demanded considerable individual energy and vitality. Family and other collectivities continue to assert considerable pressure on students; indeed, it can be argued that neoliberalization in South Korea—particularly in the form of the repeal of employee benefits and state social support—has even led to new formations of familism, namely the ideology of family as the locus of support and social welfare. However, people narrate and take responsibility for their circumstances and predicaments in ways that are quite new. Thus this generation’s self-understanding and modes of narration must be situated at the juncture of neoliberal social, economic, and educational reforms in South Korea today.
Although we cannot claim that the four students we discuss in the following pages perfectly represent a generation at large, we were struck by the consistency of their narratives about self-development. 5 We do not argue that college rank, class, and gender would articulate with the new forms of subjectivity in the same manner for every young person; however, we do think that they articulate in ways that are revealing. It is in this spirit that we linger on these four narratives to examine the variable modes of articulation in more detail and to preserve the dialogic quality of their expression.
The IMF Crisis and South Korea’s Neoliberal Turn
This generation of students spent their childhood in an increasingly prosperous and democratic South Korea. In their early or late adolescence, however, they experienced the IMF crisis (1997 through 2001). This crisis marked a period of economic uncertainty leading to a broad array of social and policy reforms that were neoliberal in character. South Korea’s neoliberal turn involved a critique of crony capitalism and led to the call for venture capitalism in a deregulated market. Creative, global, high-tech youth were critical to this reform project (Song 2003).
Intensified privatization, individuation, and globalization are the large context for the transformations of subjectivity we write of here. 6 Increasingly, neoliberal subjecthood demands that individuals become self-managers who “produce [themselves] as having the skills and qualities necessary to succeed” (Walkerdine 2003: 240). Yan Hairong (2003) coins the term
neohumanism
to describe, after Marx, how human exchange value in China today has extended to subjectivity. Specifically, she analyses the Chinese construct of
suzhi
(quality) as follows: “
Suzhi
is the concept of human capital given a neoliberal spin to exceed its original meaning of stored value of education and education-based qualifications to mean the capitalization of subjectivity itself” (2003: 511). 7 Of course, post-IMF South Korea and market-reform-era China represent entirely distinct historical configurations, but the neoliberal spin Yan describes is one that perhaps unites youth worldwide (see Comaroff and Comaroff 2000: 307).
Similar to other structural transformations imposed by external governing bodies, the IMF crisis forced the South Korean state and the corporate sector to become leaner and meaner. Unemployment skyrocketed in the immediate aftermath of the crisis. With radical corporate and banking restructuring as well as escalating transnational investment in the South Korean corporate sector, labor had to become increasingly flexible (Shin 2000). Today’s youth face a transformed South Korean economy in which full-time, secure employment is harder to procure, state and local protections and services are curtailed, the reproduction of the middle class is fraught with uncertainty, and the vagaries of transnational capital figure profoundly. These students face a reality that is ever more vulnerable and precarious, just as new models of personhood proclaim personal responsibility and authorship for one’s economic and
Although we cannot claim that the four students we discuss in the following pages perfectly represent a generation at large, we were struck by the consistency of their narratives about self-development. 5 We do not argue that college rank, class, and gender would articulate with the new forms of subjectivity in the same manner for every young person; however, we do think that they articulate in ways that are revealing. It is in this spirit that we linger on these four narratives to examine the variable modes of articulation in more detail and to preserve the dialogic quality of their expression.
The IMF Crisis and South Korea’s Neoliberal Turn
This generation of students spent their childhood in an increasingly prosperous and democratic South Korea. In their early or late adolescence, however, they experienced the IMF crisis (1997 through 2001). This crisis marked a period of economic uncertainty leading to a broad array of social and policy reforms that were neoliberal in character. South Korea’s neoliberal turn involved a critique of crony capitalism and led to the call for venture capitalism in a deregulated market. Creative, global, high-tech youth were critical to this reform project (Song 2003).
Intensified privatization, individuation, and globalization are the large context for the transformations of subjectivity we write of here. 6 Increasingly, neoliberal subjecthood demands that individuals become self-managers who “produce [themselves] as having the skills and qualities necessary to succeed” (Walkerdine 2003: 240). Yan Hairong (2003) coins the term
neohumanism
to describe, after Marx, how human exchange value in China today has extended to subjectivity. Specifically, she analyses the Chinese construct of
suzhi
(quality) as follows: “
Suzhi
is the concept of human capital given a neoliberal spin to exceed its original meaning of stored value of education and education-based qualifications to mean the capitalization of subjectivity itself” (2003: 511). 7 Of course, post-IMF South Korea and market-reform-era China represent entirely distinct historical configurations, but the neoliberal spin Yan describes is one that perhaps unites youth worldwide (see Comaroff and Comaroff 2000: 307).
Similar to other structural transformations imposed by external governing bodies, the IMF crisis forced the South Korean state and the corporate sector to become leaner and meaner. Unemployment skyrocketed in the immediate aftermath of the crisis. With radical corporate and banking restructuring as well as escalating transnational investment in the South Korean corporate sector, labor had to become increasingly flexible (Shin 2000). Today’s youth face a transformed South Korean economy in which full-time, secure employment is harder to procure, state and local protections and services are curtailed, the reproduction of the middle class is fraught with uncertainty, and the vagaries of transnational capital figure profoundly. These students face a reality that is ever more vulnerable and precarious, just as new models of personhood proclaim personal responsibility and authorship for one’s economic and
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