• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.83
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• pp.157-185
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• 2017

The present study examines the dialectic tensions arising within the ICT-mediated labor culture between the dominant power of conglomerates and the precarious labor subjects in the labor practices, as smartphones and tablet PCs have grown in popularity. The present study explores how much young precarious workers named 'Cheongyeon Alba' (young precariat in S Korea) suffers from continually precarious job positions as temporary staff or contract workers, being trapped at the bottom of the pay scale, and also being electronically connected to the workplace in a seamless way. Concretely, this study investigates how the mobile phone becomes deeply entangled with the 'precarious' labor culture in the metropolitan city of Seoul. The mobile precariat has been in a disadvantaged position, in terms not only of the moral issue of exploitation in business but also of social injustice. Labor exploitation of young workers has been reinforced by the mobile labor culture, in which they are remotely monitored by live surveillance mobile apps, and mobile instant messaging from a boss can intrude incessantly into their private life. This study depicts the extension of the business's surveillant power by mobilizing the mobile phone in the working practices.

• 한국사회정책
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.45-70
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• 2018

After critically assessing the effectiveness of basic income as an alternative to the existing social security system, this article argues that basic income is fundamentally incapable of providing an adequate protection for those in social risks or welfare needs. The proponents of basic income often claims that technological innovations will lead to the end of work and thus that basic income will be required for all citizens in the future. Moreover, they emphasize that labor market flexibility is making a large segment of work forces unstable working poor, what is often called the precariat who are not effectively protected by the existing social insurance programs. For them, basic income is the best source of social protection for the precariat of today and the citizens in the future, freeing them from the necessity of having a paid work. This article, however, points out the ineffectiveness of basic income as social protection due to its unustainably high cost that comes from unconditional benefit provisions regardless of levels of income, social risks, and welfare needs. Also it challenges the simplified 'Luddites' image of workless society in the future, arguning that techological unemployment can be overcome by new job creation as seen in Silicon Valley and job sharing following working time reduction. It maintains that it is more cost-effective and reliable to strengthen the welfare state based on the principle of reciprocity that aims at 'universal sufficient protection for those in social risks and welfare needs.'

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.53-94
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• 2021

This article pays attention to the gender representation of an abominable male abject that reveal class polarization in the movie Parasite. I seeks to read a new aspect of emotional politics in which a precariat man becomes a male patriarch while representing himself with an abhorrent position. Parasite shows a reversal of daughter and son responsible for parents, contrary to the existing family narrative. They teaches the parents' generation how to survive neoliberal that their place is created only when they take away others' place. However, after losing this prospect, Ki-woo confesses to his father that he is sorry first. Ki-taek also attempted to identify Dong-ik with the patriarch, but this male solidarity collapsed by class and committed murder in sudden anger. As a result, Gi-taek goes down to the hateful status of a stinking underground life, and Ki-woo receives a message of ethical reflection from his isolated father. The film gives the father and son the noble status of ethical fighter who fought against the structure of class polarization, especially the ending epilogue and narration emphasizing the ethical responsibility and mutual solidarity between father and son. In this process, the voices of female characters are gradually omitted, blurring gender screening for male characters. Parasite reveals the political reenactment strategy of precariat men in the age of neoliberalism, which is ethical subject by claiming to be a class abject himself. And representing the hate with gender-selecting, it is beautifying the responsible ethics of the patriarch.

• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.33
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• pp.147-177
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• 2019

This article attempts to examine the fundamental perceptions and attitudes of human beings towards others utilizing the concept of 'precariat,' a new word recently created to designate people affected by the inequality and instability brought about by neoliberal globalization. Especially, the precariats within South Korean society noted in this article will be North Korean migrants. When leaving North Korea, they have entered into South Korean society with hurting bodies and minds as they made their way through China or third party countries. After arriving in South Korea, they face difficulties such as inadequate jobs and low-level welfare benefits. Also, considering the social discrimination, exclusion, and indifference towards North Korean migrants which are commonplace, they come to live their lives as precariats. Given their situation, I would like to seek wisdom for North Korean migrants to apply as they escape from insecure lives, and perhaps Sangsaeng (mutual beneficence) would allow them to do that within South Korean society. In this light, I think that the concept of hospitality and Haewon Sangsaeng (the resolution of grievances for mutual beneficence), a code of practical ethics within the Daesoon Thought, as a basis for discussion with other philosophies that are practical in enabling North Korean migrants and South Korean citizens to coexist within modern day South Korean society. This can be achieved because 'Haewon (grievance-resolution)' lowers the boundary between self and others through sharing, and consequently, daily mutual interactions can unfold as 'Sangsaeng', which stands as a new ethical and practical system of values available to all modern individuals. In fact, contrary to the religious implications of Daesoon Thought, the philosophical and existential significance of Daesoon Thought has not received much attention. However, if we pay attention to the question of why human subjects should be hospitable to others, we can grasp how Daesoon Thought presents values that are existential in nature and also consider the specific context that accompanies the religious aspects of this system of thought.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.66
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• pp.211-241
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• 2014

In the era of neoliberalism with high rate of youth unemployment, young college students are forced to believe that the only way to enter the job market is by accepting and participating temporary off-campus apprenticeship, which often disguised as an internship for the creative culture and knowledge. This article discusses that the mode of off-campus apprenticeship, which is supposed to voluntary and participatory, bears in fact a strong resemblance with digital labor. Based on a series of in-depth interviews with college students, this study argues that the apprentice-typed labor denotes a process by which immaterial labor or free labor coincides with self-directed job training. Throughout the digital labor processes young college students are in a constant oscillation between precarity and hope, negotiating their autonomy and social conditions in the neoliberal work environment. The digital labor accumulates students' knowledge and information as a form of commodity, which in turn supports communicative capitalism.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.117-144
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• 2020

The film Burning (Lee Chang-dong, 2018) is one of the most noted Korean films in recent years as a work that unfolds an elaborate narrative in a delicate visualization. This film is a multi-vocal text in which different types of characters appear and scattered objective facts and ambiguous subjective desires are intertwined, so it is a text that has room for diverse interpretations. This article attempts to read Burning as an ethical discourse centered on the protagonist Jong-su, noting that the film raises universal and significant ethical issues that transcend the specific social and historical conditions of a contemporary Korean youth. I would like to examine the situation in which Jong-su is facing and his reaction to it, above all, from the perspective of Jong-su's ethical awakening and leap forward. Jong-su, a young South Korean non-regular man living in the present, encounters and connects with Hae-mi and Ben and attempts to understand the mysteries of the world. His trajectory, which the film shows closely, inevitably intersects the social and historical dimension of confusion and frustration of a young man graduated from the Department of Creative Writing, the reality of family dissolution and the individual psychological dimension of the sudden disappearance of his lover Hae-mi. Burning is a magistrate film that depicts Jong-su as an ethical subject oriented toward 'communal togetherness' while confronting the world and exploring its mysteries despite all his unfavorable conditions, such as his social position of the precariat youth and the epistemological uncertainty of reality perception. It is read as a story of his painful growth, in which Jong-su is becoming a 'writer', who once was a helpless non-regular delivery worker.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.57
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• pp.33-48
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• 2012

Over the last decades, the issue of work or labor has played a critical role in prevailing discourses to represent the changed economic reality. Aesthetic labor, cultural work, network labor, team-work and alike, have played a dazzling role to represent the emerging economic order, employing the word of labor. Certainly, it is not less than a part of a wide range of shifts in order to make capital work with more effect by making up a workable and governable subject. In this article, I try to examine shifts around the media work which has contributed to expand the new discourse of 'labor.' I will say that it is quite crucial for accounting for the reality of media work to shed light on moves to represent media work, and, among others, one to transform the subjectivity involved in it among others. Furthermore, it would be necessary to take a close look at the subjectivity of media work and its modification to deal with and eliminate the precariousness of media work. Saying about media work without paying any attention to heterogenous and various practices to compose a media work, one is forced to regard media work as the matter of economic and legal interests. In addition, it would bring about that the cultural political concerns of media work will be detached from critical sight of the media cultural studies. Referring to major studies around media work in critical media studies, cultural studies and political economy of communication, this article will briefly look into the arrangement of contentions around subjectivity of media work in South Korea. And it will try to suggest what cultural-political strategy we need to investigate, fighting against the hegemonic power to generate and regulate media work and its workers in precarious conditions. It does not intend to search the media work and its complicated realities in detail in South Korea. I wish that it would make a preliminary step to propose and elaborate the critical analysis of media work and its form of subjectivities.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.95-136
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• 2018

As the number of precariats grows, their poor labor rights and working conditions are becoming issues of major concern all over the world but how to represent their interests is still controversial. Basically, the union is the institutional mechanism for representing the labor rights. However, it is difficult for workplaceand enterprise-based unions to fully represent the labor rights of precarious workers. Recently, so-called community unions have emerged in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan as independent organizations representing the rights of non-standard workers. Community unions refer to labor unions which organize precarious workers across firms at the regional level. They are known to be suitable for covering the unemployed, job seekers, indirect employment workers, short-term contract workers, and small-firm workers. In South Korea, since the financial crisis in 1997, a dramatic increase in the number of precariats leads to emergence of new types of trade unions such as the Youth Community Union, the Arbeit Workers' Union, the Artist Social Union and the Korea Musician's Union. They have engaged in various activities to guarantee the labor rights of precariats. Recently, researchers have also tried to identify defining characteristics of these new forms of unionism. To expand research on trade unionism in South Korea, this study compares two different types of community unions: the Youth Community Union and the Arbeit Workers' Union. We believe that this attempt can contribute to the research on the alternative labor movement. For this purpose, this study starts with theoretical discussions on community unions, and compares the Youth Community Union with the Arbeit Workers' Union based on the five characteristics of community unionism: membership and organization structure, the recognition struggle, the type or scope of interest, solidarity with other civic organizations, and the repertoire of resistance strategies. Based on this comparative analysis, this study seeks to foresee the possibility of how community unionism will develop in South Korean in the future.