Despite the common held belief that Asian nations have displayed anti-market tendencies of under-consumption and export-oriented trade since the Asian financial crisis, in the 10 years since the crisis, South Korea has bucked this trend accruing a higher debt rate than the US. This groundbreaking collection of essays addresses questions such as how did the open market policies and restructuring processes implemented during the Asian financial crisis magnify the consumption and debt level in South Korea to such an extent? What is the impact of these financial changes on the daily lives of people in different cultural and socio-economic groups? In examining these questions the authors provide valuable insight into the rise of financial capitalism, transnational mobility and the implications of neoliberal governing tactics following the Asian Financial Crisis. Examining South Korea's transformation during the early years of the 21st century, New Millenium South Korea will be of interest to anthropologists, economists and sociologists, as well as students and scholars of Korean Studies.

Despite the common held belief that Asian nations have displayed anti-market tendencies of under-consumption and export-oriented trade since the Asian financial crisis, in the 10 years since the crisis, South Korea has bucked this trend accruing a higher debt rate than the US. This groundbreaking collection of essays addresses questions such as how did the open market policies and restructuring processes implemented during the Asian financial crisis magnify the consumption and debt level in South Korea to such an extent? What is the impact of these financial changes on the daily lives of people in different cultural and socio-economic groups? In examining these questions the authors provide valuable insight into the rise of financial capitalism, transnational mobility and the implications of neoliberal governing tactics following the Asian Financial Crisis. Examining South Korea's transformation during the early years of the 21st century, New Millenium South Korea will be of interest to anthropologists, economists and sociologists, as well as students and scholars of Korean Studies.

This book provides a rich and illuminating account of the peripheries of urban, regional, and transnational development in South Korea. Engaging with the ideas of "core location," a term coined by Baik Young-seo, and "Asia as method," a concept with a century-old intellectual lineage in East Asia, each chapter in the volume discusses the ways in which a place can be studied in an increasingly globalized world. Examining cases set in the Jeju English Education City, anti-poverty and community activist sites, rural areas home to large numbers of migrant women, and Korea's Chinatowns, greenbelts, and textile factories, the collection develops a relational understanding of a place as a constellation of local and global forces and processes that interact and contradict in particular ways. Each chapter also explores multiple modes of urban marginality and discusses how understanding them shapes the methods of academic praxis for social justice causes and decolonialized scholarship. This book is the outcome of several years of interdisciplinary collaborations and dialogues among scholars based in geography, architecture, anthropology, and urban politics.

"South Koreans in the Debt Crisis" is a detailed examination of the logic underlying the neoliberal welfare state that South Korea created in response to the devastating Asian Debt Crisis (1997-2001). Jesook Song argues that while the government proclaimed that it would guarantee all South Koreans a minimum standard of living, it prioritized assisting those citizens perceived as embodying the neoliberal ideals of employability, flexibility, and self-sufficiency. Song demonstrates that the government was not alone in drawing distinctions between the "deserving" and the "undeserving" poor. Progressive intellectuals, activists, and organizations also participated in the neoliberal reform project. Song traces the circulation of neoliberal concepts throughout South Korean society, among government officials, the media, intellectuals, NGO members, and educated underemployed people working in public works programs. She analyzes the embrace of partnerships between NGOs and the government, the frequent invocation of a pervasive decline in family values, the resurrection of conservative gender norms and practices, and the promotion of entrepreneurship as the key to survival.

Drawing on her experience during the crisis as an employee in a public works program in Seoul, Song provides an ethnographic assessment of the efforts of the state and civilians to regulate social insecurity, instability, and inequality through assistance programs. She focuses specifically on efforts to help two populations deemed worthy of state subsidies: the "IMF homeless," people temporarily homeless but considered employable, and the "new intellectuals," young adults who had become professionally redundant during the crisis but had the high-tech skills necessary to lead a transformed post-crisis South Korea.

"South Koreans in the Debt Crisis" is a detailed examination of the logic underlying the neoliberal welfare state that South Korea created in response to the devastating Asian Debt Crisis (1997-2001). Jesook Song argues that while the government proclaimed that it would guarantee all South Koreans a minimum standard of living, it prioritized assisting those citizens perceived as embodying the neoliberal ideals of employability, flexibility, and self-sufficiency. Song demonstrates that the government was not alone in drawing distinctions between the "deserving" and the "undeserving" poor. Progressive intellectuals, activists, and organizations also participated in the neoliberal reform project. Song traces the circulation of neoliberal concepts throughout South Korean society, among government officials, the media, intellectuals, NGO members, and educated underemployed people working in public works programs. She analyzes the embrace of partnerships between NGOs and the government, the frequent invocation of a pervasive decline in family values, the resurrection of conservative gender norms and practices, and the promotion of entrepreneurship as the key to survival.

Drawing on her experience during the crisis as an employee in a public works program in Seoul, Song provides an ethnographic assessment of the efforts of the state and civilians to regulate social insecurity, instability, and inequality through assistance programs. She focuses specifically on efforts to help two populations deemed worthy of state subsidies: the "IMF homeless," people temporarily homeless but considered employable, and the "new intellectuals," young adults who had become professionally redundant during the crisis but had the high-tech skills necessary to lead a transformed post-crisis South Korea.