2 results
four - Self-sufficiency, social assistance and the shaming of poverty in South Korea
- Edited by Erika K. Gubrium, OsloMet - storbyuniversitetet, Sony Pellissery, Ivar Lødemel, Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttingen
-
- Book:
- The Shame of It
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 03 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 11 December 2013, pp 61-84
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
South Korea was re-established in 1948 as an independent democratic nation after being annexed by Japan in 1910 for 35 years and experiencing three years of militaristic rule by the US between 1945 and 1948. However, the Korean War (1950-53) subsequently led to its partition into the Republic of Korea, better known as South Korea, and North Korea, the Democratic People's Republic. Since the end of the war, South Korea has experienced a dramatic transformation in virtually every aspect of its social and economic life. From a country characterised by abject poverty, it has become the world's 15th largest economy, with 50 million people, acquiring the status of being a long-term member of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).
National economic success is demonstrated in the lives of three generations, each generation being much better off financially than the previous one, with many individuals themselves experiencing a life that has literally taken them from rags to riches. Many have succeeded economically in an environment that has been uniquely conducive to economic success, and they are now celebrating their success through ostentatious consumption. This has fuelled a belief that economic failure and poverty equate with a person's own social failure and must be the result of personal failings. Policy continues to reflect this reasoning and often serves to reinforce the shame that people feel when they are characterised as being social failures, misfits and miscreants. This chapter first documents the economic and social transformation that has taken place in South Korea from 1953 onwards and which has shaped this conception of poverty. It then examines how such transformation has influenced the framing, structuring and implementation of social assistance provision.
Poverty in South Korea
In 1953, South Korea was ranked as one of the poorest countries in the world, with an absolute poverty rate exceeding 60-70 per cent according to some figures (PSPD/UNDP, 2000), comparable at the time to many African countries, including Uganda (see this volume, Chapter Nine). Its economy and social infrastructure was mostly destroyed during the war, creating mass unemployment, large numbers of displaced war orphans and widespread hunger. The situation was aggravated by refugees from the war returning home in large numbers, but with no means of livelihood (Ku, 2006, p 10; Kim et al, 2007, p 44).
Poverty in Global Perspective: Is Shame a Common Denominator?
- ROBERT WALKER, GRACE BANTEBYA KYOMUHENDO, ELAINE CHASE, SOHAIL CHOUDHRY, ERIKA K. GUBRIUM, JO YONGMIE NICOLA, IVAR LØDEMEL, LEEMAMOL MATHEW, AMON MWIINE, SONY PELLISSERY, YAN MING
-
- Journal:
- Journal of Social Policy / Volume 42 / Issue 2 / April 2013
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 28 January 2013, pp. 215-233
- Print publication:
- April 2013
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
Focussing on the psychosocial dimensions of poverty, the contention that shame lies at the ‘irreducible absolutist core’ of the idea of poverty is examined through qualitative research with adults and children experiencing poverty in diverse settings in seven countries: rural Uganda and India; urban China; Pakistan; South Korea and United Kingdom; and small town and urban Norway. Accounts of the lived experience of poverty were found to be very similar, despite massive disparities in material circumstances associated with locally defined poverty lines, suggesting that relative notions of poverty are an appropriate basis for international comparisons. Though socially and culturally nuanced, shame was found to be associated with poverty in each location, variably leading to pretence, withdrawal, self-loathing, ‘othering’, despair, depression, thoughts of suicide and generally to reductions in personal efficacy. While internally felt, poverty-related shame was equally imposed by the attitudes and behaviour of those not in poverty, framed by public discourse and influenced by the objectives and implementation of anti-poverty policy. The evidence appears to confirm the negative consequences of shame, implicates it as a factor in increasing the persistence of poverty and suggests important implications for the framing, design and delivery of anti-poverty policies.