Korean Women in the Workforce (Or a Lack Thereof)

By Michelle Kwon

A realistic ratio of men to women in the Korean workforce (image courtesy of Washingtonpost.com)

While South Korea has an enviable unemployment rate, currently hovering at about 3.9 percent, that figure obscures more complexities about the work environment in Korea than it reveals. Korea’s economy has grown dramatically since the 1970’s, often referred to as an “economic miracle” and earning the title as one of the four Asian Tigers. This success has been in large part the result of the labor of women working in low status and low wage jobs within the manufacturing industries. “The Miracle on the Han River”[1] was achieved on the backs of Korean female factory workers. The labor force participation rate of women increased from 26.8 percent in 1960 to 47.6 percent in 1995 as women left the rural areas and moved to the cities for work in the new factories and businesses. Until the early 1990s, women were employed in labor-intensive sectors such as textiles, food processing, and manufacturing; these very sectors provided the export goods that created Korea’s economic growth, and yet the contribution of women to the development of Korea is rarely spoken of. As Korea has become a more advanced country with greater lucrative economic opportunities, job creation has shifted to services sector, which happens to be a natural progression for countries that pass the threshold from “developing” to “developed.”