Business and Labour in Korea: Chaebols, their Association and Industrial Relations (Routledge Studies in the Growth Economies of Asia)

South Korea has rapidly emerged as a world economic power, within which chaebols - large family-controlled business groups, including such well known names as Hyundai and Samsung – have been the dominant economic force, with a powerful influence in politics. This book, covering the period from the 1960s to the present, traces the impact the chaebols have had on the development of South Korea’s industrial relations system, a system which is quite different from other industrial relations systems in East Asia. It shows how, although the various chaebols have had their own styles of management, often determined by the outlook of the founders and by differing circumstances, they came together in 1970 to form the Korea Employers’ Federation (KEF). This organisation, as the book demonstrates, has taken on a life of its own, playing a key role in the industrial relations system which has well developed practices for avoiding conflict. The book also relates the chaebols and developments in industrial relations to changing political circumstances, from military dictatorships to democracy, to a world where there prevailed more autonomous governments, more militant unions, and more pluralistic and even radical industrial relations.