Revolutions from above: worker training as trasformismo in South Korea *.

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Revolutions from above: worker training as trasformismo in South Korea *.

This article analyses a manifestation of social change in the once heralded Asian Tiger, South Korea (hereafter shortened to 'Korea'), and the mode of governance surrounding vocational education training (VET) strategies and other strategies of trasformismo (transformism) that aim to facilitate economic development and worker convergence with international standards. Workers are the fuel and fire of economic development and the backbone of any production system; they are vitally affected by global political economics but, paradoxically, are the most under-researched group in International Political Economics (IPE) (O'Brien, 2000: 89-99). With that in mind, this article presents a case study of Korean workers' experience of being 'trained' to adapt to hegemonic capitalist norms over several decades of state-led, Western-guided economic development in South Korea.

The notion of convergence, or the 'ability' of nations to replicate industrialised countries' development trajectories, was both implicitly and explicitly a part of IMF restructuring schemes such as those applied to South Korea in 1998 and onwards. Advanced industrial countries compose the core membership of the 'convergence club' (Magarinos, 2001), and benchmarking of 'best practices' for the creation of national wealth emanates from this base. Observers have noted a number of possible reasons for the failure of convergence strategies, many of which correspond to the discrepancies discussed by Rowley and Bae (2002). These include factors such as the mismatch of particular cultural value systems. (1) But as Paul Cammack has pointed out, experts at the World Bank believe they hold the solution to lagging nations' seeming inability to catch up with developed countries.

Cammack (2002a) (2) discusses the World Bank's intent to construct a Global Architecture of Governance (GAG), which is a metaphorical 'architecture' designed to guide convergence in a way that the Bank perceives to be the most effective. In 1999, World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn composed a comprehensive development framework (CDF) that provides a list of actions designed to aid developing countries to achieve 'structural and social aspects of development' (1999: 3; see Figure 1).

Figure 1. The Comprehensive Development Framework A. Structural 1. Good and clean government 2. An effective legal and justice system 3. A well-organised and supervised financial system 4. A social safety net and social programs B. Human 5. Education and knowledge institutions 6. Health and population issues C. Physical 7. Water and Sewage 8. Energy 9. Roads, transportation and telecommunications 10. Sustainable development, environmental and cultural issues D. Specific strategies-rural, urban, and private sector 11. Rural strategy 12. Urban strategy 13. Private sector strategy 14. Special national consideration James D. Wolfensohn, 'A Proposal for a Comprehensive Development Framework', 21 January 1999. The framework recommends development within particular categories: structural, human and physical; and a wider category of 'specific strategies' that includes rural, urban, private sector and special national considerations. Wolfensohn believes that the World Bank and IMF are responsible for overseeing and providing surveillance for all nations' development, and that these institutions are in possession of a form of superlative knowledge supporting the best possible methods of national economic development. The GAG involves IMF intervention and the pastoral role that this UN, specialised agency has played in stories of restructuring across the globe. It advocates benchmarking, or the 'system of continuous improvements derived from systematic comparisons with world best practice' (Sklair, 2001a: 115).

The contradiction of the W...

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