This thesis critically explores the labor culture and perceptions of workers in
the Korean financial investment industry and how financial capitalism operates
based on it. The thesis argues that gender functions as an axis of a new
accumulation strate...
This thesis critically explores the labor culture and perceptions of workers in
the Korean financial investment industry and how financial capitalism operates
based on it. The thesis argues that gender functions as an axis of a new
accumulation strategy driven by global financial capitalism and seeks to capture it
from a gender perspective revealed explicitly in the labor performance of industry
workers in the context of Korean society. In addition, it demonstrates how such a
gendered labor culture in the financial investment industry highlights the inequality
problem of Korean society, where financial capitalism is prevalent.
With the rapid expansion of global capitalism, neoliberal financialization, the
driving force, has firmly established itself in Korean society. As a result, the
domestic financial investment industry has grown, giving hope to countless people
while also encouraging economic desires. Workers who entered the financial
investment industry by building various high specifications have been reborn as
steady workers who embody the workers' image required by these specifications
and move financial capitalism. However, becoming these “steady workers” differs
depending on gender. As a result, experience is linked to practical labor inequality,
making it difficult for female workers to gauge where their identity fits into the
industry quickly. The “their league” structure, which is implicitly inherited and
sensed, is maintained while strengthening the male centrality of the sector, which
also shares context with the entire accumulation structure of Korean society.
To carry out this thesis, the researcher met and talked with a total of 32
research participants from August 2019 to February 2021, conducted pilot research
and full-fledged field research, and carried out in-depth interviews with industry
workers. Newspaper articles, legal and statistical data and related research papers
were carefully reviewed and used to interpret empirical data obtained during field
research. While conducting research, the researcher positioned herself as a "close
outsider" in the financial investment industry by witnessing various significant
changes and crises in the Korean capital market. Participants in the thesis entered
the financial investment industry for various reasons, were connected by
performing different tasks in multiple fields, and left the industry for various
reasons.
The intended arguments revealed in this thesis are as follows. First, the Korean
financial investment industry is constructed on the capital market. The division of
functional areas within the industry leading to the front-middle-back is the basis
for the fundamental accumulation of financial capital profits. The 1997 IMF
financial crisis, the 2008 global financial crisis, and the enactment and subsequent
revision of the Capital Markets Act are critical factors in the evolution of the
Korean capital market and financial investment industry. Second, these changes in
markets and industries have established "ideal" workability that suits them. This
workability includes the daily performance of unpaid labor in light of
“autonomous” labor, the internalization of heavy work intensity, performance-based
contractual employment, and the acquisition of social capital through informal
networking. This workability applies to many male workers located near the
“front”(investment department) in the overlapping structure of the gendered
industry labor network. Gender factors have played a significant role in entering
the industry—labor and moving—and leaving the industry, resulting in inequality.
Third, these gendered industry network structures and ideologies that drive labor
culture include risk-taking and performance-based meritocracy. Risk-taking
ideology maximizes profits while transferring the responsibility associated with it
to the outside of a male-dominated investment network. Taking these as
steppingstones, exclusive and speculative accumulation and distribution of profits
occur among workers, which are also linked to the polarization of Korean society
and the problem of predatory financial capitalism related to economic inequality.
This thesis contributes to the expansion of critical cultural studies of finance by
revealing that financial capitalism and the labor culture of the financial investment
industry reinforce the new gender order. This study deals with the dynamics of
financial capitalism from a feminist perspective by critically examining the
gendered labor culture of the Korean financial investment industry and its “league
of their own” by interpreting the experiences, desires, and life stories of those
“who feel they do not belong to it.”