Globalisation and labour struggle in Asia: a neo-gramscian critique of South Korea's political economy

South Korea’s history of economic development and corresponding political struggle is usually told from the perspective of speculators whose intellectual investment in this nation is rooted in pursuits toward capital accumulation.2 But Korea’s ongoing melee of labour unrest has trans- formed the face of development domestically throughout several stages of what Antonio Gramsci called ‘passive revolution’, which I relate to global political economic struggles for the creation and control of ideas about how to best compete and survive in the rapidly globalising world without complete destruction of national accord.