Transformation of Gender Relations in the Transition of South Korean Development State.

Whilst the issue of changes in the developmental states after the East Asian financial crisis has been hotly debated, there has been scant attention paid to explore the ways in which gender relations have been re/shaped in relation to re/making of the developmental state. It will be argued that the economic development strategies of South Korea has been re/configured with changes in the manners to employ gender relations into the industrial realignment. Herein the focus will be placed on examining how the changes in the role of post-crisis South Korean state have affected the ways in which gender relations has been interacting with the changing South Korean state. Firstly, the paper will look at the periodic features of gendered labour regimes which have been contingent upon the trajectories of economic development in South Korea. Secondly, it will investigate the ways in which women’s movements have evolved over the changes occurring in the process of industrial restructuring and democratisation in the late 1980s and 90s. Then, this leads to the scrupulous study of strategic transformation in the ways for women’s movement organisations to negotiate with the state by widening the scope to engage in the state apparatus. As such, this paper will attempt to demonstrate not only the highly gendered nature of the developmental state, but also the transformative aspects of gender relations over the transition of one nation-state’s economic development path. In so doing, it urges to incorporate a gender perspective into the discourse of the developmental state. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]