Loss of Privilege and Visibility: 1980–1998

Abstract

In 1993, the chairman of Samsung Group’s executive office published a training manual for senior officers. It was designed to help them cope with what it called “[c]hange in the values of the new generation. …” The term “new generation” had become a widely used label for young, primarily male, university graduates in technical fields who resisted the top-down, military-style organizational practices that had peaked during the 1970s push for heavy and chemical industries. Its members, asserted the manual, “avoid self-sacrifice for the nation or others.” They had developed “a way of life centered on themselves and their families.” They had become largely “indifferen[t] to . . . politics and society.” The report went on to assert that the new generation, so different as to constitute a new race of Koreans, had a “strong tendency to be complacent” as well as “a weakened desire for promotion.” While they did “tend to devote themselves to what they like” and even “find [the work] fruitful,” they bore no affection for their employers, the big companies. Their commitment was “for the ‘work’ itself.”¹