Labor and the Limits of Seduction in Korea’s Creative Economy

Labor in the Global Creative Economy

From a macroindustrial viewpoint (e.g., Day 2007; Miller et al. 2005; Mosco and Steven 2007; Sullivan 2007), labor has experienced new forms of exploitation and insecurity. Yet, young workers voluntarily enter these same exploitative and insecure labor markets (Du Gay and Pryke 2002; Heelas 2002; Thrift 2002). Still, these conditions affect workers’ subjectivities in other ways. Christopherson (2008) examines how deregulation, media supply expansion, and technological innovations within U.S. cultural industries exacerbate the gap between core and peripheral workers there, disrupting established professional and craft identities and segmenting the labor force in terms of gender and race. As Mosco (1996) argues, political economists should extend their structural analyses to explore how structure produces subjectivities to explain why workers want to keep their jobs despite harsh conditions.

Examining convergence between culture and labor, McRobbie (2002) argues that the most important standards in judging media representation and art, such as “creativity,” “enterprise,” and “self-expression,” have become hallmarks of cultural labor. Furthermore, cultural workers have produced media representations of their own trades as repositories for “self-actualization,” “self-determination,” “personal authenticity,” and “autonomy,” making the cultural producers play “an important role in . . . the contemporary understanding of work and the working subject” (Stahl 2008, 232). These representations of creative work and cultural producers convey to youth: “you can do it, too!” (Stahl 2008, 234).

In understanding the connections between the destabilized political economy for cultural production and the simultaneous celebration of cultural labor, ethnographic studies of cultural labor have followed the daily experiences of media workers. This approach was pioneered by Ursell (2000). In a U.K.-based study, she found that, despite difficult labor conditions in broadcasting—such as, excessive work hours, unstable employment terms, and relatively lower wages—workers willingly sought these jobs to pursue new labor subjectivities related to their emotional pleasure. Cultural work was “a seductive vampire” in her final analysis (Ursell 2000, 821). Ursell’s work on labor subjectivities in cultural industries has been further enhanced by research on the “emotional rules of production” (Hesmondhalgh and Baker 2008) and the managerial incentivizing of self-enterprise as a work identity (Storey et al. 2005). Thus, a growing body of research on cultural work has examined the new modalities of production and exploitation as well as how new labor subjectivities align with contemporary capitalist needs.

In summarizing the critical issues for future research, Gill and Pratt (2008) outline the problematic nature of studying cultural work. Cultural workers experience contradictory and ambiguous tensions between work “pleasure” versus job insecurity “anxiety.” They also tend to blur work and nonwork time, thus contributing to their inability to distinguish between “free time” and “extraordinary working hours” (Gill and Pratt 2008, 17–18). Finally, Gill and Pratt point to the difficulty of locating either workers’ resistance or solidarity. Cultural industries already exercise control in the name of “creativity” and “participation,” making creative workers’ subjectivities always mediated by the terms of the fields they enter (Gill and Pratt 2008, 19). In other words, the blurred boundaries and the emotional dimensions of cultural workers’ subjective experiences need to be read in consideration of “the historical and systemic forces structuring those experiences” (Hesmondhalgh and Baker 2011, 77).

To better capture historically specific as well as contradictory dimensions of creative labor, this study attempts to offer both a structural and organizational analysis of Korean cultural labor conditions while also attending to the subjectivities of independent-sector broadcast workers. Drawing from secondary research, policy reports, and interviews, this study takes political economy as its starting point to examine how structural aspects of labor processes—such as organizational forms, labor conditions, and work practices—changed under a digitalized flexible production regime. Then, the study addresses how this industrial shift impacts workers’ subjectivities through two sets of data: (1) thirty-four in-depth interviews conducted in Seoul, in 2007 and 2008, with independent-sector workers, including program directors (PDs), scriptwriters, technicians, and managers; and (2) two weeks of participant observation in 2008 in one broadcast company located in Yeoido, where most independent production (IP) is clustered. ¹

Korean Broadcasting in the Era of Globalization

After a lengthy military rule, Korea’s political turmoil in 1987 provided the momentum to transform Korea’s development state from “strong and repressive” to “limited or flexible” to “market-driven” over the next decade (Lee 2009). In terms of broadcasting policy, distinctive differences between a strong state-driven policy, on one hand, and market-driven policy, on the other, can be understood by comparing key policies passed under each regime. The Chun Doo-Whan administration (1980–88) implemented the eoron-tongpaehap, “compulsory reform of the media,” that forced state-owned broadcasters and progovernment newspapers to merge competing private broadcast channels and private local newspapers, ultimately repressing press freedom. In contrast to this politically repressive measure, the Kim Young-Sam administration (1993–98), as the first civilian government, implemented promarket media policies. The developing state actively encouraged globalization with the initiation of Segyehwa to respond to external pressures from U.S. and global institutions (Ryoo 2008).

Segyehwa interpreted globalization beyond simple economic liberalization to encompass political, cultural, and social projects involving the cooperation of local capitals and civil society (Ryoo 2008, 878). The national broadcasting industry during this period underwent dramatic commercialization (Shim 2008) with the start-up of commercial cable TV and four new regional, commercial, terrestrial television stations. In 1991, the government passed the bangsong hoejujungchak, the “compulsory television programming outsourcing policy,” that required network broadcasters to air a certain number of programs made by independent companies. This “outsourcing policy” of a flexible and limited state has been critiqued as stemming from an “immature,” local understanding of corporate, liberal ideas about broadcasting (Shim 2008, 29). For example, the government argued that competition stimulates the “natural” development of program diversity to promote democracy. Competition through commercialization thus became a dominant strategy for guaranteeing democracy and for enhancing the global competitive power of Korea’s national cultural industries (Youn and Jang 2002). The regulatory change was also an explicit example of how the Korean government responded at the national level to global market pressures for neoliberal reform.

Two media policies—“the compulsory media reform policy” and “the compulsory program outsourcing policy”—illustrate the relationship between the changing political state and the national broadcasting industry (see Figure 1).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

The evolving phases of the developmental state and the broadcasting policy.

Under the new market-driven regime in the name of “globalization,” the broadcast labor market transformed. The giant broadcast networks (e.g., KBS and MBC) no longer pursued vertical integration growth. They now turned to the independent sector for more flexible production terms. The number of independent companies increased almost fivefold from 115 in 1998 to 551 in 2005 (Korea Broadcast Advertising Corporation [KOBACO] 2005) and their workforce increased dramatically. In 2004, 8,005 IP workers represented 56.6 percent of broadcast workers and 82.7 percent of cable TV workers (KOBACO 2005). These numbers are expected to grow likely changing the entire labor structure of the broadcasting market.

Despite job growth, workers entering this market face excessive competition. Most IP companies are small and ill equipped in terms of workforce, facilities, and financial backing (Shim 2008). According to a 2005 report, 70 percent of the sampled companies could be classified as small- and medium-sized enterprises because their average capital was below $300,000. The average number of workers per company was fourteen, with 77.7 percent producing cultural and documentary programs for the networks. Leading companies in the field are managed by ex-network broadcasting staff members with personal connections to network broadcasters (KOBACO 2005).

Jobs associated with this sector stress “immaterial labor” as “liberal,” “creative,” and “attractive” (Qiu and Kim 2010). Most Korean universities over the past decade have instituted communication, journalism, and related departments in recognition of the high social status of television production. Likewise, the number of media-related educational institutions has dramatically expanded, so that the future academic workforce exceeds job demand, as governmental reports indicate (Korean Broadcasting Institute [KBI] 2002).

However, it is also well known that procuring high-income and secure jobs in major network broadcasting has become unrealistic for most entrants. The 1997 Asian Financial crisis means only a few major network jobs are made available each year (KBI 2004). In contrast, network broadcasters strategically used independents because their production costs were far less (Jin 2007). One can predict the continuing flow of labor into the independent sector as long as networks maintain highly selective employment practices. These include rigid apprenticeships marked by gender hierarchies, as full-time PDs are males and contingent scriptwriters are females (Kim 2005).

Flexible Production and Labor Practices for Digital Media

Given that there are no large-scale surveys of labor conditions within the Korean independent sector, ² this study focuses on uncovering experiences and meanings of “ordinary” or “typical” experiences of the workers. My interview data suggest that freelancing is the main employment practice. Most of these contingent workers are hired at lower salaries through oral contracts. Such nonformal contracts can lead to easy layoffs and can place the employees at a disadvantage during disputes with employers. The salary gap between workers in the networks and the IP sector is wide. Interviewees reported that the average monthly payment for entry-level workers is approximately $500 to $1,000; for mid-level jobholders, $2,000 to $2,500; and for longtime workers, payment stagnated at $3,000 to $3,500. The entry salary thus fell below minimum cost-of-living levels whereas the maximum salary hit a glass ceiling. Unlike the network workers, many workers did not have a national pension or insurance related to employment, accident compensation, or health. Despite the precarious employment conditions, independent contractors reported workloads of at least the same, if not more than those of network employees. In my interviews, most workers revealed that they worked about ten hours per day.

A distinction within this sector’s emerging labor process is the relationship between the widespread use of digital video technology and the functional flexibility exerted by employers over job roles. In the late-1990s, “video journalists” (VJs) emerged in the Korean broadcasting industry. They are perceived as single handedly performing the entire program production process from conception to editing by using small portable digital video cameras (MiniDVs) to shoot and personal computers to edit. Thus, the production process of VJs was called a “one-man production system.” VJ cultural and documentary programs became popular in their own genre. Called “6mm programs,” they eventually represented the low costs and short production times of the entire independent sector. Indeed, VJ practices have been becoming the norm within the sector.

The problem with VJ-ing, according to producers, is that the industry now produces “6mm programs” to survive. As one independent company owner, a former network PD with twenty years experience, claimed,

The networks know that independent companies extensively use MiniDVs. I don’t think the technology itself is ignoble because it has its own features. This camera really suits productions that require portability and promptness. Yet the problem is most independent PDs today have no choice but to produce programs using only this small camera, unlike the networks.

In other words, VJ-ing was not seen as problematic in itself, but the sector has no alternative production choices.

The economics of “6mm programs” also leads to changes in labor roles, merging the roles of the PD and the cameraman and reducing the availability of technical jobs such as camera and lighting. One cameraman in the business for twenty-five years lamented,

To decrease their production costs, PDs prefer the MiniDV, which they can deal with by themselves, instead of a camera which needs the professional control of a cameraman. Due to the wide use of MiniDVs, many cameramen are out of work now. Many of my coworkers have quit as cameramen and started their own business. The serious problem is the drop in the quality of images that nonexperts took.

This shift has been overwhelmingly gendered. The word for camera operator in Korean is “cameraman,” signifying the cultural association between technical jobs and men. ³ Moreover, this increase in the functional flexibility of PDs has caused a role reversal between themselves and female scriptwriters. The scriptwriter’s leadership role increased with the use of “6mm programs.” As a female scriptwriter described,

Nowadays, PDs in independent companies are no more than cameramen. As their position is downgraded, the writer’s role is emphasized as a leading creator in planning and making programs. PDs don’t have enough time to think about the program because they’re too busy going on location or editing. Also, to meet the industry demand, young assistants are becoming PDs too fast despite their immaturity (because it’s easy to learn shooting a film with a MiniDV). These situations are giving writers important roles, but it’s getting more likely for us to be exhausted mentally.

When asked about this role reversal, PDs avoided answering directly and objected to the suggestion that scriptwriters’ responsibilities have increased as a result of their new practices. Whether PDs found the question emasculating or not, PDs said that the multiskill demands of shooting and editing solo deprived them of their usual time to plan programs.

Another change in the sector has been the increase in less skilled workers. Previously, senior workers trained assistants over time through a rigid apprentice system. Given cost constraints and growing workloads, these lengthy apprenticeships have declined. A PD with almost two decades of experience explained,

Today, I have seen some people become a PD in three months because they can use a MiniDV. Moreover, from the company’s viewpoint, their labor cost is much lower than that of seniors. They’re obviously unskilled because of their short training period. From this viewpoint, their career can be shorter due to their low ability to produce a program.

Most interviewees agreed that the time period for becoming a PD had decreased, while opportunities to acquire necessary skills are also reduced. Assistantships in parallel professions also have declined. Full-time assistant cameramen have become no longer necessary in IP. Temporary workers from agencies have filled the gaps for unforeseen tasks as one-day helpers rather than as trainees. Temps cannot build expertise on a resume, resulting in a less skilled workforce. From the perspective of the company owners, the new system may appear more flexible and therefore innovative, but in practice, these cost-cutting strategies have become constraints to both program quality and worker creativity.

The Symbolic Power of Creativity

Despite these harsh material conditions, many workers disclosed why they stay at their broadcasting jobs in the independent sector:

I felt a lot of stress while thinking about quitting this job, but you see, after finishing a broadcasting course, when I see my name in the ending credits, I feel a lot of pleasure. At that moment, I feel that I made something and did some creative work. Most of my colleagues are also like that. We all do this because we are crazy about it. (Female PD with two years experience)

This enthusiasm raises critical questions about the symbolic value of creativity and the social reproduction of structures of inequality (see, for example, McRobbie 2002; Willis 1981).

To these questions, my research revealed how young people’s education and socioeconomic positions allowed them to accept relatively harsh working conditions.

I still live with my parents. Even though the pay’s so low, I think it depends on how you think . . . even though I can’t contribute to my family economically, at least I don’t need to depend on my parents for money. I know my situation is not ideal. (Male assistant director with six months experience)

I’m keeping my job because I feel some sort of pleasure from this work. I’m not yet a slave of money . . . if you marry, you have to worry about supporting your family. In that situation, I’ll probably have to work for a living; but for now, I do this job because I like it. For this reason, I sometimes think I shouldn’t marry early. (Male PD with five years experience)

The self-orientation toward broadcasting work combined with the freedom from socioeconomic responsibility moved workers to start their careers in an independent company. Whether they were beginners or veterans, workers cited their desire to express their creative passion as a main factor in permitting them to endure harsh job conditions.

Workers at every level said they want to keep doing their jobs as long as they could work “creatively.” It is beyond the focus of this study to determine whether a job is creative (cf. G. Evans 2009; Hesmondhalgh and Pratt 2005; Ross 2009), but the interviews uncovered how my subjects perceived their broadcasting work and compared it with other industrial jobs. Most interviewees felt that the object of their labor was different from manufacturing work, for example, in that manufactured goods do not credit their creators’ names, as television programs do. The designation as program “creator” gave workers a sense of meaningful achievement and partially explained how newcomers justified overcoming punishing work routines.

The symbolic value of creativity helped assistants—regardless of their job titles—engage in everyday work that was far from what they might have considered as creative. For example, assistant scriptwriters’ main duties comprised rather mundane tasks of copying, couriering, and online research. They also performed miscellaneous tasks, such as sending mail, making preview clips, and preparing equipment. As their routines diverged dramatically from what they thought they would be, they pledged to themselves not to quit before they produced their own work and became “real” writers. As an assistant scriptwriter reported,

I know that at present, my work isn’t creative work at all. It’s very routine work any high school graduate could do. I really want to produce my own workpiece, however, as my seniors do. Until I’m able to do that, I can’t quit. It would be too regrettable. (Female assistant scriptwriter with six months experience)

For many interviewees, however, the desire to do more “creative” work, such as documentary production, was tempered by knowledge of their actual labor conditions. Therefore, most framed such future documentary projects as solely a “dream.” Many reported that full-time documentarians are poorer than other workers. They acknowledged that those who produced documentaries in the independent sector handled similar economic demands as other producers with more capital and bigger social networks. Company managers or ex-network workers thus had an advantage in being able make a documentary. According to one scriptwriter, “Our boss [a former network PD] can produce his desired documentary based on budgetary support from those 6mm programs.” In contrast, the majority of interviewees felt that their own chances to be creative were limited. Many who dreamed of doing creative work were ultimately disappointed when they realized the limits of the IP-sector job trajectory, driving some to quit their jobs. Although workers’ creative passion worked as a mechanism for overcoming relatively harsh working conditions, it could at times lead to disappointment or disillusionment.

“Freelance” Instead of Worker Subjectivities

Independent broadcast companies sought freelancers to cut production costs. From the viewpoint of the workers, however, changing employment contracts was often driven by the desire to increase their income and the desire to change creative directions. These decisions to be a freelancer gave workers the sense that they exerted more control over the creative product.

After finishing their stints as assistants, freelancers typically produced short programs to be compiled in a final product. From there, after a two- or three-year contract, these workers tended to move to other companies.

I think an ordinary independent PD can keep his or her job for about fifteen years . . . After three to seven years, the pay usually increases. This period is very critical for future income because usually, after seven or eight years, the pay tends to be fixed, because the company assumes that the ability to produce doesn’t significantly differ between a seven-year and ten-year career holder. For this reason, we often move to another company during this period. (PD with five years experience)

Thus, freelancers changed companies for the opportunity to negotiate their income with the new company in an effort to avoid wage stagnation that seemed to come after about eight years on the job. Seniority after that milestone seemed irrelevant, as confirmed by many mid-level workers who revealed that their salaries were similar those of workers with ten or more years experience. Even then, workers said budgetary constraints depressed wages on a case-by-case basis.

Interviewees reported that the quality or appeal of programming also shaped their decision to change jobs. One PD said,

I move to another company when I’m interested in the programs that the company will start producing or is already producing. Through this change . . . we can experience new programs . . . this way we can advance our career.

These shifts provided workers with the ability to create new material, because producing the same program over a long period was mentally and physically tiring. A new company, with new sets of people and projects, could be exhilarating.

Freelancers perceived themselves as having control over work periods in contrast to industrial laborers forced into contractually defined work periods.

Most independent-sector workers were not affectively attached to their companies as freelancers, this tendency became stronger the longer they worked in independent broadcast sectors. An experienced female scriptwriter explained why her company detachment should be understood as a kind of freedom:

The business situation is really limited in most independent companies, and I’m kind of a senior worker in this industry. We’re all freelancers, so we don’t have much attachment to our company. For me, if I claim something from the company, I must also do something for it . . . As a freelancer, I feel freer than other workers. The writer usually tends to hate restriction in anything.

This scriptwriter’s response highlights the importance of freedom from any specific company, an important factor in the Korean context where workers historically have had more hierarchical and disciplined relationships within corporate structures. ⁴

This relaxation of hierarchical relations had a gendered element as well. Network scriptwriters confessed that a strong hierarchy structured the relationships between the male PDs and their female contingent scriptwriters. In the case of independent companies, however, both PDs and scriptwriters were freelancers. Consequentially, scriptwriters felt that they participated more in the organization of the programs’ production and could accomplish more in their career.

When I worked in the networks, I always had to worry about the evaluation of the in-house PD. I knew they usually graduated from good schools and were smart. So they had so much power over us. They were members of giant network broadcasting companies, and some of them treated us as cheap consumption goods. We always had to think about their evaluation and manage our image for them. At this point, despite the lower pay, I preferred to work in an independent company because I didn’t have to worry much about all that. (Female scriptwriter with four years experience)

Participant observation further revealed that the scriptwriters worked collaboratively. They sat at a round table and chatted as they work, discussing their programs’ elements, exchanging ideas, and sharing feedback on their work. These casual discussions made a more comfortable atmosphere for freelancers, making them feel that they were working as equals.

The progressive interpretations of such practices may have reflected the age of these workers. Most independent freelancers were young people in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties. In my sample, all workers were below thirty-five years old. They felt a generational difference from workers in the network organization. The IP units had significant appeal for workers who sensed more familiarity with their colleagues and valued the absence of overt hierarchical rules that dominate established Korean network broadcast organizations.

The Limits of a Freelance Subjectivity

Despite the advantages they saw in their work, the freelancers also found it difficult to unite against common problems. This study found many cases of workers who experienced unfair or illegal conditions, such as delayed or unpaid wages at the individual level or unfair contract practices by the networks at the organizational level. In these cases, freelancers felt more isolated than “independent.” Even though no official or general survey data for labor unionization in the independent sector were available, many respondents reported they did not have a labor union. Here the issue of workers’ identity was crucial: because they were freelancers, they tended to treat job security and work conditions as their individual problems.

We’re organized like scattered sand in the beach because we’re freelancers. Not many people care for other people. This tendency tends to be stronger with respect to other jobs. PDs don’t care about scriptwriters’ jobs. The same is true for the scriptwriters with respect to not caring about the PDs’ jobs. We are invisible to each other. (Scriptwriter with eight years experience)

Most scriptwriters discussed their identity as that of freelancers who faced their workplace constraints independently of the unions. Job mobility also frustrated any collective movement and made it hard to meet the criteria of the exclusive member policy for the unions. ⁵ Therefore, not many workers participated, strikes were a rare occurrence, and the unions had declining bargaining power in the face of either the independents or the networks.

Conclusion

Workers’ subjectivities as creators and freelancers in Korea’s independent broadcast sector exhibited “contradictory tendencies.” Their strong passion to be creative workers led them to produce novel VJ programs. Yet, this passion was problematic. First, it was a mechanism for overcoming the harsh working conditions, and, second, it generated disappointment in the last instance. Freelancers also recognized themselves as individuals who were freer, allowing them to engage in more equal working relationships. Yet, paradoxically, this very sense of individuality interfered with their willingness to band together for bargaining power to defend their rights.

Ursell’s (2000) metaphor of cultural work as the “seductive vampire” of young workers seemed apropos to this research site as well. Only a small number of people retained their jobs for more than ten years in the independent sector. When workers became longtime employees, they had limited future options. They could manage their own production company, stay a freelancer, or quit their job. With few exceptions, however, workers’ lack of expertise in a single job position and their stagnated wages hindered most workers from either advancing or staying on the job.

In the final analysis, the Korean government has retained this contradictory market by implementing a local interpretation of globalization. In this nonwestern context, the pressures for global neoliberal reform played out against Korea’s own distinct history as a developmental state (cf. Gray 2008). In this case of broadcast workers, the distinctive role of the state and its globalization strategies created what Thompson (1990) calls “structured antagonism,” in which conflict between labor and capital became invisible. As a result, the independent workers’ antipathies were misdirected at the skewed power relations among independent companies and the major broadcast networks rather than at the state itself.