Transformative Contributory Risks: Compressed Modernity and Risk Citizenship in South Korea

A systematic probing into the structural nature of South Korea as risk society leads to a revelation that virtually all categories of risks have practically reflected the pragmatic, strategic, and/or urgent efforts to expedite and aggrandize developmental, institutional, and/or civilizational purposes and utilities in the nation’s particular historical and international contexts. As these diverse risks are seen and accommodated in terms of various transormative functions, those citizens, communities, and organizations otherwise liable for or knowingly sacrificed by them are often praised and rewarded risk-reflective citizenship. To begin with, a sort of national fetishism prevails in glorifying those experts with some supposed scientific, technological, and/or industrial achievements (particularly in catching up with the West), at whatever risks would be revealed later on. Many of those managers, workers, farmers, researchers, and local residents who have bravely overcome or sacrificially endure dangerous outmoded conditions in carrying out either prioritized or neglected yet essential functions have been offered to be praised as indispensable national, industrial or organizational heroes under their tacit acceptance (or forced excuse) of such otherwise problematic dangers. Those hard-working South Koreans – with the world’s longest hours and/or incomparable intensity in work, study, human care, and so forth – have been portrayed domestically and internationally as model citizens of South Korea’s miraculously compressive economic and other marches. Those South Koreans who have cooperated or contributed in executing overambitiously targeted and often irregular or illegal activities and operations (without regulatorily or legally challenging them) have been preferentially given stable employment, positional promotion, extra wage or revenue, and so forth, on top of inner-circle honors and influences. In these diverse recognitions of transformative contributory risks, both formal arenas and personal spheres have been inundated by political, organizational, and private discourses on transformative risk citizenship.