An Inquiry into Restructuring Business and Reorganizing Vacation Following the Financial Crisis: Using Text Analysis of Business

Abstract

The 1997 financial crisis created major ripples all across Korean society. Business was subjected to intense structural reforms, with restructuring taking place on a wide scale and on many different levels. Competitiveness, flexibility, structural adjustment, innovation, core competence have all become the hallmarks of the restructuring. The attempts to restructure the old system had taken place not only in production, workplace, and labor time, but much further in the realm of reproduction, extra-workplace space, and free time as well. With the restructuring that followed the financial crisis, the very notion of vacation changed enormously. Within the many layers of restructuring that had taken place, the concept of vacation, which had been a residual category subject for a long time, had also been brought into the realm of management. This article analyses cases in which vacation was used as a target for management, hinging upon the discourse method of text including magazine and daily newspapers. The representation of vacation taking place as part of the corporate restructuring was analyzed in terms of the images and words used. Our discussion focuses on ways in which the very notion of vacation has changed amidst the business restructuring in the aftermath of the financial crisis, changing from an opportunity to refresh by way of individual rest to productivity-raising reproductive time that is to be planned and managed.