Financial Crisis and Minority Shareholders’ Movement in Korea: The Unfolding and Social Consequences of the Movement

초록

The minority shareholders’ movement has become the most symbolic and representative case of NGOs activism in the process of social restructuring following the 1997 financial crisis. Although much has been mentioned about the successful story of minority shareholders’ movement in everyday storytelling, only scant attention has been paid to the mechanism of the movement including its formation, method, and social consequences. We analyze the mechanism in conjunction with the financial crisis and the diffusion of shareholder capitalism. The minority shareholders’ movement placed the target for reform on the corporate system regarded as one of the big reasons behind the financial crisis and heavily depended upon legal channel as the tool of movement method. It inevitably created the risk that reform efforts concentrated further activist-driven, salient and single-issue focused. We, therefore, observe three major consequences that arose from minority shareholders movement: exits for foreign capital guaranteed, loss of publicness in finance, and overwhelming advantage secured by capital. We explore an account that makes sense of half-way success of the minority shareholders’ movement, hinging upon the inevitable dilemma between the legacy of developmental state and the hegemony of neo-liberalism faced by all reformers in the postdemocratization era of Korean society.

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