On the basis of field work in six Korean machine tool plants, two types of shortage are identified. One is a quantitative shortage, i.e. excess demand for labour, commonly found in small- and medium-sized plants. The other is a qualitative skills deficiency found in larger plants when existing...

In the literature in English, the prevailing view on Korean unions during the economic developmental period of the 1970s judged unions¡¯ lack of representative capacities as well as their exceptionally slow growth patterns as constrained chiefly by the state-led macro-political environment....