10 Living co-ops in Korea
Sustainable living, communal labor, and
social economySun Jung
On December 1, 2012, The Cooperative Association Fundamental Law took
effect in South Korea (hereafter Korea). Over the next 100 days, 137 cooperative
associations were registered in Seoul alone (with more than 500 registered
nationwide). To encourage these cooperative associations (hereafter co-ops), the
City of Seoul announced that it would increase its number of co-ops to 8,000
by 2022, making up 5 per cent of the gross regional domestic product (Park So-
Hui 2013). This drastic change reflects Mayor Park Won-Soon’s background as
founder and manager of the Hope Institute, a think tank designed to promote
grassroots solutions to social, educational, environmental and political problems.
One key activity of the Hope Institute has been a citizen-driven campaign to
revitalize cooperative associations, groups that were struggling for survival in
Korea’s conglomerate-led neoliberal market economy, faced as they were also
with issues including the polarization of wealth, increased youth unemployment,
and the broader collapse of small and medium enterprises (in other words,
activities all linked to the idea of a social economy). The three major candidates
for the 2012 presidential election—Moon Jae-In, An Cheol-Soo, and Park Geun-
Hye—all promised a “welfare nation” and a “sustainable society” along with a
focus on developing a “social economy.”
The boom in co-ops is a good example of Korea’s rapidly changing socio-
political climate today. Along with other groups, living cooperative associations (
생활협동조합, 生活協同組合 , せいかつきょうどうくみあ) lie at the center
of a phenomenon that mirrors the desires of Korea’s contemporary middle class for
sustainable, green lifestyles. These middle-class urban consumers who voluntarily
participate in direct trading with rural producers have also become a driving force
in this alternative food supply chain. Modeled on Western co-ops (particularly
the Legacoop in Bologna, Italy), these local co-ops seek to become part of a
global movement that fights against rural poverty, respects the environment, and
practices food safety. Korea’s living co-ops embody the rising social economy
and a growth in the public awareness of sustainable living, a consequence of
rapid globalization and economic neoliberalization widely practiced in the global
marketplace. At the same time, the emerging living co-ops in Korea are also
closely related to the guinong/guichon (“moving back to village”) phenomenon,
reflecting the nostalgic desires of urban middle-class citizens toward a cooperative