Living co-ops in Korea 145urban, well-educated, and prosperous middle class in the region as well as the
emergence of social media community networks.
The Social Enterprise Promotion Act was recently enacted in Korea, and
broader institutional support is now available. After Park Won-Soon was elected
as the mayor in October 2011, the Seoul government introduced supporting
policies and launched several innovative campaigns. In early 2012, the city
government set up a division dedicated to nurturing social enterprises in Korea.
A social enterprise certification system was introduced to promote social
enterprises, and a total of $5.9 million was earmarked to support the business
development of social enterprises. Other city initiatives included promoting 50
innovative social enterprises to solve social issues, opening an online shopping
mall to sell products manufactured by social enterprises, organizing a co-ops
festival, nurturing social start-ups that offer jobs for the disadvantaged, selecting
exemplary enterprises to receive assistance in accessing domestic and overseas
sales channels, reviving villages in the city, and creating co-ops run by local
communities (Park 2012, p. 51). Park also founded a pioneering social enterprise
called The Beautiful Store in 2002, which can be considered Korea’s first social
enterprise. The Beautiful Store’s original slogan was “One person’s trash is
another’s treasure” and is one of the first small, nonprofit organizations in the
country. The store’s recycle-and-reuse campaign helped spread the culture of
sharing and recycling as a way to establish a sustainable economic ecosystem. It
also incorporated the fair-trade movement early on, setting up a subsidiary called
The Beautiful Coffee (Park 2012, p. 50).
The emergence of this alternative economic structure may be a natural
consequence of globalization and the technological developments that have
brought numerous crises in neoliberal Korea. Due to the increasingly competitive
nature of the global economy, multinational corporations maintain their profits by
relying on unsustainable forms of production. The enormous financial gains that are
being made by those fortunate enough to benefit from these neoliberal economic
policies come with “large social and ecological costs in terms of higher pollution
levels, greater resource exploitation, less protection for workers and massive
social and cultural dislocation” (Agyeman, Bullard, and Evans 2002, p. 79). This
exploitative economic system does not, however, guarantee continued success in
generating socioeconomic competitiveness, and the “social reproduction” factor
has become increasingly significant. Social reproduction refers to “strategies for
conserving open-space, reducing commute times, delivering public transport,
providing affordable housing, improving access to services (such as healthcare),
and creating and preserving good wage-earning jobs for those not holding one
of the city-region’s ‘signature’ jobs” (Krueger and Savage 2007, p. 215). In
this context, by reinforcing the notion of social reproduction, social enterprises
maintain continuous competitiveness of both society and the nation as a whole.
They are experimental and offer an alternative way of doing business that
utilizes corporate efficiency and productivity to put people first, advance local
communities, and enhance the public interest. They grow out of the basic human
need to live in harmony and community with others.