Promedio de los Perfiles TCP en las operadoras móviles

It has been argued above, that some of the major economic discourses on

the colonial fieriod are at least indirectly dependent on non-economic value

orientations, and that these discourses have inescapably political

implications, which means that a political reading of statistical data can

often be observed. Also, it was indicated that the ways of interpreting each

economic issue by the participants in the debates are implicitly related to

the intellectuals' own economic orientations fo r Korea in the present time. Whatever the purposes and consequences of the economic policies by Japan

and the colonial state might be, it must be true that they had a big impact

on all Koreans' interpretative attitudes to the world and that they provoked

Koreans to have stronger self-identities.

It becomes necessary here to investigate the socio-political dimension of the

economic transformation propelled by the colonial state. If the political

crisis in the late nineteenth century caused many Koreans to become

uncertain of their economic relations, which were deeply rooted in a

traditional social status, the Japanese occupation seriously destabilized

traditional economic relations through its destruction of the political

authority of the Korean state and its undermining of the power of

customary agreements for the local community. The introduction of new

legislation by the colonial state concerning land taxation, partly ignored the

property rights of farmers and the right of cultivation, which had not

previously been guaranteed by law, but by social agreement in Chosun

society. The resultant loosening of fanners' attachment to particular lands

meant that they would move from one land to another when the boom for

rice exports to Japan occurred. The measures increased competition between

small farmers who had to work as tenant farmers at the same time, and so

consequently the power o f landowners became stronger in relation to tenant

farmers. Some of the big landowners, who had earned huge profits, could

mobilize their wealth for investment in different industries, banking, textiles,

and so on. However, surviving in the colonial economic structure involved

cooperation with the colonial state and Japanese entrepreneurs in several

ways (see MIN Kyung Hwan, 1991 and YOON Seok-Beom et al., 1996

for the banking industry; Eckert, 1991 for the textile industry), a fact

belabored by nationalist and socialist critics.

As I noted in chapter 2, the hierarchical structure of status, which had

lasted throughout Chosun society fluctuated significantly in the late

nineteenth century, when the people who suffered social discrimination

began to voice their collective demand for institutional reform. Although

Chosun and the empire o f Great Korea ended up with incomplete reforms,

collective behavior - in terms of organizing interest groups, establishing

religious organizations and even their own religions, continuously developed

in colonial Korea. It is interesting to observe the change in the human

rights movements, dedicated to eliminating the strong idea o f social status

and social discrimination in the new economic situation. The paekchong (®)

3 )'s organization of Hyongpyongsa A)-), which literally means the Equalization Society, and its active movement for human rights and economic interests is a good example of the changing orientation of social

movements in the transforming period (Shaw, 1991; KIM Joong-Seop,

1999). The paekchong was one of the discriminated under-classes in

Chosun society, whose members’ occupations included slaughterers and

butchers, tanners and leather workers, wicker craftmen, and occasionally

executioners. They initiated Hyongpyongsa in 1923, following earlier collective actions, at a time when social discrimination was still germane to

their situation and when their monopolization of meat processing was under

threat from non-paekchong members - other Koreans and Japanese -

actively involved in this industry. While the Hyongpyong movement was motivated by the principle of equal human rights with other Koreans - with

regard to opportunities for school enrollment and to participating in

community events as equals, for example the history o f members'

politico-economic orientations toward practical agendas was quite diverse.

And this, not only because of a loosening of the occupational tie between

the paekchong and the meat producing industry, but also because o f a

multiplicity of complex interests derived from different regions, generations,

and occupations. Furthermore, many members' involvement in other social

movements that were mainly related to the anti-colonial social atmosphere,

the introduction of socialist visions in the Hyongpyong movement and Japanese intervention in this situation, meant that the organizational

solidarity among members diminished more and more by the 1930s.

Diversification o f their political, social or economic goals and practical

differentiations were not only based on their ontological situation as a

pre-defined status group, which had prevailed in Chosun society and which

needed re-configuring, but also supported by a novel interpretative

framework for the emerging world, in which actors' roles were newly

demanded, not only as a paekchong, but also as Koreans, workers,

intellectuals, entrepreneurs, nationalists, and socialists.

3.2.2. Reformulating political alternatives under Western intellectual