거주지의 공간성과 노동계급의 형성: 울산 북구와 동구의 비교연구

This article explores the effects of working-class residential communities upon specific class-formation results in Ulsan, the biggest industrial city in South Korea. Specifically, in Bug-gu newly-constructed automobile workers' residential communities, developed on a large scale to meet workers' demand, became socio-spatial foundations for the working- class formation. However, recently urban ecological transformation and embourgeoisement of industrial workers' life-style have diluted the class-based spatiality in Bug-gu. Although workers in this region most of whom are employed by automobile plants have maintained some militant and collectivist workplace cultures, the life-worlds out of workplace are similar to the privatized life-style of urban middle classes. In Dong-gu, where ship-building industry had predominated over local economy, workers' collective housing area had been constructed adjacent to ship-building plants, and political connection between workplace and communities were realized with labor struggle in 1987. However, spatial restructuring process under the initiative of the corporation has undermined the social bases of labor struggle and class culture in Dong-gu since early 1990s. Nowadays the corporation-driven local management regime in Dong-gu has been developed with cooperative relations with the biggest enterprise union in the region. We conclude that the transformation of working-class life-world and urban space since 1990s have negative impacts on the forging class culture and workers' solidarity in Ulsan. Judging from this, ‘making working-class' in Korea has been under the condition of ‘separation of workplace and communities.' This may be the peculiarity of Korean working-class formation. Therefore, whether working-class can overcome this ‘separation' is the key to the re-formation of more solidaristic working-class in Korea.