This dissertation focuses on the gender-differentiated spatial and labor patterns emerging in Seoul's downtown manufacturing and commercial districts, addressing the significance of feminized labor that has been overlooked within the discours on indus...
This dissertation focuses on the gender-differentiated spatial and labor patterns emerging in Seoul's downtown manufacturing and commercial districts, addressing the significance of feminized labor that has been overlooked within the discours on industrial ecosystem.
Since the Sewoon Plaza area in Jongno, Seoul, was designated a ‘Sewoon Redevelopment Promotion District,’ the eviction of manufacturers and service industry merchants, began around late 2018. Starting in 2019, the merchants' association in the fields of manufactures and civic organizations proposed alternatives such as creating a ‘Manufacturing Industry Special District’ and call for the Seoul Metropolitan Government and Jung-gu District to develop relocation plans for the displaced merchants. After discussions with these groups and conducting a field survey targeting manufacturing and commercial businesses, the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced the 'Seoul Metropolitan Government's Measures for the Preservation and Revitalization of the Downtown Industry in the Sewoon Plaza Area' in March 2020. This preservation plan involved constructing public rental factory spaces on public land near the Sewoon Plaza area and accommodating some manufacturing businesses and distribution stores currently operating in the redevelopment project zone. However, this plan excluded service industries such as Sikdang and Dabang used daily by the merchants, as well as laundry handling work clothes and other laundry items.
Against this backdrop, this study aimed to reveal that the services provided by Dabang constituted a vital component of the system producing resources essential to the productive labor processes of manufacturing merchants. Dabang’s women not only performed ‘gendered hospitality’ to foster bonds with customers but also regularly supplied drinking water and washed towels necessary for the working environment of manufacturing companies. This was a business strategy adopted by coffee shops to sell more cheap tea more continuously. This study analyzes the services introduced by Dabangs as a form of domestic labor, examining the patterns that emerged as these services were mediated through transactions with male industrialists, drawing on discussions of gift-giving. While the domestic labor-style services provided by Dabang’s women were intended for economic stability, they revealed complexities of cooperation, tension, and bonding within their relationships with male industrialists.
Such domestic labor-style services shows the attributes of ‘intimate labor’ in that they involved continuously considering the other’s situation and managing necessary resources. This was the work collectively undertaken by Dabang’s women in this area. In this regard, this study notes that the domestic labor style of these women existed at a collective level within the manufacturing and commercial district. They intervened in the production labor environment of manufacturing companies, supplying structurally absent hygiene resources and facilitating the circulation of production labor. In this regard, this study is significant in revealing that the domestic labor-form services of Dabang’s circulated resources essential for sustaining the lives of production labor and functioned as a pillar of the Cheonggyecheon manufacturing industrial ecosystem.