Prologue: On the way to Gunsan

1.
Natives: Unique and Passionate People
2.
Fates: Regular and Non-Regular Workers
3.
Chanran: Dreaming of a World City
4.
Crack: Anxious Leisure
5.
That Day: The Day the Factory Left
6.
Breakup: The one who stays and the one who leaves
7.
Scenes: Chicken restaurant and one-room apartment complex
8.
Identity: Where and What to Do
9.
Year 1: Transition and Hesitation
10.
A story of rest: In a familiar city
11.
Again: Just another day like any other

Epilogue: Woven with Confusion

Gunsan native Kim Seong-woo (pseudonym) recently signed a six-month contract.
Electric vehicle company 'Myeongshin' is my new workplace.
In fact, I had just finished an interview for a full-time position at a feed factory right before joining Myeongsin.
However, when he heard that Myeongsin was moving into the former GM Korea Gunsan plant where he had worked for over 20 years, he made up his mind.
For him, who was only thinking about somehow "getting back" to his original position after losing his job, things like "six months" and "contract work" didn't matter. (p. 282)

At the age of twenty-six, I got a job at the Daewoo Motors factory.
It was a time when working at Daewoo was considered the best groom-to-be, and in common parlance, it was treated like a public enterprise. (Page 70) The Gunsan plant of GM Korea (Daewoo Motors) has ceased operations.
It was because the economic structure had changed, and it was a decision made according to the logic of capital.
After much thought, Kim Seong-woo submitted his voluntary resignation letter.
And 10 months later, I started a cleaning business.
It wasn't easy.
After closing the business, he went on to work at a paint factory and a mask factory.
For him, who had only ever worked in clean factories, the small, shabby factory was unsatisfactory. (p. 281)

Kim Seong-woo's life resembles Gunsan, a once-glorious but now-decaying manufacturing city.
From a young age, I settled in my hometown and built a stable middle-class family. (Page 129) I worked hard without rest, but one day, my job disappeared.
I received my severance pay and looked for a new job, but it didn't work out.
I was ashamed to give up the new job I had desperately sought (page 222). Being thrown out into the world for the first time, I also thought about the squalor of work without dignity (page 234).
If there is any hope to be found in Kim Seong-woo's life and city, it is that he is the only one of the people the author met in Gunsan who returned to the manufacturing industry (p. 287).

This book examines the process of Gunsan becoming a manufacturing city and its decline through the eyes of several Kim Seong-woos.
Hyundai Heavy Industries and GM Korea (Daewoo Motors), which stand at the center of it all, show how the rise and fall of companies and factories affect cities and people.
By vividly depicting the process of establishing and collapsing order in Gunsan—regular and irregular workers, direct and subcontractors, headquarters in the metropolitan area and regional production bases—it brings before our eyes the raw reality of a small city that may become our own after the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The Rise and Fall of Gunsan, a Manufacturing City

Gunsan, which had been spared from the development boom of the 1960s through the 1980s (p. 61), grew into a manufacturing city, riding the wave of "balanced growth" and the "West Coast Era." (p. 66) Daewoo, then the second-largest conglomerate, built an automobile factory in the Gunsan National Industrial Complex.
There was a crisis of group dissolution and final bankruptcy of Daewoo Motors, but it found a new owner in GM Korea.


Soon after, the Hyundai Heavy Industries Gunsan Shipyard was established in the Gunsan 2nd National Industrial Complex.
Following the shipyard, ship block and equipment companies also flocked to Gunsan. (pp. 69-71) This quantitative growth continued for about 30 years.
Autoworkers, rooted firmly in the city, built their lives on their faith in the factory. (p. 186) People dreamed of a global city, gazing at the massive cranes of the shipyard. (p. 110) Gunsan, with its unusually large population of natives, was a workplace, a home, and a playground for its residents. (p. 47)

Even when the global financial crisis hit in 2008, Gunsan's sense of crisis wasn't particularly acute. They had even weathered the IMF crisis.
Rather, thanks to high oil prices, compact cars produced at the Gunsan plant sold well. (p. 127) However, when soaring oil prices began to decline in 2013, Gunsan's fuel-efficient cars were no longer popular in the global market.
Production began to decline, and eventually GM headquarters decided to withdraw the Chevrolet brand from Europe.
Chevrolet cars sold in Europe were absolutely crucial to the survival of the Gunsan plant. (p. 132)

But I thought, 'It'll be okay, like always.'
From overtime to special work, these people, for whom the company and work were everything, tried to ignore the decline in production and enjoyed an elegant and peaceful daily life. (pp. 136-137) For fun, they appeared as extras in local movies, exercised, and spent time with friends.
Especially when I was with my family, I thought, "Ah, this is what life is like." (p. 135)

Tuesday, February 13, 2018, three days before Lunar New Year.
GM Korea's Gunsan plant officially announced that it would close in three and a half months (page 151). Factories have already closed, starting with the United States in 2008, followed by Russia and Indonesia in 2015, and Australia in 2017.
In the eyes of GM headquarters, the Gunsan plant was not a good place to work or a pillar of the local community.
It was simply an expense that exceeded profits, not faithful to shareholder interests.


In fact, Gunsan was a city that prospered and grew thanks to this efficiency and strict structure. (pp. 137-139) 2,044 GM Korea employees and 1,028 employees from 164 partner companies lost their jobs overnight.
A year ago, 4,859 jobs were already lost due to the shipyard's shutdown. (Page 185)

The tangled fates that followed the factory's departure

Go Hyun-chang (pseudonym) survived.
Instead of taking voluntary retirement, I stayed at the company and waited to be transferred.
The place he headed to was the Changwon factory, 210 kilometers away from Gunsan.
I decided to hold out for just six or seven years until my children entered college. (p. 183) But the anxiety continued even in the new city.
At some point, weekend overtime work disappeared from the Changwon factory.
It looks like the two-shift system will soon be replaced by a single-shift system.
Factories will lay off workers, starting with irregular workers, and working hours will be reduced.
This is exactly what Gunsan looked like before the factory left. (p. 188)

Jeong Sun-cheol (pseudonym) chose voluntary retirement.
In a city where the manufacturing base had collapsed, it wasn't easy to find work that was comparable to, if not better than, the previous level. (p. 197) As a second option, I opened a chicken restaurant.
I almost used up my retirement savings on various store expenses and rent (page 198). I always thought family and leisure were more important than money, but I gave up leisure for my family.
Giving up my leisure time felt like distancing myself from my family. (Page 199) Six months into my business, I started to feel unwell.
Unable to drive out customers and close the door, he held out until 1 a.m. and collapsed in the emergency room.
The next day, I went back to work and chopped onions to prepare for business. (p. 201)

After the factory left, regular workers envied the agility of irregular workers.
"When I came out into the world, I found that regular workers were completely left behind." Even within the factory, irregular workers did more of the difficult work that regular workers neglected, so they were better in terms of ability and had stronger survival skills. (p. 230) For the unemployed, finding a new job is a process of "lowering their standards." (p. 228) Regular workers hesitated.
Faced with new life as a caregiver, cleaning business owner, and billiard hall owner, the first things that came to mind were embarrassment, shame, past standards, self-esteem, and a minimal sense of dignity. (pp. 219-228)

While regular workers hesitated, irregular workers found new jobs as dock workers, apartment management office workers, and city bus drivers (p. 230). GM Korea's irregular workers, especially those in their 30s and 40s, are hailed as exemplary cases by the government and employment agencies.
They found new jobs on their own without any encouragement or supervision.
The analysis suggests that because they had previously worked as irregular workers, they were not picky about wages and treatment, were anxious about not receiving voluntary retirement benefits, and, above all, were accustomed to being transferred (p. 229). These workers, who can be seen as a product of the IMF foreign exchange crisis of 20 years ago, seem to have adapted well to the new economic crisis (p. 230).

However, the dismissal process was absolutely unacceptable.
The rude, unreasonable, and inexplicable dismissal brought back memories that had been severed.
The memory of being kicked out by a single word from a representative of a subcontractor, not GM Korea, was devastating. The shock of not receiving the severance pay or post-retirement care that regular employees who worked alongside them received was profound. (Page 232) They gave up the 10 million won severance pay belatedly provided by the company and pooled their funds together to file a lawsuit to confirm their worker status. (Page 233)

Gunsan, a city where factories have left, is facing a crisis.

A year after the factory left, voices calling for change began to be heard in earnest in Gunsan.
"The model where a region grows solely through large-scale production bases is a 10-year process." As industrial cycles evolve, regional production bases lacking core functions are the first to be eliminated.
Companies return during boom times and fill positions with non-regular workers (p. 241). Therefore, staying at the production bases of large corporations is not an option.
Industries that widen the gap between workers or companies are also unacceptable.
Local governments must be able to make decisions about management and labor.
Even small businesses with deep local roots must be self-sustaining (p. 247).

When we talk about economic crises, we often think of the IMF crisis or the global financial crisis.
We still pour out countless stories and analyses about that traumatic period.
Now, more than a decade later, the movement toward the Fourth Industrial Revolution heralds yet another major shift for the Korean economy, which has grown based on manufacturing.
This new, localized crisis presents a different picture from the previous one.
Cities that have relied on automobiles and shipbuilding as the backbone of their economies, including Gunsan, Geoje, Ulsan Dong-gu, Tongyeong, Goseong, Changwon Jinhae-gu, Mokpo, Yeongam, and Haenam, are all facing an employment crisis.

People who lost their jobs in an instant, fates divided between regular and non-regular workers, moments when anxiety and despair consume lives, memories of glory that cannot be let go, and vain scenes that mock forced hope fill the manufacturing city instead of the sound of metal and fireworks.
If Gunsan's reflection and efforts to avoid repeating the same mistakes become universal, not just a wish, it will become an experiment for Korean society as a whole, and perhaps even for global industry, labor, and urban policy in general, facing significant change. (p. 247)

"Gunsan, a city where factories have left, is facing a crisis." To unravel this one sentence, reporter Bang Jun-ho stayed in Gunsan for six weeks, listening to and recording the stories of ordinary people there.
It was featured as the cover article of [Hankyoreh 21] in the second week of July 2019.
Two and a half years have passed since then.
I came back again to see how the daily lives of the people there had changed.
This book contains the story behind it.
It also reflects on the indifference of Seoulites toward the countryside and the reporter's calculating attitude.


The author says, "It is unfortunate that someone else's confusion becomes my confusion, but it is a common sense that binds us together."
So, here we have a chance to look into the desolation of Gunsan.
This is not just their story.
This is the story of all of us right now.