Cultures of Consumption and Late Modernity in South Korea

Abstract

This paper describes the processes of economic modernization and the resulting social experience of modernity in South Korea. The focus is on the role of consumption in the politics of economic development and national identity. Describing the process of individualization in modern South Korea, consumer behavior is shown to be more important today for constructing identity, in comparison to the classic modernization of Korea in the 1960s or 1970s.