The corporate responsibility movement of South Korea can be forgiven for focusing much energy on relationships with the country’s neighbour to the north
South Korea is a vibrant democracy with a full range of NGOs. And a great many of these are focused on dealing with the communist dictatorship in North Korea.
However, NGOs and South Korea’s vibrant consumer organisations have recently begun to show a greater interest in company social involvement and corporate responsibility. The umbrella organisation of South Korea’s environmental NGOs, the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement, has introduced a programme called Smile (Sustainable Management and Investment Guidelines) which it uses to assess companies’ corporate responsibility actions.
While a vast amount of NGO activity in South Korea is taken up with the issue of North Korea, this is also true for a significant portion of chaebols’ responsible business activity too.
Peter Beck of the US Council on Foreign Relations, and a long time Korea watcher, highlights the work of Chung Ju-yung, the legendary North Korean born founder of Hyundai. He is perhaps the best known south-to-north philanthropist from the south, for example donating 1,500 cattle to the north as a humanitarian gesture in 1998. Many other senior chaebol leaders hail originally from what is now North Korea and so have a close personal connection to the issue.
However, the issue of North Korea is heavily politicised. Many charities, NGOs and corporate responsibility departments run programmes to alleviate poverty through sending food, clothing and medicines. They also help refugees and stimulate economic regeneration north of the border through projects as varied as supplying fertiliser to farms or repairing defunct coalmines.
But the politics of the situation never really goes away. Aid in return for influence and/or contracts in the north and what some see as jockeying for position in any future reunification cloud the issue.
As North Korea specialist and academic Aidan Foster Carter of the UK’s Leeds University notes, the relationship between South Korean NGOs working on North Korean issues and the Seoul government (particularly the government’s reunification ministry) are fractious.
The government would, by and large, like to retain control over all contacts and dealings with Pyongyang. NGOs, such as Life Funds for North Korean Refugees, help North Korean defectors to escape, which can cause major political headaches and increase tension across the border – officially known as the demilitarised zone.
Indeed, in recent months, north-south tensions have reached new heights. South Korean NGOs offering aid to the impoverished north have been sidelined since November 2010, when Seoul halted all aid activity over Pyongyang’s shelling of Yeonpyeong island, a broad-daylight attack that killed four.
The South Korean government has effectively banned all private-sector humanitarian assistance to North Korea and NGO activity between the two states. The Seoul authorities have maintained that Pyongyang must apologise for the shelling and the sinking of a warship eight months earlier, and agree to discuss the north’s nuclear programme before any resumption of humanitarian aid.
Unification ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo told the Korean press that the attitude of the South Korean government is to continuously send humanitarian aid to North Korea through the private sector when political conditions allow.
Naturally, for those NGOs working in North Korea conditions are difficult, and particularly so for South Korean organisations where political distrust and monitoring by the North Korean state is heightened.
The Centre for Applied Policy Research points out that the work of foreign NGOs is eyed with great scepticism in North Korea, especially because the concept of “non-governmental organisation” in a totalitarian regime is non-existent.
Thus foreign NGOs are more often treated like foreign state delegations. In particular, NGOs from the US and South Korea are subject to continual suspicion, which, the centre says, means they are not allowed a permanent working place in North Korea. South Korean developmental help organisations had received relatively good access to North Korea under the Sunshine policy, a programme to develop more contact between south and north developed by former South Korean president Kim Dea-jung. This access has retracted, however.
The Centre for Applied Policy Research points out that European NGOs, which are deemed to be less dangerous, have enjoyed more freedom in comparison to South Korea and the US, including, for example, the privilege of having a permanent working place in North Korea.
Union muscle
South Korea is highly unionised and the trade unions are active and vocal on all manner of issues both in the workplace and the national political debate.
The Korean ministry of labour says about 11% of workers in South Korea are in trade unions, split between the two national trade union blocs: the Federation of Korean Trade Unions and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. Some workers are members of independent trade unions affiliated to neither national centre.
While 11% may not sound high, Lee Yong-deuk, chairman of the FKTU points out that membership is concentrated in the top chaebols, giving workers a higher degree of power than the numbers might suggest. Additionally, during past industrial action, unionised workers have been joined by non-unionised workers and Korea’s sizeable and well-organised student population on the streets, resulting in often long running and violent protests.
Critics believe that Korea’s business associations are by and large pawns of the chaebols and reflect chaebol management thinking and objectives. South Korea has one overarching and dominant business association, the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI).
Founded in 1961, the FKI has as part of its mission statement: “Recognising the social responsibility of corporations, FKI is committed to maintaining an improved socio-economic climate at home and eventually to bringing prosperity to all mankind.”
However, NGO and trade union activists regularly accuse the FKI of ignoring corporate responsibility issues and preferring to lobby on tax breaks for its members and official pardons for its members who get caught in the criminal net.
Going green
Where NGOs have seen the biggest growth in number and public support is in the environmental sphere. For the past two decades the number and range of green-focused NGOs has been growing.
Much of the green activism in South Korea now takes place under the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement, which was founded in 1993 as a federation of eight environmental groups, the largest being the Korean Anti-Pollution Movement Association. KFEM activities include consumer boycotts of polluting industries, opposing Korea’s nuclear expansion and raising awareness of environmental issues.
The environment is one area where there is a potential major clash between NGOs and the government. While the government is promoting certain supposedly green projects as part of its “green growth strategy”, NGOs and protesters are questioning their environmental credentials.
Primary among these is president Lee Myung-bak’s plan to spend $19.7bn to dredge, dam and beautify four major rivers with golf courses and bike trails, a scheme that is supposed to increase the supply and quality of fresh water and prevent flooding. Environmental NGOs and conservation groups – such as Birds Korea – all oppose the plan.
Similar projects across the country including plans for tidal energy plants, eco-cities and other damming projects are all causing disagreement between environmental NGOs, local communities and the government.