April 23, 2018
The Language Politics of Korean Office Culture
(Image of Dr. Michael Prentice giving a Korea Institute talk in 2018.)
Written by Michael Prentice, Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, Korea Institute, Harvard University
In May 2017, the Washington Post reported that some South Korean companies had begun to require their employees to pick English nicknames to call each other in the office. One worker at the tech giant Kakao, Hwang Yun-ik, rendered his English name to “Unique,” a name that reflected a similar sound as his Korean name and aptly summarized his personality. Other nicknames at Kakao were more banal, like an employee named Jin-gi who went by James or Mi-kyeong who went by Michelle. In the office, workers address each other with such names, foregoing their titles and even simple honorific suffixes (such as “-nim”). Such changes to titles may seem trivial, however they hint at some below-the-surface politics unfolding in the contemporary Korean office place. They also raise important scholarly questions about what the role of language is to economic institutions more generally.
Though the Kakao case is “unique” (no pun intended), it reflects a wider shift in the Korean office landscape around how twenty-first century office relations should be constituted. Language has become a key focal point for articulating many of these concerns. Rank-differentiated office titles (sawon, daeri, gwajang, etc.) have come to take on many meanings: signs of the past, a site for verbal abuse between older and junior employees, and an outdated business model unfit for today’s global competition. In interviewing representatives from more than a dozen companies in Seoul over 2013 and 2015, I found that almost all major conglomerates had implemented some kind of title change policy (known as jikgeup hoching) to how employees were formally organized or how employees addressed each other. Even the global juggernaut Samsung announcing changes to its internal ranks and reporting structures in 2017.
These changes reflect what anthropologists describe as a language ideology. By changing how people refer to each other, the thinking goes that social relations and institutions themselves will change. Ordinal titles and patterns of address have come to capture corporate Korea’s commonly cited “vertical” structure. Such structures are pinpointed as significant road-blocks to economic success and employee satisfaction. Case studies on Apple and other Silicon Valley companies regularly circulate in the Korean business world emphasizing how seemingly flat and informal relations can lead to more efficient office relations. Such ideas about language are historically contingent of course: at other times and places, clear roles and hierarchical distinctions were seen as the most efficient means of communication and productive efficiency – and a key to Korea’s early capitalist success. They are also culturally situated: it was American management culture in the 1980s that saw itself as needing to radically transform itself vis-à-vis Japanese business culture and kaizen (Total Quality Management) philosophy.
While the ideal of a flat company culture has become widespread, how to actually flatten an organizational structure through language remains a practical challenge. Many companies have experimented in how their employees should address each other. Some have adopted so-called “nim” policies where employees address each other by their (real) Korean first name plus the honorific -nim, from the CEO down to low-level employees (such as the CJ Group). Others have taken the opposite approach by elevating everyone’s titles, using foreign loan words such as “manager-nim” or even “pro-nim” even for entry-level employees (such as some Hanwha Group companies). Others like Kakao have gone towards English-name address. Interestingly, despite this diversity, however, one can notice an older Korean taboo against pure first-name reference or address, a practice normally reserved for close friends or family.
These new title policies represent a new imaginary for office social life in which employees should imagine themselves as interactional and status equals, two hallmarks that we associate with modern democratic practice. But economic institutions are not democratic ones: implementing flat titles has brought into relief other implicit features that mark work distinctions like salaries, benefits, career histories, work performance grades, informational clearances, reporting lines, and geographic locations, all of which form part of the wider background of value distinctions in the Korean office. Organizational hierarchies operate as a bundle of signs that articulate to mark status, making any simple change to office hierarchy difficult. This is not to mention other markers of hierarchy embedded in Korean language practices, such as the strategic use of speech levels, honorification, or other genres of authority that can make equal titles seem merely superficial.
The dotted landscape of flat-title policies may seem like an indicator of slowly changing Korean social norms and the ongoing struggle to democratize Korean institutions, but they have also created their own curious politics. Unions for instance see such policies as a way to remove privileges associated with career labor workers, by removing consideration of tenure or performance, and leveling distinctions between employees. Some companies have even ended the experiment and reverted back to the older hobongje (seniority-based) system, such as KT which reported that young employees were unmotivated by their new titles. More than deep structural changes, we should see these changes as part of a new corporate style politics, with newer and younger industries such as high-tech often adopting informal and flat name policies (first-name or English name) with more conservative industries advocating formal flat name policies (“manager” or “pro”). This suggests a split between those industries that see themselves as embodying a new global spirit and those industries still tied to older workforces with more complex labor histories that are not so easy to flatten. While we should welcome advances in democratization in Korean society, we should also be wary of how even simple changes to language and speaking can erase histories of labor.
The materials for this article were originally part of the author’s dissertation and discussed at a colloquium talk given at the Korea Institute in October 2017. It will be part of an edited volume published in Korean published in 2019 focusing on language politics in contemporary Korea.
Bio
Michael Prentice is a linguistic and organizational anthropologist who focuses on language, management, and technology in contemporary South Korea. For his dissertation, he spent a year as an ethnographer-intern inside a steel conglomerate in Seoul. His book project will explore the shifting place that conglomerates occupy in Korean society and the ways that corporate authority is challenged both within and outside of firm. He is currently publishing research articles on a variety of topics related to office politics in Korea, including office gender stereotypes, the overuse of PowerPoint, and shareholder meetings. His research has received support from the Korea Foundation, Academy of Korean Studies, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Fulbright Program. Michael received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2017 prior to coming to the Korea Institute. He will begin lecturing in the Department of Anthropology at Brandeis University in Fall 2018.
(Image of Dr. Michael Prentice giving a Korea Institute talk in 2018.)
Written by Michael Prentice, Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, Korea Institute, Harvard University
In May 2017, the Washington Post reported that some South Korean companies had begun to require their employees to pick English nicknames to call each other in the office. One worker at the tech giant Kakao, Hwang Yun-ik, rendered his English name to “Unique,” a name that reflected a similar sound as his Korean name and aptly summarized his personality. Other nicknames at Kakao were more banal, like an employee named Jin-gi who went by James or Mi-kyeong who went by Michelle. In the office, workers address each other with such names, foregoing their titles and even simple honorific suffixes (such as “-nim”). Such changes to titles may seem trivial, however they hint at some below-the-surface politics unfolding in the contemporary Korean office place. They also raise important scholarly questions about what the role of language is to economic institutions more generally.
Though the Kakao case is “unique” (no pun intended), it reflects a wider shift in the Korean office landscape around how twenty-first century office relations should be constituted. Language has become a key focal point for articulating many of these concerns. Rank-differentiated office titles (sawon, daeri, gwajang, etc.) have come to take on many meanings: signs of the past, a site for verbal abuse between older and junior employees, and an outdated business model unfit for today’s global competition. In interviewing representatives from more than a dozen companies in Seoul over 2013 and 2015, I found that almost all major conglomerates had implemented some kind of title change policy (known as jikgeup hoching) to how employees were formally organized or how employees addressed each other. Even the global juggernaut Samsung announcing changes to its internal ranks and reporting structures in 2017.
These changes reflect what anthropologists describe as a language ideology. By changing how people refer to each other, the thinking goes that social relations and institutions themselves will change. Ordinal titles and patterns of address have come to capture corporate Korea’s commonly cited “vertical” structure. Such structures are pinpointed as significant road-blocks to economic success and employee satisfaction. Case studies on Apple and other Silicon Valley companies regularly circulate in the Korean business world emphasizing how seemingly flat and informal relations can lead to more efficient office relations. Such ideas about language are historically contingent of course: at other times and places, clear roles and hierarchical distinctions were seen as the most efficient means of communication and productive efficiency – and a key to Korea’s early capitalist success. They are also culturally situated: it was American management culture in the 1980s that saw itself as needing to radically transform itself vis-à-vis Japanese business culture and kaizen (Total Quality Management) philosophy.
While the ideal of a flat company culture has become widespread, how to actually flatten an organizational structure through language remains a practical challenge. Many companies have experimented in how their employees should address each other. Some have adopted so-called “nim” policies where employees address each other by their (real) Korean first name plus the honorific -nim, from the CEO down to low-level employees (such as the CJ Group). Others have taken the opposite approach by elevating everyone’s titles, using foreign loan words such as “manager-nim” or even “pro-nim” even for entry-level employees (such as some Hanwha Group companies). Others like Kakao have gone towards English-name address. Interestingly, despite this diversity, however, one can notice an older Korean taboo against pure first-name reference or address, a practice normally reserved for close friends or family.
These new title policies represent a new imaginary for office social life in which employees should imagine themselves as interactional and status equals, two hallmarks that we associate with modern democratic practice. But economic institutions are not democratic ones: implementing flat titles has brought into relief other implicit features that mark work distinctions like salaries, benefits, career histories, work performance grades, informational clearances, reporting lines, and geographic locations, all of which form part of the wider background of value distinctions in the Korean office. Organizational hierarchies operate as a bundle of signs that articulate to mark status, making any simple change to office hierarchy difficult. This is not to mention other markers of hierarchy embedded in Korean language practices, such as the strategic use of speech levels, honorification, or other genres of authority that can make equal titles seem merely superficial.
The dotted landscape of flat-title policies may seem like an indicator of slowly changing Korean social norms and the ongoing struggle to democratize Korean institutions, but they have also created their own curious politics. Unions for instance see such policies as a way to remove privileges associated with career labor workers, by removing consideration of tenure or performance, and leveling distinctions between employees. Some companies have even ended the experiment and reverted back to the older hobongje (seniority-based) system, such as KT which reported that young employees were unmotivated by their new titles. More than deep structural changes, we should see these changes as part of a new corporate style politics, with newer and younger industries such as high-tech often adopting informal and flat name policies (first-name or English name) with more conservative industries advocating formal flat name policies (“manager” or “pro”). This suggests a split between those industries that see themselves as embodying a new global spirit and those industries still tied to older workforces with more complex labor histories that are not so easy to flatten. While we should welcome advances in democratization in Korean society, we should also be wary of how even simple changes to language and speaking can erase histories of labor.
The materials for this article were originally part of the author’s dissertation and discussed at a colloquium talk given at the Korea Institute in October 2017. It will be part of an edited volume published in Korean published in 2019 focusing on language politics in contemporary Korea.
Bio
Michael Prentice is a linguistic and organizational anthropologist who focuses on language, management, and technology in contemporary South Korea. For his dissertation, he spent a year as an ethnographer-intern inside a steel conglomerate in Seoul. His book project will explore the shifting place that conglomerates occupy in Korean society and the ways that corporate authority is challenged both within and outside of firm. He is currently publishing research articles on a variety of topics related to office politics in Korea, including office gender stereotypes, the overuse of PowerPoint, and shareholder meetings. His research has received support from the Korea Foundation, Academy of Korean Studies, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Fulbright Program. Michael received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2017 prior to coming to the Korea Institute. He will begin lecturing in the Department of Anthropology at Brandeis University in Fall 2018.