대형마트 여성 노동자 투쟁의 재현과 군사주의―드라마 <송곳>을 중심으로

Abstract

This article examines how militarism influences the representation of labor activism in the 2015 television series, Songkot. Militarism is the basis upon which the sexist division of civil rights in South Korea is constructed, and therefore provides an appropriate methodology to explain gender politics in South Korean society. Even though Songkot’s narrative derives from the struggles by real laborers at a South Korean large supermarket in 2003, its structure is solidified through the trope of militarism. This paper analyzes how militarism in Songkot appears in the drama through the focalization of a labor union organizer who previously served as a platoon commander in the military, including the description of conflicts among workers or between workers and management through anecdotes coming from the organizer’s service period. As a result, this method of portrayal enables the elision of differences between the military, which protects national interests, and the labor movement, which defends class interests, and affirms the pervasive military culture in South Korea. Whereas other recent works of visual media which treat similar struggles to those featured in Songkot represent women workers as equal and active subjects in the fight with the company, and articulate the centrality of gender to the labor movement, I suggest that the representational strategy of Songkot can be considered a backlash or reaction to such progressive reflections on the sexist division of labor and South Korean labor movement.