From Miracle to Mirage: the Making and Unmaking of Korean Middle Class, 1960-2015

Yang argues that profitable speculation in skyrocketing prices for Seoul real estate led to mobility and material comforts for the new middle class. She also shows that the fragility inherent in such developments was embedded in the very formation of that socioeconomic group. Taking exception to conventional views, Yang emphasizes the role of the state in producing patterns of class structure and social inequality. She demonstrates the speculative and exclusionary ways in which the middle class was formed. Domestic politics and state policies, she argues, have shaped the lived experiences and identities of the Korean middle class. gives us a new interpretation of the reality behind the myth. Yang’s analysis provides evidence of how in cultural and objective terms the country’s rapid, compressed program of economic development created a deeply distorted distribution of wealth.