ABSTRACT
On December 1, 2012, The Cooperative Association Fundamental Law took effect in South Korea (hereafter Korea). Over the next 100 days, 137 cooperative associations were registered in Seoul alone (with more than 500 registered nationwide). To encourage these cooperative associations (hereafter co-ops), the City of Seoul announced that it would increase its number of co-ops to 8,000 by 2022, making up 5 per cent of the gross regional domestic product (Park SoHui 2013). This drastic change reflects Mayor Park Won-Soon’s background as founder and manager of the Hope Institute, a think tank designed to promote grassroots solutions to social, educational, environmental and political problems. One key activity of the Hope Institute has been a citizen-driven campaign to revitalize cooperative associations, groups that were struggling for survival in Korea’s conglomerate-led neoliberal market economy, faced as they were also with issues including the polarization of wealth, increased youth unemployment, and the broader collapse of small and medium enterprises (in other words, activities all linked to the idea of a social economy). The three major candidates for the 2012 presidential election-Moon Jae-In, An Cheol-Soo, and Park GeunHye-all promised a “welfare nation” and a “sustainable society” along with a focus on developing a “social economy.”
