During the three decades of neoliberal globalisation up to 2018, global inward foreign direct investment (FDI) flows increased by almost 8 times. East Asia has been spearheading this transformation. During the same period, inward FDI flows to East Asia increased almost by 28 times, from US$15.1 billion to US$ 426 billion. The majority of FDI inflow into East Asia came from East Asia’s advanced capitalist economies such as South Korea. Between 2000 and 2019, South Korea’s FDI outflow increased 723% from US$4.842 billion to US$35.53 billion. As of 2019, South Korea was the 8th largest foreign investor country among OECD members.

This massive transnational flow of capital has increased the size of the transnationally combined capital-labour relations in various industries in East Asia and the importance of FDI firms in export-oriented industrialisation. Consequently, FDI firms are increasingly affecting developing countries’ labour regimes - institutions, rules, and practices through which relations between labour and capital are regulated. As transnational actors, institutions and motivations play increasingly decisive roles in building and managing labour regimes, labour regimes no longer exist predominantly as nationally bound institutions despite their physical locations within national boundaries of East Asia’s developing economies. Rather, they are increasingly being transnationalised. Furthermore, each transnationalising labour regime in individual economies is being integrated into transnational hierarchies that cut across different production sites built by TNCs. In a nutshell, TLRs refer to a hierarchical series of labour regimes that transcend national borders. Our estimation shows that as large as 600 million East Asian workers are directly subjected to emerging TLRs. More often than not, expanding TLRs increase downward pressure on wages, labour standards and welfare of the workers particularly in Asia’s smaller and weaker developing economies located at the bottom of hierarchical TLRs.

Korean transnational labour regimes (KTLRs) are TLRs built and maintained by South Korean transnational corporations. An increasing number of workers are now under the influence of expanding KTLRs. KTLR Monitor’s conservative estimation shows that at least 7.6 million East Asian workers work under the influence of expanding KTLRs. To improve working conditions and welfare within transnational labour regimes, we think it is important to understand how Korean TNCs are operating and how they maintain labour regimes across East Asia. KTLR Monitor traces and archives the cases of labour disputes in South Korea’s FDI firms located across East Asia. In do doing, we hope we can build a comprehensive picture of Korean TNCs’ role in constructing and maintaining labour regimes across East Asia, grasp the nature of KTLRs better, and contribute to the region-wide effort to improve the welfare of workers in East Asia’s developing economies.