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South Koreans in the city of Ulsan claim that eating whale meat is a tradition, but what is the role of SMOs in making whaling into a tradition identified with a local identity? In following account of a confrontation that took place in Korea between anti-whaling protesters from Greenpeace and local defenders of whaling, it is shown that tradition is not an inevitable outcome of conserving the past; instead, it is an outcome of mobilization, framing, and choices made by movement participants. Tradition in the whaling town of Ulsan was formed through the encounter between opposed social movements, prompting strategic choices of counterframing, frame bridging, and the dissonance between framing and feeling rules. Through the encounters with transnational activists, the Korean defenders of whaling refashioned themselves as rooted cosmopolitans, utilizing global norms to justify local practices in the name of heritage and tradition.

While the origin of Korean Industrial Relations goes back 150 years when the country opened its seaports to foreign countries, it didn’t emerge as a field of study until 1950s when academics began to write books and papers on the Korean labor movement, labor laws, and labor economics. In this paper, we sketch this history and describe important events and people that contributed to the development of industrial relations in Korea. Korean industrial relations in the early 20th century were significantly distorted by the 35-year-Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945). After regaining its independence, the U.S. backed, growth-oriented, military-based, authoritarian Korean government followed suit and consistently suppressed organized labor until 1987. Finally, the 1987 Great Labor Offensive allowed the labor movement to flourish in a democratized society. Three groups were especially influential in the field of industrial relations in the early 1960s: labor activists, religious leaders, and university faculty. Since then, numerous scholars have published books and papers on Korean industrial relations, whose perspectives, goals, and processes are still being debated and argued. The Korean Industrial Relations Association (KIRA) was formed on March 25, 1990 and many other academic and practitioner associations have also come into being since then. The future of industrial relations as a field of study in Korea does not seem bright, however. Issues regarding organized labor are losing attention because of a steadily shrinking unionization rate, changing societal attitude toward labor unions, and the enactment of new and improved laws and regulations regarding employment relationships more broadly. Thus, we suggest that emerging issues such as contingent workers, works councils and tripartite partnership, conflict management, and human rights will be addressed by the field of industrial relations in Korea only if this field breaks with its traditional focus on union and union–management relations.