Robin's Legacy in South Korea

 Robin's Legacy in South Korea, 2011-2014

By So Jung Rim and Jungwon Kim

Robin’s involvement and relationship with social economy and social innovation movements in South Korea go back to the early days of the movement nine years ago, when the seeds of ideas were being sown and exciting initiatives were starting to emerge. Robin played the role as an enthusiastic supporter and critical friend for the movement by sharing his learnings and reflections from the UK context.

The first encounter

Robin’s first direct link with South Korea started when he visited Jeju island, South Korea in 2011. He was invited as the keynote speaker for the 2nd Asia NGO Innovation Summit (ANIS), one of a few global events bringing Asian social innovators together. The event was organised by the Hope Institute, one of the first Korean think-and-do tanks centred around social innovation. I worked as the visiting research fellow of the Hope Institute and was involved in organising this event. 

Having worked in a university environment, I assumed that an important keynote speaker would present and disappear. To my surprise, Robin embodied lived knowledge. Robin was relentless at learning from everyone and he wanted to talk and ask questions to all the Korean attendees one by one. Not only did I gain intellectual knowledge that day, I also learned about the passion, attitude and approach of learning — how you can learn anything from all different levels of people and experiences.

Robin saw signs of how technology could transform a society in a new way and wanted to learn more from Asia. He believed that new technology could help the development of a human-centred economy and Asian countries like South Korea could lead the way. 

Read more about his keynote speech here.

After the three days in Jeju, Robin travelled to Seoul (link here) to meet other activists and practitioners working in the field of social innovation. Robin was curious about everything and everyone. We visited together SeongMiSan community groups and enterprises, Beautiful Coffee (the largest fair trading coffee enterprise in Korea), Hansalim coop (the food consumer cooperative).  He met dozens of activists and innovators who were trying to come up with different solutions for child care and education, fair and sustainable food supply. Robin also met and had a conversation with Wonsoon Park (link here), who became the Mayor of Seoul that year and turned Seoul into a people powered city.

A mentor and a friend

Robin's constant nourishment and encouragement for us didn’t end after the short time together in Korea. When Robin returned from a visit to Korea that year meeting with Mr. Park and other co-operators on the ground, he was very excited. He said, “We must write about the changes that are happening in Korea”. He emphasised the need for learning exchanges between different places. He was always interested in what people do and how they make it work in different contexts.

Inspired by Robin, my colleague SoJung, Kwansoo and I set up the SPREAD-I platform, a media platform that disseminates practices and case studies on social change. We were inspired by Robin’s thoughts on “spreading social innovation”, which captured the organic and formative nature of social change. 

Robin always encouraged us to write, create more content and share it with others. He mentored and encouraged us throughout our documentary project on co-operative education and housing called “The Mutual Future”. With Robin, we imagined the possible utopia that exists. He showed us the possibility of a cooperative future not only through our shared conversations but also through his actions. And he was with us during our journey, always curious and ready to listen. 

A trellis for the co-operative movement

Robin’s involvement with the Korean co-operative movement came at an important time.  The widening economic inequality in South Korea drove many Koreans to search for new forms of businesses. To respond to this reality, the South Korean Government introduced the strong policies supporting the social economy sector. The South Korean parliament also passed a new piece of legislation called the Framework Act on Co-operatives (FAC) in December 2011. The enforcement of the FAC started in December 2012. This new Act allows anyone forming a group of five people to start a co-operative which has the corporate status. The FAC also opens the door for a co-operative to conduct its business in any sector except the financial sector. Before this legislation, a co-operative could only be established in eight sectors such as agriculture, fishery, forestry, food grocery etc. The new Act encouraged many Koreans to venture into new businesses with co-operative values. (See the ILO’s report for the details of the South Korean FAC and the related government policies supporting the social economy sector).  

Between the one-year period between legislation and enforcement, the South Korean Government needed to prepare the detailed enforcement ordinances and other related regulations.  In developing the FAC bill and the following enforcement ordinances, the Korean Government formed the FAC task force team which consisted of government officers, policymakers, academic researchers and practitioners in the sector. In March 2012, this task force team contacted me to arrange a meeting with the social economy experts in the UK. They wanted to interview the UK social economy experts to hear their advice on making and implementing government policies. When I rang Robin, without any second of hesitation, he helped me connect with key people in the coop movement in the UK. Several weeks later, the UK’s social economy experts, Robin, and myself met the Korean TF team in London. For a whole day, the Korean delegates asked ceaseless questions on the subject. We didn’t stop there. Next day early morning we hired a coach and travelled up to the mid-counties cooperatives in Warwick. There, the Korean delegates had an opportunity to learn how a large scale co-operative could be run and its impact on the local community.  Robin arranged this two day visit schedule and facilitated the entire meeting.  

While the co-operative law expert and the UK FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) officer were busy answering many technical questions posed by the delegates, Robin was busy at strategically debating with the Korean Government officers and academic researchers who were not yet convinced with the potential of the social economy. Although the new Act was passed, there were still many government officers and researchers who were only familiar with mainstream business models and their view on the FAC was the mere result of a political compromise. Robin sat with each delegate on the coach and spent their 2 hour travelling time getting to know each other, their thoughts and what they hoped to learn. Mr. HyukJin Choi who led this trip recalled that this trip and the research interviews with Robin and other experts enabled them to witness the social economy’s actual outcome and rationale to transform the major economic landscape.  Later when Mr. Choi who became the Director of the Korean Social Enterprise Promotion Agency, he didn’t forget introducing Robin. He wanted Robin’s passionate messages to spread to the wider Korean audience. Robin became a regular interviewee to the major Korean media on topics related to the social economy.

Why did Robin generously spend his entire two days with these Korean visitors he hardly knew before? Perhaps, he sensed the passion and potential of the South Korean grassroots movement in the social economy field from his visit to South Korea in 2011. He truly wanted the seeds of the social economy movement to grow and flourish in Korea, and moved the hearts and minds of the government officers and the skeptics.

Perhaps, we are now seeing the fruit of Robin’s passionate words and actions. He has been like a trellis for our growth as individuals and organisations. There were 53 co-operatives in Korea in 2012, now there are over 18,000 co-operatives.

September 2020