Nam Center Colloquium Series | Critically Capitalist: The Spirit of Asset Capitalism in South Korea

Critically Capitalist examines South Korea’s mass investment culture through the lens of “critical capitalism”—a paradoxical phenomenon where ordinary Koreans simultaneously critique capitalism while dedicating themselves to asset accumulation. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork among amateur stock investors, real estate enthusiasts, and money coaches during the 2010s, the book reveals how contemporary capitalism sustains itself by channeling popular discontent into financial and real estate markets. The book focuses on individuals aspiring to become millionaires in ten years. Rather than embodying the rational, emotionally detached investor of economic theory, these asset aspirants formed vibrant communities, articulated sophisticated critiques of capitalism’s structural inequalities, and openly expressed emotional wounds caused by exploitative labor and economic polarization.

Critical capitalism emerged from popular discontent with both South Korea’s developmental state legacy and neoliberal financialization after the 1997 IMF crisis. Asset seekers positioned their speculative activities as resistance against corporate oppression and foreign capital domination, while simultaneously embedding themselves deeper into financial markets. However, their community building, emotional expression, and anti-capitalist rhetoric paradoxically legitimated their participation in dispossessive forms of capitalism. The book demonstrates how critique, community, and emotion function as the cultural and affective backbone of asset capitalism, showing that contemporary capitalism thrives not despite its critics, but precisely by incorporating their criticisms into new forms of market participation and wealth accumulation.

Bohyeong Kim is an assistant professor of communication studies and Asian studies at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of Critically Capitalist: The Spirit of Asset Capitalism in South Korea (University of Michigan Press, 2025), and her research centers on the relationship between media, culture, and the capitalist economy. Her work has appeared in Cultural Studies, Journal of Cultural Economy, Media, Culture & Society, Korean Journal of Communication, Television & New Media, among other journals. She is currently working on another book-length project about South Korea’s platform capitalism and the tech-media-finance conglomerate Kakao.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at ncks.info@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.