Im-dong’s Ilshin Spinning Factory and Yang-dong’s Past and Future
Written by Anastasia Traynin
Photographed by Lorryn Smit and Anastasia Traynin
Across from the “Baseball Village” and the Im-dong Community Service Center, colorful artwork on a long row of uniquely triangle-shaped, cement-block buildings mixes with baseball player memorabilia. Standing on the narrow road that leads from the Mudeung Baseball Stadium towards the old downtown, these murals have nothing to do with the sport: This is the entrance of the still-operating historical hub of Gwangju’s textile industry, Ilshin Spinning Inc. Factory 1, which was originally founded in 1935 during the Japanese colonial period as Jongyeon Spinning Mill, the largest in Korea.
During the heyday of industrialization in the 1960–1970s, teenage girls and young women from low-income families, mostly from Jeonnam Province but some from elsewhere in Korea, packed in to work at the Ilshin and now-defunct Jeonnam textile factories. This writer had passed by the factory gates many times on the way downtown. Having met a former female sewer from the infamous wholesale Pyeonghwa Market of labor martyr Jeon Tae-il in Seoul’s Dongdaemun district, there was an interest in the important role female textile workers played in Korea’s economic growth. The Ilshin story came through the discovery of a May 2017 Gwangju Meil Shinmun article that reported on the operation in Im-dong and the Ilshin Spinning Factory 2 that had opened in 2007 in the expanding industrial complex in Pyeong-dong in the far west of the city.
After meeting with its writer, Park Jun-su, the story expanded into a general reflection on Gwangju’s industrial history. Not only has Park written newspaper articles on the subject but he is the author of an entire book on a prominent figure of the times: Kim Hyeong-nam, a former U.S. military interpreter appointed by the U.S. military government as chief director of the spinning mill in post-liberation 1945. Kim oversaw the National Jeonnam Spinning Corporation, from which Ilshin was spun off in 1961, and played a strong role in the community until his death at age 74 in 1978. His legacy as a manager also extends to the nearby Suhrim Presbyterian Church, which he founded in 1946 as a community center of worship and as a night school for the factory workers. While the Ilshin and Jeonnam factories take up a large visible chunk of Im-dong on the north side of the Gwangju River, the story continues southward across the river into Yang-dong.
Part 1: Inside Ilshin Spinning Factory 1
From outside the factory gates, no sound or sight of its continuous operation can be detected. Not even the inviting wall artwork, commissioned for local artists by Ilshin in 2012, gives any clue as to the work going on inside. On a sunny Monday morning in January, with snow still on the ground, journalist Park accompanied the writer to meet with Factory Manager Choi Yeon-jak and take a tour of the enterprise’s inner workings.
On the side nearest the baseball stadium stand the old water tower, electricity generator, and underground water pipe pumping into the Geungnak River. Choi explained that in 2016, the old towers were scheduled to come down, but Ilshin opposed the decision and decided to keep them as emblems of the bygone era. In addition to the towers, the old railroad that transported fabric is still visible through a crack in one of the buildings.
We move over to the production area, where rows of massive bales of white, fluffy raw material sit ready for processing. Choi explains that there are seven steps from initial processing until the final production of fabric that is sent for dyeing at Gyeonggi-do’s Banwol Dyeing Mill, established in 1984 as Ilshin’s own cloth dyeing center. Though automation rapidly decreased the number of workers from its peak of 2,000–3,000, Ilshin is still a 24-hour operation, employing about 500 women and 100 men to work 185,600 spindles of mélange cotton and raw cotton in three daily shifts.
Koreans and some foreign workers operate the processing machines and spinning looms that continue to push through 67,000 kilograms daily, producing various raw fabrics such as cotton and polyester out of textiles brought from such faraway locales as Indonesia, China, the USA, Brazil, Turkey, and Australia. The final products are ordered and distributed from headquarters in Seoul’s Yeouido, founded in 1991, and sent off to big-brand clothing companies such as Reebok, Fila, DKNY, and Tommy Hilfiger.
Walking through the mixing and blowing room, the dust rises through the air and the machines whir. In the office, the finished yarn samples come in a multitude of bright colors, and the various maps on the wall show the different countries of origin. In the room next to the office, a female staff member beams and proudly shows the visitors 5,000 multi-colored hanging pieces of finished dyed fabrics.
Though we do not see every step of the process, the final part of the inside tour is, of course, the centerpiece: massive rows of thousands of spindles on ring spinning looms. The spun-out, bright white yarn is fine and soft to the touch. Not even five minutes into the tour, the sound of so many looms spinning at once is already deafening and overpowering. Compared to old photos of a young girl bent over every spindle, these days the machines seem to vastly outnumber the workers. Yet, without them, nothing could operate.
Before heading outside, the writer and Journalist Park are instructed to blow off the dust covering our shoes with an air compressor. Though there is plenty more to be seen, the tour would not go on for more than an hour. Back outside in the fresh air and on the icy ground, the final stop is the green statue of Kim Hyeong-nam, erected in 1980 after his passing. His signature glasses and outstretched hands show the larger-than-life personality of the pastor and factory director, who was as well the chairman and president of Seoul’s Soongshil University, which sponsored his funeral. On a tree near the parking lot hangs a white placard written in English, perhaps as a nod to the U.S. military takeover after liberation from Japan, that was dedicated by workers on the first anniversary of freedom in 1946.
Leaving Ilshin on that day left the writer with even more questions: Where do the current workers live? How many foreign employees are there? What is a day in the life of a contemporary textile mill worker like? The answers would have to come at a later date, one outside the scope of this story.
Part 2: The Emptiness and Revival of Yang-dong
Between liberation from Japanese colonization after World War II and full democratization by the early 1990s, Yang 2-dong with its market, Yang 1-dong with its community service center, and Yang 3-dong – the area known as Balsan Village – were bustling with the bulk of the city’s working class. Market merchants, craftspeople, and laborers all mixed together, especially the young Ilshin and Jeonnam Spinning workers who walked across the stream along the former Ppongppong Bridge and took up residence in the hills and narrow alleyways of Balsan Village. In Korean, the name dal-dongne (달동네), meaning “moon village,” refers to this kind of urban slum neighborhood in a city’s hilly areas; however, when viewed from the top, Balsan Village ironically boasts some of the best views of the city.
Journalist Park Jun-su grew up in Yang 1-dong right in the middle of the busy industrial years, and spent his childhood among the mazelike streets that lead to Yangdong Market, where his mother worked as a merchant. He finished his studies at Yangdong Elementary School, but while his peers put on school uniforms in middle and high school, he spent those years working in a furniture factory. Park remembers not only the hardships but also the vibrant, close-knit community that has changed dramatically over the last several decades.
“When I graduated from Yangdong Elementary School, there were 5,000 students,” Park said. “The last time I visited, the teachers told me there were under one hundred.”
This hollowing out of Park’s old neighborhood is palpable while walking around on any given day, with mostly elderly residents and some laborers being visible. Notably, the presence of a multicultural family center suggests a transforming demographic. And yet, before the incorporation of rural Gwangsan-gu – the city district that nearly doubled the size of Gwangju and shifted the center further west – this area could have been seen as a central part of Gwangju.
Standing at the highest top of Balsan Village near a modern art sculpture, anyone can see the span of Gwangju down below, with the Jeonnam and Ilshin spinning mills stretching out in the center and Kim Hyeong-nam’s brown-colored church with a European-style steeple. After the elimination of the old iron Ppongppong Bridge, there was no longer a direct route into Balsan Village, though a newer road through the formerly unauthorized dirt paths has been built to allow greater access and plans to rebuild the bridge in the future are in the works.
Within the past two years, the neighborhood has been redubbed “Youth Balsan Village” in a collaboration between the city and Hyundai Motor Group to add color to the neighborhood and hopefully bring local youth to the area to meet with the senior residents. Certainly, the colorfully painted stairwell leading from the entrance near the stream to the top with the older houses has generated many youthful photographs. The addition of new cafes, painted houses, and the Ppongppong Bridge international art residence and gallery seem to have injected new life into this sleepy “moon village.”
“I love this area,” Park said. “I am thinking about making a novel about it.”
Our last stop in Yang-dong was the relatively new communal home for elderly women whose husbands have passed away, where we sat and chatted with these long-time Balsan Village residents. Old photos of the spinning mill girls at work in the 1960–1970s hang on the outside walls. Though none of them were textile workers, the ladies raised their families here and endured decades of hardships, with the home’s manager working as a hanbok tailor in her younger years. Somewhere in the area, a few former Ilshin and Jeonnam spinners still reside, but their stories will have to wait until another day.
What started as curiosity about murals on cement walls near a stream and a baseball stadium unfolded into a story of Gwangju’s industrial past and a peek at the possible future of urban regeneration. Though the city’s factories have largely become concentrated in Gwangsan-gu’s growing industrial complexes, it is interesting to visualize the former bustling Im-dong and Yang-dong neighborhoods and to reimagine what they can still become.
Note: The writer would like to thank journalist and poet Park Jun-su at the Gwangju Meil Shinmun for his invaluable insight into the history and current operation of Ilshin Spinning Factory, his personal stories of Gwangju’s industrialization, and walks around his home neighborhood of Yang-dong.
The Author
Anastasia (Ana) Traynin was a co-managing editor of the Gwangju News. She has been a contributor to the magazine since fall 2013 and has been living in Gwangju since spring of that year. After teaching for three years at Hanbitt High School, she became a GIC coordinator in May 2016. She has passions for Korean social movements, alternative education, live music, languages, and writing.