Relocating exploitation: Tenant shopkeepers, rental relationships, and the speculative commodification of urban space in South Korea

In light of recent trends toward “jobless growth” and increased wagelessness, a debate has arisen concerning whether there is an “outside” of capitalism. Surplus populations that are superfluous to the needs of the capitalist class can, it has been argued, constitute this “outside,” with some among them sustaining a living unscathed by capitalist exploitation. However, in my case study of tenant shopkeepers in South Korea, I demonstrate how supposedly superfluous livelihood activities are subsumed in exploitative capitalist relations when the urban commercial properties in which tenants make their livelihoods become high- return, speculative commodities. By identifying how and when exploitation can be activated well beyond the employment relationship, or even the “disguised” employment relationship, I call for extending the concept of exploitation to include these frontiers of capitalist extraction.