Significance of and Developments after the 1987 Korean Labor Uprising

The last entry on Hagen Koo's article Labor Movement in Korea Losing Steam (Insight into Korea, Herald Media 2007).

Koo argued that one of the most important significance of the 1987 labor uprising was that it brought new actors into the South Korean labor movement.

The center of labor conflicts shifted from small-scale, light manufacturing sectors to heavy chemical industrial centers.

All of a sudden, the semi-skilled male workers in heavy and chemical industries emerged as the main actors of the South Korean labor movement, pushing aside and marginalizing women workers who had played an active role in the grassroots union movement earlier on.

New and powerful unions were also established at large manufacturing firms, and many white-collar unions were also set up in the service sector.

"The new unionism thus emerged represented a militant unionism with a strong antipathy and mistrust toward management and the government. This was undoubtedly the products of the extremely repressive labor regime during the authoritarian period of rapid industrialization."

This new unionism and organized labor also emerged as a major social force for democratic reform and social justice.

But more significantly, from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, production workers at conglomerates obtained hefty wage hikes and increased welfare compensation.

Unions also became more democratized, and the previously government-controlled Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU, pictured, logo) was revamped to become a genuinely independent and representative union.

Koo noted that another significant development was the formation of an alternative radical national center, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) in 1995, comprising many powerful unions in the automobile, shipbuilding, health care, and telecommunications industries.

Yet another significant development was the globalization of the South Korean economy.

"If democratization opened the political space for the labor movement, globalization functioned to undermine the economic base of the unionism."

Globalization brought new managerial practices aimed at creating a flexible labor force, and indeed, the major focus of labor-management conflicts in the first half of the 1990s was on labor laws concerned with employer rights on utilization of labor and particularly on layoffs of workers.

The conflict resulted in the Kim Young-sam government's "ill-calculated legislative move" to pass controversial labor laws aimed at giving more power to employers to lay off workers, at a pre-dawn National Assembly session on December 26, 1996, with no opposition lawmakers present.

The undemocratic move unsurprisingly triggered off a huge labor response. The newly formed KCTU and the old FKTU coordinated successfully to produce the first large-scale general strike since the Korean War, mobilizing millions of workers over a three-week period in January 1997.

Since the strike was about job security and many people were experiencing job instability, it was fully supported by the public.

"This was one of the rare moments since the 1987 transition when organized labor appeared as a moral force fighting for social justice, democracy and economic interests not only of union members but of all working people in society."

But as Koo noted, "the euphoric moment" did not last long as the Korean economy was hit by a financial crisis a few months later.

To cope with the crisis, the government proposed the setting up of a labor-management-government tripartite body. In February 1998, the Tripartite Commission succeeded in producing a tripartite accord that, among other things, allowed employers to implement redundancy layoffs in cases of business failures.

Although the accord was welcomed as a "historical compromise" by most interested parties, the rank-and-file KCTU members were upset by the outcome and forced the union leadership to resign.

"Subsequently, the KCTU stepped out of the Tripartite Commission, and the bad feelings created at this time continued to haunt the radical leadership and operate as a source of deep mistrust toward the government's effort for labor-capital compromise."

Relationship Between Korean Labor Movement and Church Groups in the 1970s

Still on Hagen Koo's article Labor Movement in Korea Losing Steam (Insight into Korea, Herald Media 2007).

Koo noted that an important feature of the Korean union movement in the 1970s was the involvement of church groups and intellectuals in labor struggles.

In the 1970s, two progressive church groups, the Urban Industrial Mission and the Young Catholic Workers provided a variety of educational programs to workers, and defended the workers from state persecution.

In the 1980s, labor struggles became more politicized due to the increase in the number of student activists who infiltrated into the labor movement. The Gwangju massacre in 1980 (pictured) also played an important contributory role to the radicalization of students.

"Students came to the realization that they could not bring down the military dictatorship and they must ally with the working class. The nohak yeondae, labor-student alliance, became their dominant strategy, and under this strategy a large number of students dropped out of college and became factory workers in order to raise political consciousness among factory workers."

By the mid-1980s, a large number of labor activists had been formed both inside and outside of factories. They gradually extended beyond the Seoul-Incheon region to southern coastal industrial towns where heavy and chemical industries were concentrated.

"Behind close company surveillance, many skilled workers in southern industrial towns, like Ulsan, Masan and Changwon, were reading Marxist literature and forming small discussion groups."

Brief History of the Korean Labor Movement

Still on Hagen Koo's article Labor Movement in Korea Losing Steam (Insight into Korea, Herald Media 2007) where he outlined the history of the country's labor movement.

Many foreign observers attributed the origins of South Korea's labor movement to the labor conflicts that erupted in the summer of 1987, in the wake of the country's political transition to democracy.

After Chun Doo-hwan acceded to the demands of the opposition for a direct presidential election, industrial laborers broke a long period of imposed silence and passivity and plunged into collective actions.

From July to September 1987, more than 3000 labor conflicts occurred, exceeding the number of labor disputes that took place during the two preceding decades.

Even though the 1987 labor struggles was a landmark in the development of the Korean labor movement, it was not the beginning of the democratic labor movement in South Korea.

The movement started much earlier with the famous suicide by a young tailor, Chon Tae-il (pictured, modern-day statue put up in his memory), in 1970. He set himself on fire to protest against inhumane working conditions in a sweatshop district known as Peace Market in Seoul.

"Until his body was completely burned by the flames, Chon held a copy of the Labor Standard Laws in his hand and shouted: "We are not machines!" "Let us rest on Sunday!" "Abide by the Labor Standard Laws!" "Don’t exploit workers!"

Chon's self-immolation had a tremendous impact on the working-class movement. It sowed the spirit of resistance and rebellion in the minds of millions of workers, and provided a powerful symbol for the working class in a society that until then did not have a sacred symbol that could inspire the mobilize workers for a collective goal. What he fought for was justice and human dignity rather than simple economic improvement. It therefore carried "an enormous moral authority."

More concretely, his tragic death played an instrumental role in bringing students and intellectuals to the assistance of the grassroots labor movement during the harsh authoritarian period.

Chon's heroic self-sacrifice subsequently led to resistance undertaken by young female workers employed in labor-intensive light manufacturing sectors.

From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, female workers in the textile, garment and electronic industries waged "incredible episodes of labor resistance."

In one instance, women protesters stood naked in front of combat troops to prevent the latter from coming nearer, while in another instance, strikers threatened to commit collective suicide with broken bottles.

"Women's struggle during this period demonstrated an amazing spirit of resistance and comradeship,” Koo wrote.