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."