Over the past century, the history of Korea’s labour movement is a history of struggle against brutal state repression. Korea has experienced three instances over the past one hundred years where the independent labour union movement was eradicated entirely by state suppression.
In the 1920s, under Japanese imperialist rule of the Korean Peninsula, an early form of labour union movement began in Korea, and the first nationwide labour union organisation was established in 1927. However, the Japanese colonial police relentlessly suppressed the labour union movement. As part of the efforts to reorganise the Korean Peninsula into a war base ahead of the full-scale invasion of China in 1937, the Japanese imperialists outlawed all forms of labour union activity in 1936-37.
Just 80 days after the defeat of Japanese imperialism in August 1945, a national labour union organisation, the General Council of Korea Trade Unions (GCKTU), was established on the Korean Peninsula. At its core were labour activists who had sustained underground activities under the harsh wartime mobilisation system during the Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War.
However, the U.S. military government, which took control of the southern part of the Korean Peninsula after the end of Japanese occupation, refused to recognise the independent national labour union organisation and unleashed suppression. In response, a general strike was launched in September 1946. The U.S. military government brutally suppressed the general strike by mobilising large numbers of former Japanese police members and organised gangsters, thereby annihilating the independent labour union movement.
Due to the ultra-right political landscape formed by the Korean War (1950-53), an independent labour union movement remained impossible in Korea until the 1960s. Jeon Tae-il’s struggle in 1970 became a new starting point for the independent labour union movement. Despite the harsh suppression by Park Chung-hee’s military regime in the 1970s, a small-scale democratic labour union movement took shape. However, the Chun Doo-hwan military regime that emerged after Park Chung-hee’s assassination in 1979 brutally suppressed the Gwangju Uprising in 1980 and crushed all democratic unions by 1982. Once again, the independent labour union movement was annihilated.
In 1987, the Great Workers’ Struggle, a nationwide strike wave, took place, and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) was established in 1995. One might think that in Korea today, the risk of the independent labour union movement being eradicated by state repression no longer exists. However, if Yoon Suk-yeol’s self-coup had succeeded on December 3, 2024, it could have led to the fourth eradication of the independent labour union movement.
Yoon Suk-yeol’s self-coup was blocked by the resistance of workers and the people, and it ultimately failed. At this moment, we can say that today, South Korea has overcome a history where the independent labour union movement was crushed three times. Since 1987, it has successfully survived and developed despite state repression. What was the secret to this? As a labour organiser with 40 years of experience in the movement and a historical researcher, I would like to suggest three points.
The first reason the independent labour union movement in Korea was able to resist state repression to a certain extent successfully is that a broad mass of advanced workers – combative, class-conscious, and self-sacrificing – has been formed. Between Jeon Tae-il’s struggle in 1970 and the establishment of the KCTU in 1995, around 5,000 workers were dismissed, 3,000 were detained, and 100 became martyrs. This means that at least several thousand highly dedicated, advanced workers existed before the KCTU was built.
The primary factor that led to the emergence of advanced workers on such a massive scale was the intense exploitation of Korean capitalism and the state’s brutal repression. During that era, Korea’s advanced workers genuinely yearned for liberation from hellish labour. Of course, harsh exploitation and repression did not automatically lead to the emergence of advanced workers. The decisive turning point from a subjective standpoint was the choice made by the approximately 150 people’s army fighters who resisted the martial law troops to the very end without surrendering during the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, ultimately meeting their deaths.
While the democratisation protests that ignited the Gwangju Uprising were led by university students, it was the nameless workers who became the main force of the people’s army fighters when armed resistance began against the martial law troops’ firing. The fact that ordinary citizens waged an armed struggle against the military regime, liberating Gwangju for five days, and more significantly, that this armed struggle was led not by intellectuals or university students but by workers, propelled 1980s Korea into an era of revolution.
The student movement, which had been confined to the level of pro-democracy protests while favouring American-style democracy as an alternative, began pursuing a democratic revolution against the military regime after evaluating the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. It posited the working class as the subject of revolution. To develop this revolutionary direction, it actively imported Marxist theories, which had been strictly tabooed until then due to the military regime’s suppression. From the early to mid-1980s, thousands of student activists, armed with rigorous Marxist theory, abandoned their student identities to become workers. They entered workplaces nationwide to organise labourers as the revolutionary vanguard. Not all of them succeeded. However, these student-turned-workers became crucial mediators in the growth of the militant workers who emerged during the 1987 Great Workers’ Struggle, transforming them into advanced workers with a firm class consciousness.
Armed with class consciousness and self-sacrifice, advanced workers fearlessly led the masses’ struggle at the forefront, undeterred by the military regime’s brutal repression. The existence of thousands of advanced workers who feared neither dismissal nor arrest, even death itself, became a precious starting point enabling the independent labour union movement to confront the state’s harsh suppression.
The second reason was that it fostered a tradition of solidarity struggles, solidarity strikes, and solidarity general strikes against state oppression. The 1987 Great Workers’ Struggle marked a new starting point for the Korean labour movement today. Over three months from July to September, 3,300 strikes involving 1.2 million participants took place. Though mostly illegal strikes involving factory occupations, they achieved victory by securing nearly 100 per cent of their demands. The astonishing fighting spirit displayed by the workers was the result of brutal state repression.
However, the process of the 1987 workers’ uprising did not remain a one-time outburst. It resulted in the establishment of an independent labour union movement as an organisational achievement, but this was not an automatic process. The state unleashed ruthless repression to prevent the 1987 workers’ struggle from leading to organisational consolidation. The state arrested countless workers and tortured those detained. Dozens of workers died.
To counter such brutal state repression, the independent labour union movement developed solidarity struggles and solidarity strikes as crucial means of resistance. In 1984, over ten democratic unions were formed in the Guro district of Seoul. When the military regime began its crackdown in 1985 by arresting three leaders from one of these unions, these ten democratic unions responded with a week-long solidarity strike. The struggle ended in defeat, with all unions destroyed and over 2,000 members fired. Yet this struggle, by attempting the first solidarity strike against repression in almost 40 years since 1946, provided crucial direction for the large-scale democratic labour union movement that emerged after the 1987 Great Struggle.
Following the Great Struggle of 1987, newly formed democratic labour unions united regionally to wage solidarity struggles against state repression. They established a tradition where, if one union faced crackdowns, dozens of other unions in the same region would unite in solidarity. In 1989, workers in the Masan-Changwon region staged a solidarity strike involving 20,000 participants and fierce street protests, successfully securing the release of detained union leaders.
The most significant event occurred in 1990. In January 1990, the predecessor to the current KCTU, the National Council of Trade Unions (NCTU), was established. It was the first nationwide union centre created by the democratic labour unions that emerged from the 1987 workers’ uprising. To dismantle this national organisation, the state unleashed even more brutal repression. In response to this repression, the NCTU launched a three-day general strike involving 120,000 workers every day. It was the first nationwide general strike since 1946. Its impact far exceeded its numbers because it included many core manufacturing workplaces in Korea. Pressured by this general strike, the state effectively recognised the NCTU, and in its wake, the KCTU itself was established a few years later.
The third reason was its continuous striving to unite with and lead the democratic struggle of the entire people against oppressive state power. In fact, the Great Workers’ Struggle of 1987 itself was the result of the massive pro-democracy demonstrations against the military regime in June of that year, achieving a partial victory. Although workers were not affiliated with independent labour unions, they participated en masse in street demonstrations involving one to two million people. Through these street struggles, they were able to build their confidence. If we could bring down the military regime, the oppressor of the entire society, wouldn’t it be much easier to bring down the boss, the oppressor in the workplace? That was the mindset of the workers who led the Great Workers’ Struggle.
Following the establishment of the KCTU in 1995, and particularly after the month-long general strike over labour laws in 1996-97, the KCTU transcended its role as a national federation of independent labour unions. It became the focal point for all people yearning for democracy in Korean society and for all social movements striving for social progress.
The administrations of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye from 2008 to 2016, and the Yoon Suk-yeol administration from 2022 to 2024, have increasingly and blatantly revealed their authoritarian nature, attacking fundamental democratic rights on multiple fronts. Workers have also been a primary target of these attacks. The KCTU stood at the centre of the people’s struggles against the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye administrations, and against the Yoon Suk-yeol administration. These struggles culminated in the impeachment of Park Geun-hye in 2017 and the impeachment of Yoon Suk-yeol in 2025.
However, the KCTU’s active participation in democratic struggles against oppressive state power has also led to some confusion in its relationship with the Democratic Party, another major capitalist political force. During its periods in power from 1998 to 2008 and 2017 to 2022, the Democratic Party fully demonstrated its character as a capitalist regime attacking workers. It was precisely these Democratic Party administrations that comprehensively introduced and expanded the layoff system and non-regular employment system, which have inflicted the most suffering on Korean workers over the past 30 years.
Under Democratic Party administrations, countless workers were arrested and dismissed. Even KCTU chairpersons were invariably arrested under Democratic Party administrations. The Democratic Party differed from more authoritarian regimes only in that it presented a seemingly humane face while attacking workers. Therefore, the Democratic Party cannot be a subject for solidarity in the struggle for democracy; it must be an adversary that the independent labour union movement confronts. However, a considerable part of the KCTU has regarded the Democratic Party as a solidarity partner, which has hindered the independent labour movement’s ability to develop further and has led to the hegemonic dominance of the Democratic Party over all people. Overcoming this problem is one of the most important tasks for the current Korean labour movement.
