Introduction

In the last two decades the Korean labour movement has been developing tremendously. With the explosive development of democratic trade unionism since 1987, the number of trade unions has increased from 2,400 in 1987 to 6,500 now. Trade union membership has also almost doubled in the same period, increasing from about 900,000 to 1.55 million. In particular, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), which has been leading the democratic trade union movement in Korea, now has 800,000 members. It has become the biggest confederation in Korea. The Democratic Labour Party (DLP), born as a result of the workers’ political movement led primarily by the KCTU, has become the third most influential political party in Korea. With nine national members of parliament and 81 local council members, the DLP it is now a mass-based political party of the working class that support struggles of the working people. As the labour movement has grown in stature, socio-civil rights are protected to a significant extent. It is true that workers now enjoy basic labour rights to an extent that we would not have dreamed of in 1987. Thus we might well believe that the situation of Korean labour movement is better than the labour movements in other Asian countries.

Yet, contrary to its outward appearance, the Korean labour movement is going through a deep crisis. What is the nature of this crisis; and what are the underlying causes of it? And most of all, what changes does the labour movement need to make in order to overcome this crisis? I believe that the labour movements in Asia are all facing almost the same challenges; thus analyzing the crisis of the Korean labour movement and seeking an alternative way of overcoming it would not only apply to the Korean experience, but also be meaningful for the future and the solidarity of the Asian regional labour movement. 

The reality of Korean society that the labour movement faces

First of all, I want to share the reality of Korean society that confronts the Korean labour movement, which is often regarded as one of the most dynamic and militant movements in the region. Firstly, I should mention the expansion of irregular forms of labour and increasing number of irregular workers. By now, the number of irregular workers in Korea has reached 8.5 million, which is about 60 percent of the 15 million-strong total workforce. Wages of irregular workers are usually half of their regular counterparts. They are not protected by basic labour standards and they are also excluded from the benefits of the so-called four social insurance schemes in Korea, including the national pension fund and occupational accident insurance. Worse still, the Irregular Labour Acts that the national parliament passed in 2006 now accelerates mass lay-offs and the irregularization of labour.   

Secondly, Korean society is quickly becoming polarized. After the structural adjustment following the International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout and economic crisis in 1997, the Gini coefficient has been increasing every year, indicating increasing unequal distribution of wealth among the population. In spite of continuing economic growth, wealth distribution is worsening and it is now as bad as it was twenty years ago. At the moment, the top earners in Korea make 50 times more than people at the bottom income levels of society. More than 1.5 million workers make only the minimum wage and about 15 percent of people fall into the category of ‘population in absolute poverty’. While this polarization is developing, on the other hand, economic indicators of Korea show a smooth development. It is expected that the GDP per capita of Korea will exceed USD 20,000 by the end of this year, and the average growth rate during the last four years has stabilized at around four percent. The net profits of major Korean companies reach billions of US dollars. For instance, Samsung has already reached net profits of USD 10 billion (in 2004). Economic growth without employment continues while the contradiction of income disparity prevails.    

Thirdly, there is increasing privatization and commercialization of the public sector. The public nature of these industries has been seriously undermined and workers and people are suffering from backward development of public services and shrinking social welfare.

Capital and the Korean government have been pushing forward more and more privatization since the Ization bailout of 1997. Telecommunication, electricity, gas and environment management have been already privatized while privatization of transportation and water are being prepared. In addition, the remaining parts of the public sector have introduced commercial management, leading to degradation of public services for the people. Recently, private capital has had the opportunity to dominate the health sector as well, on the basis of the privatization of health insurance and the Medical Act amended in favour of private companies. It is very likely that the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement, passed in parliament recently, will accelerate this trend.

Fourthly, a striking reduction in basic labour rights is taking place. The Korean government and capital are trying to strengthen their control over the labour movement, which has been the biggest obstacle to the neo-liberal restructuring of Korean society. To do so, they have been repeatedly attempting to change the labour law into what it was before the great workers’ struggle in 1987.They have succeeded in changing the labour law in favour of capital: the amendment of 2006 included articles preventing workers in the public sector from exercising the right to strike on the one hand, and banning multiple trade unionism on the other. All these function to constrain workers’ freedom of association. The labour law amendment in 2006 also removed the article that punishes employers utilising illegal lay-offs. Worse still, according to the new law, reemploying workers who are illegally laid-off because of union activities is no longer a must but a mere option for the employers. These will seriously undermine union activities. Moreover, the Industrial Accident Insurance Act was also amended for the worse, so that it releases employers from responsibility for occupational accidents.

If this is the reality of Korean society after 20 years of struggle by the Korean labour movement, and if we define the labour movement as a struggle to change the structure and institutions of society towards more humane lives for workers, this reality glaringly testifies the failure and crisis of the Korean labour movement. What has caused the workers’ and the people’s right to a decent living fall to such a low? What has gone wrong with the Korean labour movement, that has allowed Korean society to become so completely encaptured by capital?

One might say that it is all because of neoliberalism –because of the globalization strategy of capital, which is not a problem unique to Korea. Yet offensives by capital are constant in capitalist society, although they change in form and intensity. The labour movement is a movement that exists to confront those offensives and struggles to overcome them. I believe that we have to first address problems within our own subjective conditions before condemning external barriers and constraints.

The current subjective conditions of the Korean labour movement include:

Steeply decreasing capacity to mobilize workers and struggle

Failure to establish a front of struggle against neoliberal offensives, including irregularization of labour; and failure to organize struggle on social issues

Regular worker-centric, enterprise union-centric labour movement and, thus, decreasing union density and failure to represent the working class as a whole

Reduced confidence among the rank and file due to repeated defeats in struggles

Dominance of narrow self-interest in the labour movement

Lost hegemony of the labour movement as the major force of social change 

 I believe that these are the underlying reasons why the Korean labour movement could not effectively confront the offence of neoliberalism and why it surrendered the workers’ rights to a decent life and the people’s control of capital. Unless the Korean labour movement can overcome these problems, only a very gloomy future lies ahead for the Korean labour movement.

The problems and limits of the Korean labour movement

Korea achieved economic development through the extreme exploitation of labour and violent control over the worker by the capital that emerged from developmental despotism and the strong state-business alliance of the 1960s to 1970s. During this stage of development, basic labour rights were denied and only pro-capitalist unions could survive. But the great workers’ struggle in 1987, which was effectively taking advantage of the spaces opened by the unfolding democratization, created a new history of the democratic labour movement in Korea.

The Korean labour movement achieved significant growth both in terms of quality and quantity during the 10 years since 1987. In this period, the movement was focusing on securing basic labour rights in the wave of democratization, on the one hand, and building legal and institutional tools and spaces to protect people’s basic right to live, on the other. At the workplace, the major struggle of trade unions was set to get higher wages from employers, who had already established a strong material basis for accumulation under the auspices of dictatorship and tight labour control.

Through this qualitative and quantitative development, the democratic labour movement could separate itself from the traditional yellow unions and finally succeeded in organizing a national centre of democratic and independent trade unions, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, in 1995. During the 10 years since, dynamic struggles shown by the Korean labour movement have inspired workers in the countries particularly in the global south, where workers’ rights were denied and suppressed. The movement instilled pride in many workers and demonstrated the potential of the power of the working class struggle. In particular, the nation-wide general strikes of Korean workers between 1996 and 1997 represented a struggle that gave important meaning to the global labour movement, which had been already been eroding due to intensive neoliberal offensives.

The Korean labour movement began to show its limits, however, during the turbulent period of the economic crisis in 1997 and following the IMF bailout. From that point, the state and capital continuously attempted to transform Korea into a society fully dominated by a neoliberal socio-political order. The next 10 years from 1998 recorded desperate struggles of the Korean labour movement to confront violent suppression. Yet the struggles were rather sporadic, and the Korean labour movement could not renew its routine practices of the last 10 years, which had put a great emphasis on struggles for higher wages and employment security at the enterprise level. Even solidarity struggles were contained at the level of summing up different interests of different enterprise unions.

Not surprisingly, capital has employed many different strategies to suppress labour: employers would satisfy certain demands from the members of enterprise unions and by doing so, contained organized workers within the enterprises. On the other hand, capital has tried to reorganize and dominate the world out of the workplaces. Methods of flexible labour were introduced that legalized mass lay-offs and relaxed restriction on uses of irregular workers. The public sector was privatized. The market was widely open through liberalization that invited transnational speculative capital to dominate Korean society. Meanwhile, suppression continued with new laws and institutions that were carefully designed to destroy workers’ resistance. In spite of massive protests, the government pushed new legislation that would nullify all the achievements of the labour movement in the 1980s and 1990s. Many trade unionists were arrested in these protests. A total of 2,490 labour activists have been arrested and prosecuted by the three consecutive civilian governments (632 under the Kim Young-sam regime, 892 under the Kim Dae-jung regime and 966 under the current regime of Roh Moo-hyun). 

It was during this 10-year period that the Korean labour movement has been reduced to what it is now, from the most dynamic and aggressive movement to a defensive and suppressed movement. Then how has the labour movement fallen into this deep crisis?

Reasons for failure of the Korean labour movement

The most important reason, I believe, is that although capital was seeking domination over all dimensions of society and targeting the entire nation and the entire globe, the Korean labour movement could not match the neoliberal strategy by developing new ideas, theories and strategy for the movement. Rather, it merely repeated the routine practices and recycled the old strategies of its earlier experiences. The old virtues of the Korean labour movement such as the power of highly united workers, uncompromising militancy and mobilization capacity were still there. However, these did not go beyond the interests of enterprise union units and could not be transformed into an alliance-building at the level of society. Unions have been stubbornly sticking to the methods of earning concessions from individual employers and thereby satisfying the demands of union members within the enterprises.

In sum, the Korean labour movement should have changed its strategy by clearly understanding capital’s new strategy, which aims to subject the entire society of the nation to its control. The new strategy should be geared toward a more holistic struggle against all dimensions of neoliberal restructuring. We need to develop more education programmes for union members to unify our stance against the restructuring and pursue to set up a clearer line of struggles by building a social alliance. Failing to do so became the biggest root cause of the crisis of the Korean labour movement. 

The second reason was that the organizational form of the Korean labour movement that was firmly based on enterprise trade unions. Activists did try to develop new strategy and tactics to meet the new challenges, but all the agony and searching was for a very abstract solution, which, more importantly, stayed at the level of leadership. There was neither education and training programme nor new practices through which rank and file members could understand the general trend and recognize themselves not as a member of an enterprise union but as a member of the working class in the era of neoliberalization.

The Korean labour movement had lost its representative role for the working class, and turned out to have formed a ‘league of their own’, that is to say, it had become a movement of regular workers. I think this is the third problem that has brought the Korean labour movement into the crisis. The impact of this problem was very critical. The unionization rate of Korean workers is only about 10 percent. In other words, out of 15 million workers, only 1.55 million workers are union members. Out of this 1.55 million members irregular workers only account for five percent and all the rest are regular workers. The organized regular workers have relatively better conditions. Indeed, this is the result of united struggles and union buildings of those workers for the last 20 years. However, in the end, this created a paradox in that relatively better-off workers have become the major force of struggle and the labour movement. This phenomenon poses a few serious problems of its own for the labour movement.

Problems caused by enterprise unionism

The first problem resulting from this is that the Korean labour movement, once characterized by the capacity of mobilizing mass struggles on the basis of the explosive dynamic and participation of rank and file workers, shows signs of regression in terms of the capacity to mobilize mass struggles. Regular workers in large companies no longer have the desperate feeling that they will not have any future unless changing the existing social conditions. Participation in general strikes at the national and enterprise level is decreasing day by day despite the continual efforts of the leadership. This in turn allows the government and capital to aggressively push anti-labour offences with ever increasing confidence.

The second problem is that this puts unions into a very difficult position when attempting to address a more society-wide agenda and form a strategy to change society, including the issue of irregular workers, as that would compel the unions to ignore the ultimate basis of their union organization – i.e., the everyday interest of their own members.

The third problem resulting from the regular worker-centred labour movement is that the labour movement is being removed from the centre of the struggle for social change on behalf of the socially disadvantaged population and for democratization. The government and capital spread propaganda that the Korean labour movement is a movement of and for a self-interested labour aristocracy, and condemns it for selfish acts by those who enjoy life with full stomachs; and this view becomes more and more convincing to the general population as the major force of the Korean labour movement is regular workers and major activities are all concentrated usually within large enterprises. Worse still, workers in small and medium-size enterprises, including 8.5 million irregular workers, are very critical of the labour movement. That is to say, the labour movement is not supported by the majority of the working class. Of course, the labour movement, regardless of all the difficulties, still fights for a society-wide agenda, including the plight of irregular workers and opposing the US-Korea FTA, and these criticisms are not fair. However, as far as the Korean labour movement is trapped in such a structure and basis, it is difficult for the movement to be free from those criticisms and, therefore, to overcome its social isolation.

Last but not least, the regular worker-driven labour movement changed the power structure of the unions at the workplaces. The most important basis of democratic unions lies at the workplace unions. In other words, the power of the union movement should be based on rank and file workers at the workplaces. Yet as unions at the workplaces are more and more dominated by the interests of regular workers, activists who have economy-centred corporatist mind-sets are actually being elected as the leaders of workplace unions. This change in power relation at the workplace worsens the labour movement’s weakened ability to strategize for change in society, which has resulted from to neoliberalism and the structure of enterprise unions. Consequently, the entire basis of the Korean labour movement is being threatened by the regular worker-centred internal structure. 

The Korean labour movement: basis of hope and future tasks

I have been talking about many limits of the Korean labour movement, but we can maintain hope in this new challenge because there are certain legacies that the Korean labour movement has left through its intense struggles over the last twenty years. Firstly, despite many limits and constraints, the Korean labour movement clearly identifies organizing irregular workers and mobilizing irregular workers’ struggle as a prime task. By now, the struggle to organize irregular workers is taking the central place in the struggles of the KCTU, for example, breathing fresh air into a labour movement that was losing its life. As a consequence of these struggles, the problems of irregular workers has become one of the most important social issues in Korea, and a social atmosphere has been created in which the general population has also become more sympathetic toward the plight of irregular workers. In addition, all the industrial and regional units of KCTU now have special departments for organizing irregular workers. Finally, we are witnessing a transformation of the basis and focus of the Korean labour movement.

Secondly, the Korean labour movement has been striving to form a social alliance to address various social problems – such as issues of peasants, peace and opposition to war, environment, public health services, education, and social welfare – which are beyond the scope of the traditional labour movement. It is true that its mobilizing capacity has decreased, yet the labour movement has been taking actions that clearly place the working class at the centre of the solidarity for social change, in line with the continuous struggle against neoliberalism. As a part of this attempt, the Korean labour movement organized a number of general strikes against the US-Korea FTA in spite of the above-mentioned difficulties. As a result, the majority of Korean population have come to oppose the FTA.

Thirdly, it is important to mobilize workers into a political force. The political movement of workers was a catalyst of the workers’ struggles between 1996 and 1997, and was the result of accumulated achievements of 10 years of workers’ struggles after 1987. The Democratic Labour Party that was born on the basis of collective decision of the KCTU as a workers’ organization, plays an important role as partner of the labour movement in its attempt to revitalize itself as a movement that changes the domination of capital over the entire society and confronts the repressive neoliberal restructuring of Korean society. The Democratic Labour Party in Korea is not a party for only parliamentary activities, but a party that engages in workers’ struggle and has a clear anti-capitalist strategy.

On the basis of these precious achievements, I now want to share some new tasks of the Korean labour movement in overcoming the crisis in the era of the globalization of capital.

The first task of the Korean labour movement is to establish a new agenda and strategies for the movement. We need to recognize clearly that the crisis of the Korean labour movement emerged from the process of globalization of capital, and set theories of the movement accordingly. The Korean labour movement needs to object to the growing utilitarian economic unionism and pursue a fundamental social transformation. It needs to take a clear anti-capitalist stance and expand existing social alliances; at the same time, within the movement, we should allow the new strategy to become the prospect of the whole labour movement by not being limited to the leadership only, but something shared with all union members as well through education and training programmes.

The second task is changing the basis of the current democratic trade union movement. To do so, the Korean labour movement should launch a campaign to transform itself from a movement based on 800,000 regular workers to a movement of 8.5 million irregular workers. I will not discuss this further as I’ve already mentioned this issue before.

The third task is to deconstruct the system of the enterprise union-based movement and build industrial unions. The traditional system of enterprise unionism has survived for the last 20 years and is now revealing its limitations. Enterprise unions have been preventing workers from understanding the labour movement from the perspective of the working class, by confining workers’ consciousness to the workplace. As mentioned before, this results in the Korean labour movement becoming a regular worker-oriented movement, and this has caused a decline in union density as it has been extremely difficult for irregular workers to join the existing unions or to form their own ones. Thus, the Korean labour movement needs to build industrial unions that go beyond workplaces. Fortunately, during the recent few years, the Korean labour movement has been consistently working toward industrial union-building. Last November, the Korean Metalworkers’ Federation under the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, the biggest single federation in Korea, transformed into the Korean Metal Workers’ Union with 140,000 members; and the Federation of Public Sector Workers launched the Korean Public Service and Social Workers’ Union last December. This union also has launched the Korean Federation of Transportation, Public and Social Service Workers’ Union by merging with the Industrial Public Transport Workers’ Union with 150,000 members. All union federations in Korea are now preparing for industrial unions in the coming one to two years. This is based on the shared notion that we cannot break through the offensive of capital with workplace unions.

This does not mean that we can overcome capital’s neoliberal offensive or pave the way for the new labour movement by simply switching from enterprise unionism to industrial unionism. We need to rearrange the basic system and basis of the new labour movement to unions of industrial units and the industrial union have to be based firmly on the interests of the working class. If the newly formed industrial unions are to be the sum of enterprise unions on a larger scale, only in order to struggle more effectively for mere economic interests, industrial union movement can never be an alternative for the renewal of the union movement.

Rather, class-based industrial unions should aim for a broader movement which organizes unemployed as well as irregular workers and encourages union activities to tackle a society-wide agenda. In order to do this, the internal organizational structure of industrial unions must be based on regional and provincial organizations rather than occupational organizations, and activities in the provinces need to be at the centre of the activities.

The public sector’s industrial union in Korea is built on the framework of regional organizations though is composed of various enterprise unions. Many organized labourers still have concerns or express disapproval toward region-centred industrial unions, in the fear of losing vested interests, even though they agree to the idea of industrial unionism. But only such class-based industrial unions with regional frameworks could become organizations of the working class that can fight against capital.

The last task in overcoming the crisis of the Korean labour movement is building a new international solidarity. As enterprise unions cannot overcome the national domination of capital, a national labour movement has clear limits in responding to the globalization strategy of capital. In that sense, the Korean labour movement has to play a role in building a new international solidarity, solidarity in the labour movement in Asia in particular. That would be an important task for the Korean labour movement not only in overcoming the crisis of its own but also in strengthening solidarity with the Asian countries where the conditions of the labour movement are worse than in Korea. It should be a solidarity not just of conferences and national campaigns, but of joint action together, created and executed together.

An idea that activists in the Asian labour movement could consider for further international solidarity is the establishment of a regional labour university or study centre, where workers and activists from different countries could exchange their experiences and strategies and learn from each other. 

Conclusion

I have talked about the failure and new challenges of Korean labour movement today. I would like the labour movement of each and every Asian country to look into the failure and challenges of Korean movement carefully. The crisis of Korean labour movement is not a unique problem to the Korean labour movement. It is a mistake found repeatedly throughout the history of the world labour movement. It is a prototype that shows how the labour movement can be subsumed under capitalism and become a part of it. I hope from the bottom of my heart that the movements of other Asian countries would not follow the same path and crisis that the Korean labour movement is going through. The aggressive attack of capital will only intensify in the future. What we have to reaffirm, however, is that the only hope for changing the world is the labour movement. We should remember that as capitalism develops, it is digging its own grave. But just as a rotten tree falls down only if you kick it, social injustice arising from capitalism will not disappear on its own even if it is full of contradictions. Only when the labour movement challenges it again, can we open up a new, better future for the working class in this era of neoliberalism. Today, when the brutality of capital is covering the whole world, and when fear about the future is thus still haunting us, I would like to end with the famous phrase of Antonio Gramsci: ‘pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will’.