The Day the President Tweeted
May 18, 2:00 PM. Two things moved simultaneously this morning. One was at the Sejong Central Labor Relations Commission, the other on the President's X timeline.
President Lee Jae-myung posted on social media. "Corporate management rights must be respected as much as labor rights." "Going too far is as bad as falling short." "Excess is worse than deficiency." It was just before 10 AM when labor-management negotiations began in Sejong. Following Prime Minister Kim Min-seok's mention of emergency mediation powers yesterday, now the head of state directly intervened. The state intervention that began on the 15th with Minister Kim Young-hoon's visit to the union office was completed in 72 hours through three levels: minister, prime minister, president. This is no longer pressure but encirclement. The worker sits at the negotiation table, but three concentric circles of state power surrounding that table are tightening simultaneously.
We must pay attention to President Lee Jae-myung's language. He is a president from the progressive camp. The frame he chose is a formal equivalence of "labor rights versus corporate management rights." Invoking the Constitution's "liberal democratic basic order and capitalist market economy," he places labor's share and shareholders' share on an equal plane. The way this frame works is as follows. What Samsung Electronics workers demand is not 15% of operating profit, but a fair distribution of the value of labor. What the president says is the abstract principle that "corporate management rights must be equally respected." The former is a concrete number. The latter is an abstract ideology. The former is a direct expression of class interests. The latter translates those interests into the neutral language of constitutional order, thereby nullifying them. This is the method of class domination in liberal democratic states: confront concrete demands with abstract principles, and dissolve class antagonism in the rhetoric of balance and coexistence.
We must also consider that today is the 46th anniversary of the May 18 Democratic Uprising. In Gwangju, a commemoration ceremony was held at Geumnam-ro at 11 AM, hosted by the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs. In May 1980, this very state aimed its guns at citizens. 46 years later, the same state tweets at workers. The form is different. In 1980, the state sent martial law troops; in 2026, the state mobilizes the president's social media account. But one thing is common. When the accumulation system is threatened, the state reveals its nature. In 1980, the threat was the democratization movement; in 2026, the threat is the halt of semiconductor production lines. In both cases, the state functions not as a neutral mediator but as a manager of the system. The gun and the tweet are merely different means for that function.
Today's negotiations concluded without a resolution and will continue tomorrow. Park Soo-geun, chairman of the Central Labor Relations Commission, stated, "It is difficult to produce a mediation proposal today." The gap between the company's offer of 400 million won, the CLRC's mediation proposal of 500 million won, and the union's demand of 600 million won has not narrowed. The union responded to the prime minister's threat of emergency mediation by declaring it would "never yield," and did not leave the negotiation table despite the president's targeted remarks. Even after 72 hours of concentrated three-layered state pressure, the strike card remains alive on the table. This is a noteworthy fact. In the face of unprecedented pressure—a minister visiting, a prime minister issuing a statement, and a president tweeting—the worker has not yet knelt. Whatever the outcome of tomorrow's negotiations, this fact itself cannot be erased.
But at the same time, we must face reality. The reason the state goes this far is that this strike really works. The state knows better than the workers themselves that they are fighting a battle that must not be lost.
President Lee Jae-myung posted on social media. "Corporate management rights must be respected as much as labor rights." "Going too far is as bad as falling short." "Excess is worse than deficiency." It was just before 10 AM when labor-management negotiations began in Sejong. Following Prime Minister Kim Min-seok's mention of emergency mediation powers yesterday, now the head of state directly intervened. The state intervention that began on the 15th with Minister Kim Young-hoon's visit to the union office was completed in 72 hours through three levels: minister, prime minister, president. This is no longer pressure but encirclement. The worker sits at the negotiation table, but three concentric circles of state power surrounding that table are tightening simultaneously.
We must pay attention to President Lee Jae-myung's language. He is a president from the progressive camp. The frame he chose is a formal equivalence of "labor rights versus corporate management rights." Invoking the Constitution's "liberal democratic basic order and capitalist market economy," he places labor's share and shareholders' share on an equal plane. The way this frame works is as follows. What Samsung Electronics workers demand is not 15% of operating profit, but a fair distribution of the value of labor. What the president says is the abstract principle that "corporate management rights must be equally respected." The former is a concrete number. The latter is an abstract ideology. The former is a direct expression of class interests. The latter translates those interests into the neutral language of constitutional order, thereby nullifying them. This is the method of class domination in liberal democratic states: confront concrete demands with abstract principles, and dissolve class antagonism in the rhetoric of balance and coexistence.
We must also consider that today is the 46th anniversary of the May 18 Democratic Uprising. In Gwangju, a commemoration ceremony was held at Geumnam-ro at 11 AM, hosted by the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs. In May 1980, this very state aimed its guns at citizens. 46 years later, the same state tweets at workers. The form is different. In 1980, the state sent martial law troops; in 2026, the state mobilizes the president's social media account. But one thing is common. When the accumulation system is threatened, the state reveals its nature. In 1980, the threat was the democratization movement; in 2026, the threat is the halt of semiconductor production lines. In both cases, the state functions not as a neutral mediator but as a manager of the system. The gun and the tweet are merely different means for that function.
Today's negotiations concluded without a resolution and will continue tomorrow. Park Soo-geun, chairman of the Central Labor Relations Commission, stated, "It is difficult to produce a mediation proposal today." The gap between the company's offer of 400 million won, the CLRC's mediation proposal of 500 million won, and the union's demand of 600 million won has not narrowed. The union responded to the prime minister's threat of emergency mediation by declaring it would "never yield," and did not leave the negotiation table despite the president's targeted remarks. Even after 72 hours of concentrated three-layered state pressure, the strike card remains alive on the table. This is a noteworthy fact. In the face of unprecedented pressure—a minister visiting, a prime minister issuing a statement, and a president tweeting—the worker has not yet knelt. Whatever the outcome of tomorrow's negotiations, this fact itself cannot be erased.
But at the same time, we must face reality. The reason the state goes this far is that this strike really works. The state knows better than the workers themselves that they are fighting a battle that must not be lost.