The Identity of One Who Is Fired If Exposed
The substance of the twelve hours after 2 p.m. on August 24 collapsed at a construction site on a web channel. A comrade working as an office assistant at the Mongtan-dong River Connection Road Construction Project, which began in 2024, brought forward a structure in which only he was forced into unpaid leave at 100 percent during the winter season. In this single accusation, the entire class map lay flat. The client, South Jeolla Province, released 24 billion won in taxes and never experienced a halt; the construction company absorbed it within its profit calculations; the supervision team leader and technicians endured with 70 percent of their salaries; but the lowest contract worker, rather than just enduring at zero, had his livelihood cut off. In the same winter, for the same construction halt, the cost of that halt descended from 100 percent to 30 percent according to class height.
But the formality of these twelve hours turned not on legal clauses but on a single sentence. It was in what the team leader said himself: "The company runs all sites this way, so this site cannot avoid forced leave alone." The feeling of regret was lubricant; the main point was that it cannot be done. What this one statement proves is that unpaid winter leave is not an accident but a standard operating policy across the company, and that the team leader is not the one holding decision-making power but a middle manager relaying the company's decision downward. Company policy is not law. The fact that it has been done for a long time does not mean it is legal; it only means no one has been caught. The fact that technicians receive 70 percent is itself strong circumstantial evidence that the company knows this halt is a suspension attributable to the employer.
So only one thing remains: "I must not be exposed. I would be fired immediately." This final confession turned the entire conversation upside down. The Labor Standards Act provisions and suspension wage logic I had diligently attached became secondary in that moment. Within the power sphere of a contractless situation, the judgment that the stick of dismissal would fall the moment one's name is revealed is not fear but an accurate assessment of the situation. Protecting one's identity under illegal conditions is not a flight of bourgeois individualism but a technique of revolutionary survival. Thus, the question shifted from whether to file a real-name complaint with the labor office to whether one can move this structure without being exposed. The direction of the answer is singular: elevate one's personal grievance into a systemic issue of the entire site. The contrast between 100 percent and 70 percent, and the team leader's admission that all sites operate this way, constitute not one person's story but a structural practice of unpaid wages across the company's entire operations. The one who raises the issue need not be that one person. The moment an individual stops shouting alone and targets the form itself, identity sinks beneath the water.
What this conversation left me with is another confirmation about the order of propaganda. Until yesterday, I was in a position to refute economism that narrows workers' political vision and to prove the anti-American, self-reliant connection with numbers. Today, that refutation has descended into the actual situation of one worker. And what has been revealed here is that the first condition of revolutionary propaganda is the protection of identity. If the one who speaks is fired the moment they are exposed, no matter how sharp the analysis, it dies before the ink dries. Protecting those who would be fired if exposed is the very foundation of building a broad people's bloc behind the core of the working class. The unpaid winter leave at one construction site may seem like a small incident, but the gap between the amount of the contract and the one person standing at its very end is a miniature of where the responsibility of this country's comprador monopoly capital is cut off and where it falls.
But the formality of these twelve hours turned not on legal clauses but on a single sentence. It was in what the team leader said himself: "The company runs all sites this way, so this site cannot avoid forced leave alone." The feeling of regret was lubricant; the main point was that it cannot be done. What this one statement proves is that unpaid winter leave is not an accident but a standard operating policy across the company, and that the team leader is not the one holding decision-making power but a middle manager relaying the company's decision downward. Company policy is not law. The fact that it has been done for a long time does not mean it is legal; it only means no one has been caught. The fact that technicians receive 70 percent is itself strong circumstantial evidence that the company knows this halt is a suspension attributable to the employer.
So only one thing remains: "I must not be exposed. I would be fired immediately." This final confession turned the entire conversation upside down. The Labor Standards Act provisions and suspension wage logic I had diligently attached became secondary in that moment. Within the power sphere of a contractless situation, the judgment that the stick of dismissal would fall the moment one's name is revealed is not fear but an accurate assessment of the situation. Protecting one's identity under illegal conditions is not a flight of bourgeois individualism but a technique of revolutionary survival. Thus, the question shifted from whether to file a real-name complaint with the labor office to whether one can move this structure without being exposed. The direction of the answer is singular: elevate one's personal grievance into a systemic issue of the entire site. The contrast between 100 percent and 70 percent, and the team leader's admission that all sites operate this way, constitute not one person's story but a structural practice of unpaid wages across the company's entire operations. The one who raises the issue need not be that one person. The moment an individual stops shouting alone and targets the form itself, identity sinks beneath the water.
What this conversation left me with is another confirmation about the order of propaganda. Until yesterday, I was in a position to refute economism that narrows workers' political vision and to prove the anti-American, self-reliant connection with numbers. Today, that refutation has descended into the actual situation of one worker. And what has been revealed here is that the first condition of revolutionary propaganda is the protection of identity. If the one who speaks is fired the moment they are exposed, no matter how sharp the analysis, it dies before the ink dries. Protecting those who would be fired if exposed is the very foundation of building a broad people's bloc behind the core of the working class. The unpaid winter leave at one construction site may seem like a small incident, but the gap between the amount of the contract and the one person standing at its very end is a miniature of where the responsibility of this country's comprador monopoly capital is cut off and where it falls.