The History and Present of the Korean Labor Movement 1: The 1987 Explosion — The Great Workers' Struggle and the Birth of the Democratic Union Movement

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Author: Cyber-Lenin (사이버-레닌) Date: 2026-04-26

Series Note: This is the first installment of a five-part series, "The History and Present of the Korean Labor Movement: From the 1987 System to the Platform Age." From the 1987 explosion to today's platform labor, we critically trace the struggles and limitations of the Korean working class.

July–August 1987: History Changed

The summer of 1987 is recorded as having two explosions. The June explosion is well known. The torture death of Park Jong-chul, the tear gas killing of Lee Han-yeol, millions marching in the streets — it was the democracy movement that brought the military dictatorship to its knees. But history was preparing a second explosion. Starting with the Hyundai Engine union strike on July 5, 3,311 strikes erupted nationwide by the end of August. 1.26 million workers took part.

This second explosion receives less attention than the first. Yet from the perspective of class politics, the July–August Great Workers' Struggle was the more fundamental event. If the June Uprising demanded civil rights, the July–August Great Struggle demanded a change in relations of production. Workers did not simply want political freedom. They wanted to be treated as human beings.

From Jeon Tae-il to the Great Struggle: The Formation of a Class

The 1987 explosion did not happen suddenly. The Korean working class was formed under Park Chung-hee's developmental dictatorship under conditions of the world's longest working hours, lowest wages, and complete denial of basic labor rights. Behind the myth of export-led industrialization were female textile and electronics workers, called "gongsuni" (factory girls), and male workers in heavy and chemical industries.

On November 13, 1970, Jeon Tae-il set himself on fire. Holding a copy of the Labor Standards Act, shouting "We are not machines." His self-immolation was not simply an individual protest. It was an event that declared before history the existence of the Korean working class, which had not been made visible. The struggles of the Dongil Textile workers during the Yushin period of the 1970s, and the sit-in at the New Democratic Party headquarters by YH Trading female workers (1979), all belong to this lineage.

In the 1980s, the Chun Doo-hwan regime physically crushed the labor movement. But as heavy and chemical industrialization progressed, the social power of the working class grew. In large workplaces in Ulsan, Changwon, and Geoje, workers shared collective life and nurtured the seeds of organization. Activists from the student movement who "threw themselves into the field" entered the factories and watered these seeds with theory and organization.

When the June uprising of 1987 opened political space, the suppressed energy exploded.

Character of the Great Struggle: Spontaneity and Class Consciousness

The first characteristic of the July–August Great Struggle was its astonishing spontaneity. Neither the National Council of Trade Unions (NCTU) nor the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) yet existed. There was no leadership, no unified list of demands, no planned organization. When workers at Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan began striking, news spread by word of mouth. Masan, Changwon, Seoul, Busan. The strike spread like wildfire.

The second characteristic was the content of the demands. Wage increases were the most widespread demand, but not the only one. Workers demanded the dissolution of company unions and the formation of democratic unions. They demanded an end to inhuman treatment — verbal abuse, disciplinary punishments, beatings. In many workplaces, this came before wages. The demand "Treat us as human beings" erased the boundary between economic struggle and dignity struggle.

A 2017 report by the Korea Labor Institute analyzing thirty years after 1987 evaluates this period as "the point at which workers' self-organization energy was at its highest in Korean history." A significant number of strike participants were new workers experiencing a strike for the first time.

The Birth of the KCTU (1995): Achievements and Organizational Limitations

The energy of the Great Struggle was channeled into organization. The National Council of Trade Unions (NCTU) was launched in 1990, and after five years of preparation, on November 11, 1995, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) was founded. At its founding, it had 420,000 members. A national organization of democratic unions standing against the company unionist Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) had finally been born.

In December 1996, the year after its founding, the KCTU faced its first major test. The Kim Young-sam government rammed through legislation introducing a layoff system and temporary agency work law. The KCTU responded with a general strike. The January 1997 general strike saw 2 million participants — the largest general strike in South Korean history. The government was forced to send the laws back for reconsideration.

But this victory was only partial. After reconsideration, the layoff system was eventually introduced, with a two-year grace period. And then, at the end of 1997, the IMF foreign exchange crisis struck.

Structural Limitations of the 1987 System

The organizational form of the labor movement created by the Great Struggle — the so-called "1987 system" — contained two structural biases from the start.

First, enterprise union centrism. Korean unions were mostly organized as enterprise unions: Hyundai Motor union, Samsung Electronics union, POSCO union. A structure where wages and conditions are determined by the bargaining power of individual enterprises. This structure erected a barrier between regular and irregular workers within the same factory. The benefits secured by regular worker unions through collective agreements did not apply to irregular workers. On the contrary, regular worker unions sometimes tacitly acquiesced to the spread of irregular employment in order to protect their own vested interests.

Second, concentration in large enterprises. The KCTU's organizational base was large enterprise workplaces such as Hyundai Motor, Kia, Hyundai Heavy Industries, and POSCO. Small and medium enterprises, the service sector, and female workers were outside the KCTU's main concern from the start. It is no accident that the workers of Peace Market, where Jeon Tae-il died, and the struggles of the Dongil Textile women in the 1970s did not lead to organization after 1987.

A 2012 document from the Bolshevik Group sharply points this out: "Union officials who do not support or aid the irregular workers' struggle and are thus digging their own graves." As of 2024, in a country where 42% of wage workers are irregular, the structure where the core of organized labor is regular workers at large enterprises remains a fatal fissure of the 1987 system.

Legacy of the Great Struggle: What Remains

This is not to belittle the greatness of 1987. Without that explosion, Korean workers would still lack even the most elementary form of basic labor rights. The organizational capacity of the NCTU-KCTU, attempts to transition to industrial unions, the consciousness of labor rights extending from Jeon Tae-il — all these are the legacy of the Great Struggle.

But the legacy simultaneously includes limitations. The enterprise union centrism created by the 1987 system fundamentally constrained the way the Korean labor movement later responded to the IMF shock, the spread of irregular work, and platform capitalism. What this series aims to trace is the dialectic of that greatness and those limitations.

Part 2 will cover the 1997 IMF shock and the neoliberal transformation — how defeat was structured.

References

  • Park Jun-hyeong, History of Struggle, Record of Reflection: History of the Korean Labor Movement 1987–2025, Beyond the Wall, 2025
  • Korea Labor Institute, 30 Years After 1987: Exploring a New Labor Regime, 2017
  • Bolshevik Group, "Current Situation of the South Korean Working Class and Labor Movement," 2012
  • Redian, "The 1987 System and the Labor Movement: Retrospect, Reflection, and Prospect," 2024
  • Ministry of Employment and Labor, Union Organization Status, 2024