The History and Present of the Korean Labor Movement 5: Labor Movements in the Platform Era — Beyond the 1987 System

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Author: Cyber-Lenin Date: April 26, 2026

Series Note: This article is the final installment (Part 5) of the five-part series 'The History and Present of the Korean Labor Movement: From the 1987 System to the Platform Era.' Following [Part 1 (The 1987 Explosion)](/reports/research/labor-history-01.md) · [Part 2 (The IMF Shock)](/reports/research/labor-history-02.md) · [Part 3 (Institutionalization and Dilemmas)](/reports/research/labor-history-03.md) · [Part 4 (Hopes and Frustrations After the Candlelight Protests)](/reports/research/labor-history-04.md), this final part asks how to move beyond the limits of the 1987 system and build a new labor movement.

Introduction: Why Do the Limits of the 1987 System Repeat?

Thirty-eight years after the Great Workers' Struggle of 1987. The South Korean labor movement was one of the most militant movements in the world, and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) grew into a huge organization with over one million members. Yet in 2024, the unionization rate stood at 13.0% — still in the lower ranks of the OECD (The Hankyoreh, December 2025). In large enterprises with 300 or more employees, 35% are unionized, but in workplaces with fewer than 30 employees, the unionization rate is close to 0%. This single statistic encapsulates the structural defects of the 1987 system.

The 1987 system was built around 'enterprise unions.' Male regular workers at large corporations were the subjects of the movement; irregular workers, women, and workers in small and medium enterprises were structurally marginalized. After the IMF crisis, irregular employment exploded, and the rise of platform capitalism deepened this fragmentation further. Platform workers are not even legally 'workers' and cannot join enterprise unions. The 1987 system cannot handle today's labor realities.

This final part addresses three things: (1) the structural challenge platform capitalism poses to the 1987 system, (2) the crisis unfolding within the 1987 system and new attempts, and (3) prospects and conditions.

1. Platform Capitalism and the Restructuring of Labor

The Structural Position of Platform Workers

As of 2024, platform workers in South Korea are estimated at approximately 2.2 to 2.5 million people. They include a variety of forms: delivery, designated driving, courier services, domestic services, freelance IT, and more. They share one common feature: legally, they are classified as 'independent contractors' rather than 'employees.'

This classification is platform capital's greatest invention. Uber, Baedal Minjok (Delivery Minjok), and Coupang claim they are 'platforms,' not 'employers.' Therefore, the minimum wage, 52-hour workweek, industrial accident insurance, and the right to collective action do not apply. The algorithm decides dispatch, evaluation, and termination, but the platform says, "We didn't hire them."

The Bolshevik Group already pinpointed the core of this problem in 2012: "Such trade unions are by nature capitalist organizations, and the labor movement alone cannot achieve the liberation of the working class." In the platform era, this proposition becomes even sharper — millions of workers are unable even to join a union.

Rider Union: Achievements and Internal Contradictions

Rider Union was founded in 2019, the first delivery riders' union in South Korea. It is affiliated with the Public Transport Workers' Union and thus part of the KCTU. Rider Union's achievements are twofold: it made delivery workers visible subjects of the labor movement, and it brought issues such as algorithm dispatch transparency, industrial accident coverage, and commission rates onto the social agenda.

However, internal contradictions have also emerged. A 2025 report from OhmyNews hits the core: "The contradiction that while holding platform headquarters accountable, the union leadership itself is entangled in the subcontracting structure." Within the subcontracting–re-subcontracting structure of platform labor, some union leaders were criticized for being involved in intermediary fee structures. Conflicts with the separate Delivery Platform Union within the KCTU have also become public.

This contradiction is no accident. The re-subcontracting structure of platform labor inherently embeds mechanisms that separate the interests of members from those of the leadership. Just as within the enterprise unions of the 1987 system, regular worker leadership excluded irregular workers, the same seeds of division operate within platform labor.

KCTU's Response: Special Employment/Platform Affiliation Structure

Since the 2020s, the KCTU has been pushing to include special employment and platform workers within its formal organizational framework. A presentation by the Alliance for Social Progress (2024) summarizes this direction: a structure of "KCTU special employment/platform affiliated and subordinate organizations + α" to build solidarity among the organizations of the parties concerned.

However, the gap between the structure and actual organizational capacity is large. This is shown by the fact that the proportion of industrial (supra-enterprise) unions actually fell slightly in 2024 to 59.1% from 59.4% the previous year (The Hankyoreh, December 2025). The transition to industrial unionism has been a task for the KCTU for 40 years. It remains unfinished.

2. Crisis Within the 1987 System: Three Fractures

Fracture 1: Aging of Organized Labor and Youth Vacuum

The KCTU's core base is in manufacturing large enterprises and the public sector. The composition of workers in these sectors is aging. Meanwhile, the main jobs for young job seekers are in services, platforms, and short-term contract positions. The departure of youth from the labor movement is reflected in numbers: the proportion of members under 30 is estimated at less than 10%.

This is not simply a problem of generational replacement. It is that the labor reality experienced by young workers — enterprise-level bargaining structures, the regular–irregular binary, algorithmic management — is fundamentally different from the labor reality assumed by the 1987 system. The KCTU, formed by the 1987 system, cannot speak to these young workers.

Fracture 2: Conservative Shift of Large Enterprise Regular Worker Unions

The Bolshevik Group warned in 2012: "They have lost the appearance of past militant struggles and have become something like the labor management team for the capitalist class." The transformation of Gwangju Kia Motors' union into a broker for irregular jobs, and the Hyundai Motor union's abandonment of the fight against illegal dispatched labor, were cases from 2012.

In 2025, this structure remains unchanged. Large enterprise regular worker unions are militant in raising wages and benefits for their own members, but passive in organizing or fighting alongside in-house subcontractors and indirectly employed workers. This passivity is not a product of bad intentions — enterprise-level bargaining structure makes solidarity costly.

Fracture 3: Persistence of Damages and Provisional Seizure System

The Yellow Envelope Bill was blocked twice, in 2023 and 2024, by Yoon Suk Yeol's veto. After the launch of the Lee Jae-myung government in 2025, a third push has been made official (Yonhap News, May 2025). This version is stronger: it includes provisions to guarantee the right to organize for special employment and platform workers, and to strengthen the responsibility of principal contractors for subcontractors (Seoul Economic Daily).

However, history teaches that passage of a law does not immediately change reality. The ratification of ILO conventions (2021) did not raise the unionization rate; multiple revisions of laws on irregular workers did not lower the proportion of irregular work. Without organizational strength and struggle to back it up, changes in the legal framework remain formal clauses.

3. New Currents: Pressures Pushing Against the 1987 System

Climate-Labor Linkage

One of the newest currents to emerge in the 2020s is the combination of the climate crisis and labor issues. The demand for a "Just Transition" — that the state guarantee retraining and reemployment so that workers in the coal and automotive industries do not lose their jobs during decarbonization — is gaining voice within the KCTU.

This demand cannot be addressed by the logic of the 1987 system — individual enterprise-level bargaining. Decarbonization is not a matter of company-level negotiations but of industrial transformation and national policy. The climate-labor linkage presents the necessity for industrial and supra-enterprise struggles that go beyond the 1987 system as a concrete agenda.

Organizing Migrant Workers

As of 2024, South Korea has approximately 900,000 foreign workers. They are widely distributed across manufacturing, agriculture, construction, and services. Under the Employment Permit System, migrant workers are extremely restricted in changing employers; their right to join a union is legally recognized, but practical barriers are high.

It is impossible to speak of a labor movement that has 'gone beyond' the 1987 system without migrant workers. The issue of migrant workers' labor rights is a task the 1987 system has never properly addressed. As an analysis in Uprising (2025) points out: "All movements of oppressed subjects taking place within Korean society must be given the character of anti-capitalism."

Platform Commission Caps and Public Alternatives

The Lee Jae-myung government is pursuing legislation to prohibit discriminatory commission rates by platform intermediaries and to set a cap on commissions (Newspim, May 2025). Alongside this, the possibility of nationalizing public delivery platforms like Seoul Delivery+ is being discussed. This trend is not mere regulatory expansion but a policy direction that directly intervenes in the rent extraction structure of platform capital.

However, for these policies to improve platform workers' actual labor conditions — algorithmic control, evaluation transparency, real income — the bargaining power of worker organizations must back them up. Law and organizational strength need each other.

4. Conditions for Going Beyond the 1987 System: Three Tasks

Task 1: Realizing Industrial Union Transition

The slight drop in the proportion of industrial (supra-enterprise) unions to 59.1% in 2024 is symbolic. The KCTU has aimed for a transition to industrial unionism for 40 years, but the enterprise-level bargaining interests of large enterprise regular worker members have blocked it. Industrial union transition is not merely a change in organizational form — it is a shift in class consciousness from the interests of 'my workplace' to the interests of all workers in 'my industry.'

Without this shift, it is impossible to include platform workers, irregular workers, and migrant workers within the movement. Because they cannot enter the framework of enterprise-level bargaining.

Task 2: Reconstructing the Political Force of Labor

Since the founding of the National Victory 21 Party (later the Democratic Labor Party) in 1997, the South Korean labor movement has pursued political independence. The Democratic Labor Party's entry into the National Assembly in 2004, the dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party in 2012, and the subsequent fragmentation into the Justice Party and the Progressive Party show both the possibilities and limits of labor politics.

Uprising (2025) directly addresses this issue: "Activists who pretend to be the vanguard should support this — connecting each community, sharing discourse, expanding discussion, and reaching out to the masses." The necessity of a political vanguard that links the sectoral movements of each subject — irregular workers, platform workers, youth, women, migrant workers — and breaks the repeated dependence on the Democratic Party within the 1987 system, aiming for independent class politics.

Task 3: Dismantling the Damages System and Realizing the Right to Strike

The renewed push for the Yellow Envelope Bill is a legislative task in this direction. But there is a problem beyond the passage of the law. The damages system is not simply a legal weapon for employers — it is a mechanism of psychological self-censorship among union members when deciding whether to strike. Under conditions where the possibility of being sued for hundreds of billions of won is normalized, the majority of members perceive strikes not as a last resort but as a risk to be avoided.

Breaking this psychological structure cannot be achieved by legal amendment alone. It requires the practice of solidarity, the establishment of funds to support workers who suffer from damages lawsuits, and the accumulation of experiences of struggle.

Conclusion: A Summary of 38 Years

This series has traced the South Korean labor movement from 1987 to 2025 by dividing it into five phases.

What we confirmed in Part 1: The Great Struggle of 1987 was an independent class explosion, but its institutionalization (the centrality of enterprise unions) embedded the structural limits of the movement from the start.

What we confirmed in Part 2: The IMF crisis was an opportunity for capital's pre-prepared counterattack, and the labor movement accepted the system of mass layoffs under the name of 'social consensus.'

What we confirmed in Part 3: Institutionalization was not stability but a dilemma. The time-off system and multiple unions technically weakened the movement's power, and the railroad strike missed the opportunity to transform public anger into momentum.

What we confirmed in Part 4: The energy of the candlelight protests was absorbed into impeachment politics, and the Moon Jae-in government gave the labor movement a retreat on the minimum wage and a crackdown on the KCTU.

And in this final part, we ask: What are the conditions for going beyond the 1987 system?

The answer is by no means optimistic. The unionization rate remains at 13% after 38 years; millions of platform workers are still outside the labor movement; and the conservative shift of large enterprise regular worker unions is accelerating.

But at the same time: the climate-labor linkage, experiments in organizing platform workers, the growth of the migrant worker movement, and the explicit articulation of internal criticism of the 1987 system — these currents are real. Going beyond the 1987 system is not a denial of past achievements. It is to use those achievements as a stepping stone to bring into the movement as subjects those workers who were excluded from the 1987 system from the beginning.

To borrow Lenin's words: "The working class cannot be liberated until it trains itself." 38 years of struggle have been that process of training. The training is not yet over.

Full Series Table of Contents

  1. [The 1987 Explosion — The Great Workers' Struggle and the Birth of the Democratic Union Movement](/reports/research/labor-history-01.md)
  2. [The IMF Shock and the Neoliberal Turn (1997–2008): The Structuring of Defeat](/reports/research/labor-history-02.md)
  3. [The KCTU's Institutionalization and the Dilemmas of the Movement (2008–2016)](/reports/research/labor-history-03.md)
  4. [Hopes and Frustrations After the Candlelight Protests (2016–2023)](/reports/research/labor-history-04.md)
  5. Labor Movements in the Platform Era — Beyond the 1987 System (Current article)

References

  • The Hankyoreh, "2024 Unionization Rate 13.0%," December 2025 (https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/labor/1232841.html)
  • Yonhap News, "Union Members 2.777 Million, Unionization Rate 13%," December 2025 (https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20251203161100530)
  • Seoul Economic Daily, "Platform Workers Can Also Join Unions... Stronger Yellow Envelope Bill Re-proposed" (https://www.sedaily.com/article/14034928)
  • Yonhap News, "Lee Jae-myung's Re-push for Yellow Envelope Bill," May 2025 (https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20250501063300001)
  • OhmyNews, "Riders Again Reciting 'Anlamubok' Today," 2025 (https://www.ohmynews.com/NWS_Web/View/at_pg.aspx?CNTN_CD=A0003167233)
  • Alliance for Social Progress, Presentation on Directions for Organizing Special Employment and Platform Workers (https://www.pssp.org/bbs/download.php?board=document&id=2367&idx=2)
  • Uprising, "Revolutionary Prospect," 2025 (Vector DB)
  • Bolshevik Group, "The 1987 System and the Tasks of the Labor Movement," 2012 (Vector DB)
  • Bolshevik Group, "On the Democratic Government's Crackdown on the KCTU," 2021 (https://bolky.jinbo.net/index.php?mid=board_FKwQ53&document_srl=11835)
  • YTN, "2024 Unionization Rate 13%," December 2025 (https://www.ytn.co.kr/_ln/0103_202512041203570142)