At the end of World War II, the Korean Peninsula was divided by the United States and the USSR along the 38th parallel. The radical forces of the national liberation movement under Japanese colonization (1910-1945), strongly influenced by Stalinism, supported the North Korean regime. On the other hand, pro-Japanese and pro-American right-wing forces rallied around the South Korean regime under the aegis of the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Korean War (1950-1953), which took place in the context of the Cold War between the United States and the USSR-China, was a disaster for both South and North Korea. The death toll of the war was ten percent of the total population of the Korean peninsula in the 1950s. Experiencing a catastrophic war in the midst of right-wing rule, independent workers’ organizations and leftist forces were completely eradicated in South Korea. Socialist movements became targets of red witch hunts and terror and disappeared. The political terrain shifted to the extreme right. The United States became the ally that saved South Korea from war and famine with massive aid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In April 1960, there was a democratic revolution as the desire for democracy grew after the war. Liberal bourgeois forces took power, and independent trade unions were revived. But in May 1961, a section of the military staged a coup, claiming anti-communism and order. The military government banned all independent workers’ organizations and turned them into yellow trade unions run by right-wing gang scabs. These yellow trade unions were controlled by the police and were nothing less than an apparatus of the military government. Even liberal bourgeois parties couldn’t enjoy full political freedom. There was a strong political repression that denied almost all basic democratic rights. The dark period, in which even radical left movements, let alone a revolutionary socialist movement, didn’t exist, lasted until the early 1980s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Korean War stopped in 1953, but the Korean Peninsula remained in a state of armistice without a peace treaty. The threat of another massive war at any time became an alibi for the military dictatorship to suppress all kinds of movements ruthlessly. The pro-American government in South Korea legitimized the bureaucratic and repressive regime in North Korea, and the North Korean regime legitimized the military dictatorship in South Korea. Socialism was equated with the North Korean regime, and therefore considered unthinkable and unacceptable in South Korea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Capitalist industrialization, which unfolded over hundreds of years in advanced capitalist countries, was compressed into decades in South Korea after the Korean War. Such a rapid process of capital accumulation was nothing less than the rapid creation of a massive working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The military regime of Park Chung-hee, which seized power in a coup in May 1961, sought to legitimize its coup with rapid economic growth. The money for industrialization came from the United States and Japan. The debt for industrialization was mainly guaranteed by the government. In addition, most of the key industries, such as railroads, electricity, water, and steel, were owned by the state. Therefore, the rapid process of capital accumulation took place under the government’s initiative, with private monopoly capital growing in collusion with the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The United States wanted to turn South Korea into a model to show the superiority of the Western camp in the Cold War. The aid of the United States was concentrated on consumer goods and food, which became the instrument for transferring the workforce from agriculture to industry and the source for maintaining low wages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Japan also played an important role in the primitive accumulation of Korean capitalism in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1960s, Japan changed its industrial structure from labor-intensive to capital-technology-intensive sectors. The export of capital to South Korea helped Japan to dispose of surplus capital. Throughout the 1960s, Japan’s labor-intensive industries such as textiles, footwear, furniture, and electronics moved massively to Korea, forming the first industrial group of Korean capitalism. In the 1970s and 1980s, Japan transferred some surplus capital in heavy industries to Korea. By importing capital and technology from Japan, Korea was able to accelerate the process of capital accumulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the second half of the twentieth century, South Korea emerged as one of the fastest developing economies, rapidly transforming itself from a traditional agrarian society into an industrial capitalist society. Korean capitalism grew as an export-oriented economy. The working class had to be scapegoated in the rapid process of export-oriented capital accumulation. As capital accumulation proceeded at an astonishing pace, the exploitation of the working class reached a very high level. The corresponding superstructure was the ruthless repression and control of the military dictatorship. All kinds of independent workers’ organizations were virtually banned and severely repressed by the government. This mechanism of terrible exploitation, oppression, and control was legitimized by the ideology of the development of the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Capital accumulation increased the number and power of workers. In the 1970s, the women-centered democratic trade union movement began to activate, centered in the export-processing zone concentrated in textiles and electronics. These women workers’ struggles were met with ruthless repression by employers, the government, and trade union bureaucrats. In the absence of a developed workers’ movement, religious groups and liberal bourgeois forces played the role of protectors of the women workers’ struggles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the 1970s, the military regime strengthened the heavy and chemical industries, such as iron, shipbuilding, automobiles, petrochemicals, etc., which accounted for 55.2 percent of the total industry in 1978. This process concentrated young male workers in the cities, who staged a few company-level riots in the 1970s, but failed to build stable workers’ organizations because of the harsh government repression and a lack of leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the 1970s, South Korea’s political terrain was shaped by the confrontation between the military dictatorship and liberal bourgeois forces. Within the democratic camp, there were more radical and people-oriented forces, fragmented around intellectuals. Under the illegalization of socialist thought, they could only dimly see Marxist thought through distorted windows such as liberation theology. They saw the working class as a weaker element to be protected by society instead of the protagonist of the revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under the ruthless repression of the military government, the nascent and weak workers’ movement adhered to non-politics. The dozen or so democratic trade unions, which typically organized hundreds of workers at the company level, limited themselves to economic demands such as wages and working conditions. They tried to defend themselves passively by avoiding any left politics. In this situation, it was very difficult to generate class-conscious workers out of the workers’ struggles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The struggle of the YH workers who occupied the headquarters of the main opposition party in August 1979 was brutally suppressed by the military government. The opposition leader’s resistance and the government’s repression led to the Busan and Masan Uprisings in October. A few days later, during the crisis of the military regime, dictator Park was assassinated by his loyal subordinate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the military government faltered, the workers began to move actively. The crisis in the Korean economy since 1978 was another factor. In 1980, there were 897 strikes until May, with 200,000 participants, similar to the total participation over the 1970s, demanding wage increases, the payment of overdue wages, opposition to plant closures, the building of democratic trade unions, and the democratization of yellow trade unions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the “Seoul Spring” protests grew, General Chun Doo-hwan, who had seized control of the military in a coup in December 1979, staged a second coup in May 1980 to take state power. When students in Gwangju organized protests demanding the lifting of martial law, the military regime sent in special forces to crush the demonstrations. The army’s brutal and horrific repression turned the students’ peaceful protests into an armed uprising of the people, including many workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On May 21, the army temporarily withdrew from Gwangju after fierce firefights in all directions. The people set up self-governing organizations to establish order autonomously and organized their own army, the People’s Army, to defend the uprising. A significant change occurred during the expansion of the resistance. As the armed struggle developed, the movement led by the students turned into a movement led by the workers. This raised the level of the struggle. When the army attacked Gwangju again on the 27, most of those who fought to the end before being killed or arrested were workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Gwangju Uprising of 1980 was based on the spontaneous anger and aspirations of the people. This uprising brought about significant changes in the politics of South Korea. Radical students founded a revolutionary democratic movement in which they saw the protagonists as workers and people. It reflected the fact that those who had fought to the end and dedicated themselves during the 1980 Gwangju Uprising were the workers and the people, not the students or the liberal bourgeoisie. For the first time, the working class was seen as the subject of the revolution, not the object of protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The radical student revolutionaries wanted to develop their thoughts on the further steps of the revolutionary democratic movement. They studied the basic ideas of Marx and Lenin, and the concept of the growth and transformation of a democratic revolution into a socialist revolution began to spread. Hundreds of students went to the workplaces, hiding their real identities, to organize the workers as protagonists of the revolution. They accepted the lesson of the Gwangju Uprising and seriously thought about building revolutionary leadership to lead a people’s uprising. They vowed, “Give us an organization of revolutionaries! Then we will overthrow the world!” Such a revolutionary fighting spirit was the most fertile soil for the birth of a socialist movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The student movement continued to expand and radicalize. The division within the democratic movement between timid factions following the liberal bourgeois parties and radical factions seeking democratic revolution accelerated. The separation of socialist-oriented factions from radical factions also began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1984, the workers’ struggle resumed after the defeat of 1980. A thousand taxi drivers in Daegu blocked the city hall, demanding wages and freedom to organize, and won. Taxi driver strikes followed in several other cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1985, ten democratic trade unions founded the previous year in Guro, Seoul, held a week-long solidarity strike against the military government’s repression, the first since the Korean War. The strike was brutally repressed, resulting in the dismissal of 2,500 workers, all participants, but it paved the way for 1987.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the military governments from Park in the 1960s and 1970s to Chun in the 1980s, all political power was concentrated in the president, but the presidential election was indirect. People regarded the right to directly elect the president as the most indispensable democratic change, and the direct presidential election system was seen as the end of military government. Therefore, many forces fighting for democracy, especially the liberal bourgeois forces, demanded the constitutional amendment of the direct presidential election system with the strong support of the people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this situation, the Chun military regime announced in April 1987 that it would no longer negotiate with the liberal bourgeois parties on constitutional revision and would adhere to the old constitution. This meant a frontal confrontation with all the democratic movements, from liberal to revolutionary, that were steadily growing at that time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In June 1987, the direct mass struggle outside the bourgeois political structure exploded. On June 10, 300,000 people took part in protests all over the country, the highest number of protest participants under the military regimes up to that time. Many people actively supported the students, the main force of the protest. On the 18th, the number of protest participants reached 1 million, and on the 26th, 2 million. As the protests continued and developed, many workers joined the protests as unorganized individuals. As the riot police concentrated in Seoul to defend the core of the regime, many southern regions saw the lack of riot police and allowed the protests to become more radicalized with attacks on some buildings of the ruling party. Through these processes, some of the worker participants in the southern regions gained considerable confidence and courage, which gave them the momentum to lead the first strikes of the Great Strike Wave from July to September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the unprecedented protests continued, the military regime, considering it too dangerous to use the army to suppress the protests, accepted the direct presidential election system on the 29th. The liberal bourgeois forces welcomed this and declared “victory”. The street protests quickly stopped because most of the student leaders of the protests followed the liberal bourgeois forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From July to September 1987, there were 3,341 strikes in South Korea. 1.2 million workers participated in the strikes, which was five times the total number of participants in the previous ten years. As a result of the strikes, about 1,000 new democratic trade unions were formed at the workplace level. Before that, there were more than 2,700 trade unions, but almost all of them were totally yellow trade unions led by bureaucrats and thugs. Some of the democratic trade unions were newly formed and others were built by democratizing the yellow trade unions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The typical strike method in 1987 was the occupation of the factory. When some workers called a strike, all the workers stopped the factory, gathered in front of the main building, elected their representatives among themselves, adopted their demands based on free discussion, forced their employer to negotiate with them even though the strike was obviously illegal, and then continued to occupy the factory until the employer accepted their demands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The strikes involved all workers in workplaces, regardless of their specific occupation or employment status, so the democratic trade unions built as a result of the strikes included all workers in the workplaces. Therefore, the Great Strike Wave of 1987 was a wave of self-organization of the workers by building democratic trade unions against the military regime, the employers, and the yellow trade unions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main demands of the workers were wage increases, the abolition of the discriminatory wage system, and the recognition of democratic trade unions. The workers focused as much on the importance of democratic trade unions as on wage increases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Right after the Hyundai workers in Ulsan organized a united strike and march on August 18, which could have been a turning point for the strikes to cross the workplace boundaries, the military regime began repressing the strikes. Riot police were sent to workplaces across the country to crush the strikes. Hundreds of workers were arrested and imprisoned. Employers also began to attack the workers. With the help of the riot police, the strikebreakers organized by the employers inside the enterprises violently attacked the striking workers. Many workers who were leading the strikes were dismissed. The strike wave, which couldn’t develop into a political strike for a counter-attack, quickly diminished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, the revolutionary political forces at that time were not ready to lead the spontaneously explosive energy of the workers. This was the weakness derived from the history of South Korea. The rapid accumulation of capital, which was unprecedented in the world, was accompanied by the pains of the workers who had suffered the harshest exploitation and oppression in military-like workplaces. These accumulated pains of the workers increased the explosiveness and militancy of the strikes. But the independent political consciousness of the workers was very low because all kinds of revolutionary movements and even leftist movements had been practically wiped out after the Korean War. In 1987, a small minority of the revolutionary movement of the working class was just emerging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the June Uprising, the liberal bourgeois forces quickly became conservative. They had wanted a democratic modification of the capitalist political structure, not its destruction, and to be positioned at the head of it. Now their role was to control the democratic struggles and bring them into the orbit of bourgeois democracy. Significant forces in the democratic movements were assimilated into the line of the liberal bourgeois forces. This was the case with the majority of the Juche forces who followed North Korea with nationalist sentiments and formed the majority of the student movement. But revolutionary students and advanced workers wanted to reject this and develop their own movements. Organizations seeking a socialist workers’ revolution began to emerge at a rapid pace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After 1987, various socialist books, including the major works of Marx and Lenin, were published, and socialist thought spread explosively among students and intellectuals. The militant workers who emerged from the Great Strike Wave and subsequent struggles also began to accept socialist ideas and participate in socialist organizations. By 1990, several revolutionary organizations had developed with hundreds or dozens of members, all of which were harshly repressed by the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there were crucial limitations. The ideas of Marx and Lenin were mainly interpreted through Stalinism or Maoism. Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg were rarely introduced. This had to do with the fact that, even before the Korean War, there was no Trotskyist tradition on the Korean Peninsula. The fact that the realities of the USSR, China, and North Korea were little known, and the hostility to the military regimes’ suppression of freedom of thought and speech, created the illusion that these were truly socialist societies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The democratic trade union movement, which formed explosively during the Great Strike Wave, continued to develop. Democratic unions developed unique organizational features in which general assemblies of all members and regular shopfloor meetings led by cadres played a key role in their democracy. All information was shared with union members, and the direction of the unions was decided through democratic discussions in which all union members participated. The ordinary structure of democratic unions was transformed into a kind of strike committee at the time of a strike. The workers who stood out in the struggles became cadres. Sometimes the leaders of democratic unions were bribed by the employers and betrayed the union members, but in many cases the rest of the workers could overcome them through impeachment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the democratic unions were organized at the workplace unit, the prevailing spirit of these unions was “unity of the whole workers” and “liberation of the workers,” not narrow trade unionism. Occupation strikes, which were common at the time, were understandably met with riot police. This led the democratic unions to seek unity with the surrounding workers. Striking workers fought the riot police with other workers from the same region. In this way, by 1989, about a dozen regional organizations of the democratic unions had been built, focusing on the manufacturing industries. In addition, about a dozen industrial organizations of the democratic unions were built, focusing on white-collar industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the most important strikes during this period was the 128-day strike by the Hyundai Heavy Industries Workers Union (HHIWU). From December 1988 to April 1989, the union occupied the Ulsan shipyard with more than 10,000 strikers for nearly four months, demanding, among other things, the reinstatement of two workers fired in a 1987 strike. Only a week into the strike, the union president betrayed his members and signed an agreement with management. But the strikers held a general assembly, impeached their leader, formed a special strike committee, and continued the strike for about 100 more days. When the 15,000 riot police from land, sea, and air attacked the strike, the strikers continued to fight in the streets with their families and other workers for two weeks. In the end, the strike was defeated, but the HHIWU workers were able to build strong rank-and-file groups with more than 500 militant activists after the strike, making their union the most important and powerful union in the Korean democratic trade union movement at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In January 1990, 600 democratic unions with 200,000 members formed the National Trade Union Council (NTUC). It was illegal under the law at the time. The capitalist class saw it as a frontal challenge. To further repress the workers’ movement on a stable political basis, the military regime, which won the 1987 presidential election, formed a coalition party with two opposition parties that held two-thirds of the parliamentary seats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In response to the government’s harsh repression, the NTUC organized a general strike of 120,000 workers in May 1990, covering the key manufacturing industries of Korean capitalism. It was the first general strike since the Korean War. It lasted only three days, but its impact was not small. In May 1991, the NTUC organized another general strike. This allowed the NTUC to counterattack the government and gain the space to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Various socialist groups and advanced workers led by socialists played a key role in the rapid growth of the democratic union movement during this period. In particular, the strong rank-and-file movements, led by militant workers who were trained or influenced by socialists, played a key role in correcting democratic unions when they showed the weakness of fragile leadership in the face of struggle or the tendency to bureaucratize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The collapse of the USSR in 1991 with the exposure of its bureaucratic reality gave a great shock to the socialist movement. At that time, there were no forces capable of transforming the collapse of the Stalinist regime into an opportunity to raise a real perspective of revolutionary socialism. As a result, the majority of socialist activists lost their political perspective and became demoralized. The great wave of liquidationism began to engulf the socialist movement. Major organizations abandoned the revolutionary line and turned to legalism and reformism one after another. This demoralized many advanced workers and played a negative role in the democratic union movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1993, the first civilian government started. The president was from the former ruling party but had been an old opposition leader before joining the ruling party through a merger of three parties in 1990. The former opposition leader announced “the end of the military regime” and dissolved the private group of elite military officials. He introduced a bank account system based on real names to eradicate the underground economy and black money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reformist appearance of the regime affected the leaders of the democratic unions. More leaders turned to the moderate line. The leadership of the NTUC, accepting the initiative of the moderate line, decided to merge with other moderate democratic unions that had been outside the NTUC to escape the repression of the military regime. This led to the formation of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) in November 1995. Unlike the NTUC, which was led by militant and revolutionary tendencies, the KCTU was led from the beginning by legalist and reformist tendencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The minority of socialist forces sought a revolutionary perspective against the wave of liquidationism. Their questions about the Stalinist regimes opened the way to the genuine revolutionary socialist traditions beyond the barrier of Stalinism. In particular, the thought of Trotsky, who defended the true tradition of the Russian Revolution and fought against the counterrevolution of the bureaucratic cliques, became the guide for their questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first attempt to spread Trotskyism and rally revolutionary activists was made by a Korean branch of the International Socialist Tendency, in which the SWP in the UK played a central role. The IST was able to make a considerable impact on socialists who were confused after the collapse of the USSR. But it had little practical influence on socialists working in the workers’ movement because of its abstract propagandism, combined with its limitations of being composed mainly of intellectuals and focusing on student activities. In addition, it raised the line of critical support for the liberal bourgeois forces in the main elections, which was a critical flaw for it, since the overwhelming majority of socialists and advanced workers regarded the independence of the working class from the liberal bourgeois forces as the starting point for a truly revolutionary politics. These critical limitations, which have not yet been overcome, prevented most revolutionary activists from choosing it as an alternative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the decline of the movements accelerated, the socialist forces were rapidly reduced. Only a small minority of activists could maintain the perspective of revolutionary socialism. Throughout the mid- and late-1990s, they formed various smaller groups, some of which focused mainly on rebuilding revolutionary socialist thought and others of which focused mainly on ongoing activities with militant workers in the workers’ struggles. In the early 2000s, the main groups began to cooperate with each other, leading to the building of the Socialist Workers Alliance (SWA) through their merger in 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The basic agreements among the revolutionary socialists were such as the rejection of Stalinism, the continuation of the true tradition of the Russian Revolution, and the opposition to the bureaucratic North Korean regime. They characterized the revolution necessary for South Korea as a socialist workers’ revolution and sought to establish their perspective independently of petty-bourgeois perspectives. They sought to build a stronghold in the workers’ movement based on the independence, unity, and militancy of the working class. And they accepted the importance of transitional demands as a bridge between revolutionary programs and the current consciousness and struggles of the workers. All this led to the perspective of building a revolutionary socialist party as an alternative to the trade-union bureaucrats and reformist party leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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In April 1996, the government offered the KCTU tripartite negotiations between labor, management, and the government, even though the KCTU, the national center of democratic trade unions, was still illegal at the time. The essence of the negotiations was that the government would accept some of the KCTU’s old post-1987 demands, such as the recognition of plural unions, the abolition of the penalty for third-party intervention in labor disputes, and the right to unite teachers and civil servants, in exchange for the introduction of neoliberal reforms, such as the freer layoff system, the worker dispatch system, and the flexible work system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The KCTU faced serious internal debates over its participation in the tripartite negotiations. The legalist and reformist forces, centered on the leaders, argued for participation and cooperation to increase the competitiveness of Korean capitalism. But the militant forces, based on rank-and-file organizations, insisted on refusing to participate and organizing a powerful general strike to fight neoliberal reforms. In October, the KCTU leadership had to withdraw from the tripartite table as pressure from below grew and the government’s intention to implement neoliberal reforms without meaningful acceptance of workers’ demands became clear over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At dawn on December 26th, the Labor Reform Law was unilaterally and secretly passed by the ruling party with the majority of seats. The law was filled not only with neoliberal reforms but also with additional attacks on democratic trade unions, such as shortening the period of eligibility of dismissed workers as union members, recognizing the right of union leaders to sign agreements with management without the approval of a general assembly, prohibiting wage payments during strikes, allowing replacement workers during strikes, prohibiting strikes inside workplaces, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On that day, the KCTU general strike against the Labor Reform Law began and lasted until January 18, 1997, with an average of 150,000~200,000 participants every day. The number of participants reached a maximum of 350,000 on January 15. The powerful general strike hit the whole society and put the government in a groggy state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But at the critical moment, the KCTU leadership called off the general strike to give the government a chance to deal with the situation. The government began negotiations with the liberal bourgeois opposition parties to amend the labor law. The new labor reform law that was passed in March based on the agreement between the ruling and opposition parties had only minor changes from the law passed in December, such as a two-year waiting period before the introduction of the freer layoff system and the worker dispatch system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the failure of the historic general strike, the government and the capitalists inflicted massive repression on the militant cadres who had led the general strike participation in the workplaces. But the KCTU leaders were able to avoid repression and enjoy the legalization of the KCTU under the new law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In late 1997, less than ten months after the failure of the general strike, the Korean government had to seek a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) during the presidential election in the midst of the Asian financial crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new president-elect, who was the leader of the liberal opposition party, proposed another tripartite table to deal with the economic crisis. The KCTU leaders joined the table in January 1998 and agreed in February to immediately implement the freer layoff system and the worker dispatch system. But the KCTU Representative Assembly, which met three days later, overwhelmingly rejected the agreement and impeached the entire leadership. The assembly passed a resolution to organize a general strike to fight against the old and new governments and the capitalists who were trying to shift the burden of the economic crisis onto the workers. But the new special leadership of the KCTU elected at the assembly abandoned the implementation of the resolution five days later. Thus, the new labor reform law was passed before the new government took office, without a massive struggle by the workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The IMF crisis was a great shock that shook the whole of Korean capitalism. The international finance capital behind the IMF ordered a total restructuring of Korean capitalism. The Korean capitalists used this pressure to increase the rate of exploitation in order to increase their competitiveness in the neoliberal globalization. The freer layoff system and the worker dispatch system were the key instruments of the restructuring, destroying stable jobs and replacing them with rapidly increasing irregular workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In July and August 1998, the Hyundai Motorcar Workers Union (HMWU) occupied its Ulsan plant for 38 days with 5,000 strikers against massive layoffs. When riot police surrounded the plant and tried to crush the strike, the workers, armed with iron pipes and flammable materials, showed a determined will to resist at any cost. And the 300 wives of the strikers, who formed the Family Committee, stood with their children in front of the armed workers. The riot police had to stop the repression, which obviously would have caused considerable casualties. However, after the riot police withdrew, the HMWU president reached an agreement with management to reduce the number of dismissals on the basis of the ruling party’s arbitration, although the union’s demand was for the cancellation of all dismissals. The strikers were disappointed by his betrayal, and the strike collapsed. Although the agreement was not approved in a vote at a general assembly after the strike, it was implemented by force. The cafeteria workers, who were overwhelmingly female and the most prominent workers in the strike, became the main victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In June 2001, when riot police broke up an occupation strike at Hyosung, a chemical-textile company in Ulsan, thousands of workers from other companies fought the police in the streets. The days-long street struggle was followed by solidarity strikes by other chemical-textile unions and metal unions organized in small and medium-sized companies. This led the KCTU to call for a political general strike on July 5 to smash the union repression, stop the neoliberal restructuring, and bring down the Democratic Party (DP) regime. But the HMWU, the most powerful union at the time, refused to join the general strike, decisively weakening the strike’s power and leaving Hyosung and two other unions critically defeated, with about a thousand workers fired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before 1991, there were two tendencies of activists in the democratic trade union movement. The militant activists were mainly led by independent trade union leaders forged in militant struggles. Socialist groups could influence some militant activists and imbue them with a revolutionary spirit. Meanwhile, the moderate activists were mainly led by the Juche (pro-North Korean) forces. While the militant activists led the NTUC, many of the moderate activists remained outside the NTUC to avoid the government’s harsh repression. After the formation of the KCTU, the moderate activists were called the Nation Faction (NF) because they recognized themselves as part of the broader nationalist movement and gave great weight to the public opinion of the entire population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But after the collapse of the USSR and the subsequent liquidationism that prevailed in socialist groups, a significant portion of the militant activists became moderate. This was especially true of some independent trade union leaders and other young activists who joined or were influenced by liquidationist groups. They were called the Center Faction (CF) because their main faces were the central leaders of the NTUC, who played a crucial role in the NTUC’s decision to merge with other moderate democratic unions in 1993, leading to the formation of the KCTU in 1995.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the KCTU was formed, the NF was the leading force. The NF played a key role in the failure of the 1996-97 general strike. Nevertheless, it continued to lead the KCTU, eventually reaching a tripartite agreement in February 1998 and then being overwhelmingly impeached at the Representative Assembly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new special leadership of the KCTU in February 1998, which was elected at the assembly but abandoned the decision to organize a general strike, was led by the CF. The president of the HMWU in August 1998, who betrayed his co-workers by accepting reduced layoffs, also belonged to the CF. Important figures in the CF still had a militant reputation, but they showed that their true nature didn’t differ from that of the NF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the failure of the 1996-97 general strike, a new militant faction was formed from below. It was called the Shopfloor Faction (SF). The faction grew out of militant activists during the NTUC, but was joined by new militant activists from outside the NTUC, especially in the large factories. The SF led the impeachment of the KCTU leadership at the Representative Assembly in February 1998. The militant activists of the SF fought against the betrayals of the union leaders, most of whom belonged to the NF or CF, and their influence grew rapidly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the president of the HMWU in 2001, who refused to join the general strike, was the most famous leader of the SF. This meant that even the SF was not able to overcome the pressure of the neoliberal attacks and the harsh repressions of the capitalists and the government. This was due, among other things, to the lack of a clear socialist perspective and determined conviction. While newly formed small revolutionary socialist groups had some influence in the SF, the faction was primarily led by a centrist organization called Workers’ Power (WP).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In July 1997, the KCTU passed a resolution to run a candidate in the December presidential election and to lead the building of a progressive party. This decision was partly the result of the experience of the liberal bourgeois opposition party’s agreement with the ruling party on the neoliberal labor law amendment after the general strike. It was also influenced by the experience of the PT in Brazil, which was considered very successful in the Korean democratic trade union movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The building of a progressive party led by the democratic trade union movement could have been a significant advance given the absence of independent working-class parties under the Red Scare that had prevailed since the Korean War. Even if it was not a socialist party and a party led by socialists, it could have meant the political advance of the working masses with the possibility of leaving the bridge to revolutionary socialism. But for this positive possibility to be realized, militant and class-conscious workers should have led the party. If the party had been built from 1987 to the early 1990s, the possibility of the party growing in such a way would have been considerably high. But the situation in the late 1990s was quite different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the KCTU, the compromising and reformist leaders took the lead in building a progressive party. In addition, the Progressive Political Alliance, which was the hotbed of reformism and legalism that had developed out of liquidationism, was added as a leading force with some parts of the Juche forces. In the 1997 presidential election, when the Korean economy was collapsing, the presidential candidate of the KCTU, who represented the reformist forces, raised a blatantly nationalist slogan, “Rise up, Korea!” and won little support from the workers. That was the moment when the project of building a progressive party almost failed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in the 1998 regional elections, the KCTU candidates in Ulsan, under heavy pressure from the HMWU’s struggle against mass layoffs, raised the slogan, “Stop the Layoffs!” and received explosive support from the workers, winning many seats. Thanks to this success, the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) was founded in 2000. Raising some radical demands such as free education, free health care, and taxing the rich, the DLP continued to grow with strong support and hope from the workers, winning 10 seats in the 2004 general election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the classless, electoralist, and nationalist vision of the DLP leaders led the party to collapse. The leaders abandoned and avoided the radical demands of the workers and instead confined themselves to narrow bourgeois-democratic demands. They announced that they would represent the interests of both small and medium-sized capitalists and workers. To beg for votes, the DLP leaders apologized to the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), the national center of the yellow trade unions, for the DLP’s legitimate criticism of the FKTU’s agreement to further neoliberal attacks at the tripartite table. As a result, the DLP completely lost the possibility to grow as a militant workers’ party and failed to clearly distinguish itself from the ruling liberal bourgeois Democratic Party (DP).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the liberal government’s neoliberal reforms aggravated social polarization, the DLP couldn’t benefit from the disillusionment and anger of the broader workers and people against the ruling party. While the right-wing party rapidly expanded its support, the DLP largely lost its support as the ruling party did because it was seen as a similar political force to the ruling party in the eyes of ordinary workers and people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After its electoral failure in the 2007 presidential election, reformist forces left the DLP to form the New Progressive Party (NPP). The DLP now became the party of the Juche forces. In 2012, three forces, the DLP, the former leaders of the NPP who left the party after the failure to ratify the reunification of progressive forces, and a small faction that left the former ruling liberal bourgeois DP, merged into the United Progressive Party (UPP). The UPP did well in the 2012 parliamentary elections, winning 13 seats thanks to widespread antipathy to the right-wing government, but immediately after the election it fell into extreme infighting, leading to another split.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The former leaders of the NPP and a small faction from the DP left the UPP and formed the Justice Party (JP), whose orientation is similar to Western social democratic parties. The UPP was dissolved by the right-wing government in 2013 for supporting North Korea, but continued its activities and rebuilt the party as the Progressive Party (PP). The NPP lost most of its cadres to the JP through repeated splits, but continued to exist by merging with other small forces and renamed itself the Labor Party (LP) in 2014, whose orientation is similar to Western new reformist parties. These three parties, the JP, the PP, and the LP, are the current reformist parties in Korean politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most revolutionary socialist groups saw the DLP as a reformist party from the beginning. But a small group based in Ulsan tried to utilize the possibility for the DLP to grow as a militant workers’ party in facilitating the political development of militant workers en masse. However, it ended its intra-DLP activities in 2002, concluding that the experience of the Ulsan branch, the most advanced and well-organized part, showed that the DLP had no more possibility of growing as a militant workers’ party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the contrary, a socialist group, Liberation Solidarity, remained in the DLP in the hope of developing the DLP as a socialist party until the first split of the DLP in 2008. The Korean branch of the IST, All Together, unfolded an entryist tactic to the DLP from the beginning until the DLP’s demise and the UPP\u2019s split in 2012, defining the DLP as a reformist party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A left group, largely based on the student movement and with characteristics similar to Western new reformism, formed the Youth Progressive Party in 1998 in opposition to the KCTU-led party-building project. It renamed itself the Socialist Party in 2001 and merged with the NPP in 2012, later becoming the main axis of the LP. But the group fell for the universal basic income as a panacea and tried to rename the party, but failed. They then left the party and formed the Basic Income Party, which won a proportional seat in parliament in the 2020 general election with the help of the liberal bourgeois DP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main centrist force was the WP. The group began its activities in the early 1980s, so it had a strong base among militant workers when the organization was officially formed in 1999. The activists in the group were basically Marxists, but their understanding of Marxism was not deep. They had revolutionary orientations, but they didn’t develop their politics sufficiently and responsibly. When union leaders who were once militant workers and the main figures of the SF and even members of the WP, including the president of the HMWU in 2001, became union bureaucrats who betrayed other workers and the cause of the general strike, the political limitation of the group exploded. The group tried to defend the leaders instead of resolutely criticizing and correcting them. Over time, the bureaucratic acts of some union leaders in the WP spread to other areas, such as the blatant betrayal of the irregular workers’ struggle at the Hyundai Motorcar Company (HMC) in the mid-2000s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Small revolutionary socialist groups organized uncompromising criticism of the bureaucratic leaders, the SF, and the WP. The groups tried to reorganize the SF with a thoroughly anti-bureaucratic spirit and class-conscious cause. Unfortunately, this was not successful because the repeated defeats in the struggles against neoliberal attacks and the rapid division between regular workers in large companies and other poorer workers degenerated most of the militant workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The neoliberal reform led to an explosion in the proportion of irregular workers, which includes subcontracted workers in factories, contract workers in the public sector and service industries, self-employed workers controlled by companies, etc., to more than half of the total workforce. The irregular workers, many of whose positions were regular before 1997, generally won 60 to 70 percent of the wages of regular workers and suffered from the same harsh and poor working conditions as before 1987, as well as job insecurity. But it was very difficult for irregular workers to join an existing union because unions were organized at the company level and only for regular workers. It was also very difficult for irregular workers to form a new union because the irregular workers who formed or joined a union could easily be dismissed through various legal methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Regular workers in large companies and the public sector, on which most democratic unions were based, represented only 20 percent of all workers. As the economic and social gap between them and other workers rapidly widened, organizing irregular workers into unions became the decisive task for the democratic trade union movement. But, unfortunately, the overall regular workers’ movement, even the SF, avoided this task. This sharply accelerated the degeneration and bureaucratization of the democratic trade union movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nevertheless, irregular workers began to form their own unions in 1999. Many irregular workers’ unions failed to survive, but they continued to fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this situation, small revolutionary socialist groups were able to lead the formation and struggle of some irregular workers’ unions in large factories, including the HMC, from 2003. The struggles of the irregular workers in the mid-2000s, led by revolutionary socialists, argued for the abolition of the irregular work system through the unity of all workers and led to the formation of new militant and class-conscious activists among both irregular and regular workers. But the situation around the irregular workers’ unions was very harsh. The irregular workers’ unions continued to be attacked by the capitalists and suffered from hundreds of dismissals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2007, four small but important revolutionary socialist groups decided to unite to form the SWA. Formally launched in February 2008, the SWA was the first organization to openly pursue a revolutionary socialist program since the Korean War. As a revolutionary force, the SWA made clear its difference from centrist forces like the WP. It characterized itself as a practical organization that would lead the working class struggle to revolution through actual leadership of the workers’ movement with a transitional program. It included some class-conscious activists in various industries, including auto assembly, auto parts, shipbuilding, iron, railroads, subways, health care, power plants, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 2009 strike of the Ssangyong Motorcar Workers’ Union (SMWU) was the most important struggle in which the SWA intervened, tried to lead, and played a significant role. The SMWU was one of the most bureaucratic unions. But when the company decided to dismiss a third of its 7,000 workers in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the small militant and class-conscious minority was able to take over the leadership of the union. When the union launched a factory occupation strike against the mass layoffs, the SWA closely intervened in the strike, agitating the workers on the direction of the strike and working with the militant leadership of the union. The union developed a very militant strike that maximized workers’ activism based on a combination of general assemblies and small circle activities for 77 days until the brutal repression by riot police. The SWA also vigorously organized solidarity actions from below in other unions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Only six months after its official founding, the right-wing government attacked the SWA with the National Security Law (NSL). The eight key activists were suddenly and simultaneously arrested by the police, but released by the court two days later. Sudden police arrests, detentions, and imprisonment of socialists under the NSL were common before the 1996-97 general strike. After a ten-year hiatus under the liberal DP governments, the attack resumed. But the NSL was considered too outdated by many in society, and the court decided to release activists, which would have been unthinkable in the past. However, the police and prosecutors continued to conduct surveillance and collect tons of evidence, and a year later, just after the SMWU strike was crushed, they charged the SWA activists without detention. The trial lasted more than a year and resulted in convictions, two years’ imprisonment but three years’ reprieve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2009, the WP dissolved itself, recognizing its mistake in dealing with the bureaucratization of its members and deciding to expel some members. Most of the former WP members formed the Construction Meeting for a Socialist Workers Party (CMSWP). The CMSWP participated in the united actions against the government’s attack on the SWA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This situation made it possible to begin a discussion in the SWA about the possibility of merging with the CMSWP. The majority emphasized the continuing centrist limitations of the CMSWP. But the minority saw the possibility of further change in the CMSWP and appreciated the momentum of attracting new activists through the merger. After a year of dispute, the SWA split in 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The minority left the SWA and merged with the CMSWP and other activists to form the Construction Committee for a Socialist Workers Party (CCSWP). The CCSWP transformed itself into the Committee for a Working Class Party (CWCP) in 2012, and then formed the Social Revolution Workers’ Party (SRWP) in 2016. Meanwhile, the majority announced the dissolution of the SWA and formed the Construction Committee for a Revolutionary Workers Party (CCFRW).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the global financial crisis broke out in 2008, the workers’ movement in Korea was falling into depression due to the bureaucratization of its main force, the regular workers’ unions. This was exacerbated by the right-wing government’s harsh repression of the SMWU’s militant strike in 2009. Several medium-sized unions were destroyed in government-sponsored union-busting operations. Fearing further repression, in 2011, the bureaucratic leadership of the KCTU reintroduced the policy of solidarity with the liberal bourgeois opposition party, which had at least ostensibly disappeared in the KCTU since the formation of the DLP in 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the 2008 global crisis, the conditions of the broad irregular workers rapidly deteriorated, including the reduction of real wages. Their conditions became more and more different from the decent conditions of regular workers in large companies and the public sector. Some Korean conglomerates, such as Samsung, LG, and Hyundai, were able to rapidly expand their global market share after the 2008 global crisis, surpassing their Western global competitors, because they had already developed a highly competitive super-exploitation system with vertically subcontracted small companies and enormous irregular workers since the IMF crisis in the late 1990s. While the regular workers in large companies received some crumbs from the huge profits of the conglomerates, the broad irregular workers had to suffer even more intensified exploitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the anger of irregular workers throughout society reached a boiling point, in July 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of an HMC subcontracted worker who was fired in 2005 as an illegal dispatch. This meant that he should be considered directly employed by HMC. HMC refused to accept the meaning of the rule and continued to fight against similar cases, but the rule provoked a 25-day strike in November-December 2010 by HMC’s irregular workers to demand the transformation of their status into regular workers. The strikers, under the strong influence of the former SWA activists, argued for the transformation of all subcontracted workers to abolish the irregular work system in the HMC, regardless of their work duration, work status, or work character, which could be separated by future rules of the court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As HMC’s irregular workers’ unions organized about 20 percent of the 10,000 irregular workers at three plants in Asan, Jeonju, and Ulsan, during years-long negotiations after the strike, the company insisted on the partial recruitment of irregular workers as new regular workers. Unfortunately, the irregular workers’ unions fell into a trap by adopting the prior recruitment of union members as their demand, which was the abandonment of the transformation of all subcontracted workers. According to the agreements between the irregular workers’ unions, the regular workers’ union, and the company in HMC in 2014 and 2016, about 10,000 irregular workers in HMC were gradually recruited as new regular workers. However, a significant number of irregular workers still remain in HMC in the form of contract workers who can only work for less than two years. The retreat of the irregular workers\u2019 unions in HMC was, among others, the reflection of the fact that they were surrounded by already bureaucratized regular workers\u2019 unions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The more right-wing president, the daughter of the former military dictator Park, took power in 2013. She launched a war against the regular unions in 2015, attempting to introduce various labor reforms, such as an efficiency-differential wage system and the low-efficiency dismissal system, to worsen the conditions of regular workers in particular. In response, the KCTU organized several one-day general strikes under the militant leadership of the former SMWU president. The one-day general strikes were not strong, but they awakened many ordinary regular workers. In 2016, when some large companies tried to introduce their respective reforms in accordance with the government’s policy, the regular workers’ unions were able to respond powerfully with the strong support and participation of their rank-and-file members. According to government statistics, the total number of strike participants in 2016 was the highest since 1992. However, the regular workers’ unions unfolded their strikes respectively without organizing united actions or their own common demands, let alone raising the demands for the broad irregular workers, such as a sharp increase in the minimum wage or the abolition of the irregular work system. In late September 2016, the three most important unions of the Korean workers\u2019 movement, the HMWU, the HHIWU, and the Railway Workers’ Union, unfolded strikes simultaneously with other unions, but only respectively. The simultaneous strikes of the three unions, only one of which has the potential to shake the whole of Korean capitalism, happened for the first time in the history of the Korean workers’ movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just one month later, a political crisis suddenly erupted with the revelation of the president’s abuse of power. The political crisis was the result of conflicts among the ruling elites, but also the result of a social polarization that had deepened since the IMF crisis of the late 1990s and the 2008 crisis. The general strikes of the KCTU and the subsequent strikes of the regular workers’ unions made a breach in the seemingly strong castle of the right-wing government. The candlelight protests, which grew very quickly and neutralized the president, included different political spectrums, from pro-liberal forces to social movements to workers\u2019 movements. Thus, the candlelight protests were a space of class struggle over who would oust the president and how. The political implications of an ouster by a mass movement around a strong KCTU general strike would be quite different from an ouster by impeachment within the bourgeois institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the early stages, the overall candlelight protestors didn’t prefer impeachment because of the complexity of the process and the uncertainty of its outcome. So, almost all the forces in the candlelight protests looked at the KCTU with the question of whether it could organize a general strike strong enough to oust the president. If the KCTU had organized a strong general strike in this situation, demanding not only the ouster of the president but also various workers’ rights, such as the abolition of the irregular work system, the abolition of all dismissal systems, the full recognition of the freedom to strike, etc., it would have been a promising and great turning point in the class struggle. But, the KCTU general strike on November 30 turned out to be a paper tiger. The KCTU, which had long been bureaucratized and confined to narrow trade unionism or economism under the influence of various reformist forces, wasn’t able to cope with such a critical political task. Just after the failure of the KCTU general strike, the liberal DP took up the impeachment drive with all effort and finally succeeded. Thus, the candlelight protests resulted in the victory of the DP, in other words, the defeat of the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The revolutionary socialists, especially the CCFRW, formed by the SWA majority, played an important role in organizing the KCTU general strikes in 2015, especially by leading a network of militant activists calling for the general strike from below in Ulsan. But, in 2016, as the situation became much more complicated and developed, the arguments of revolutionary socialists to organize united strikes with common broader demands and a strong general strike demanding the ouster of the president and various workers’ rights weren’t able to influence the broad activists and ordinary workers in the KCTU enough to change the overall attitude of the KCTU. After the failure of the KCTU general strike and the indictment for the impeachment of the president by the parliament, the candlelight protests continued for another three months until the impeachment was finally accepted by the Constitutional Court in March 2017. During this period, the SRWP, in which the SWA minority participated, played an important role in organizing various campaigns against Korean conglomerates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the new president from the DP took power after the impeachment in 2017, there was a serious misunderstanding among the workers, including the KCTU, about the people’s victory or even the workers’ victory. It meant that the working class had been defeated not only in the physical class struggle but also in the ideological class struggle. The sense of victory and the illusion of the DP government among ordinary workers paradoxically led to an increase in the membership of the KCTU. From 2016 to 2022, the membership of the KCTU increased from 0.7 million to 1.1 million. Most of the newly organized workers were irregular workers. This brought the share of irregular workers in the total membership of the KCTU to about 30 percent, a significant change from 20 years ago when it was only 2 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But unlike in the late 1980s, most of the newly organized workers haven’t experienced a strike, or at least a truly militant strike. Instead of organizing strikes, the attitude of relying on various committees around the government or tripartite tables spread rapidly in the KCTU. In addition, the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic prevented the workers from organizing their protests for two years. Thus, the workers’ movement was weakened to an unprecedented degree during the DP government from 2017 to 2022. Nevertheless, there were some important strikes, including the strike of the tollgate irregular workers at the Korean Expressway Corporation in 2019 and the strike of the call center irregular workers at the National Health Insurance Corporation in 2021, both of which demanded their transformation into regular workers and saw the eager intervention of the revolutionary socialists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The retreat of the workers’ movement affected centrists and even some revolutionary socialists. But, it was just another opportunity for other revolutionary socialists to forge themselves and develop their politics more sharply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From 2017 to 2020, most progressive organizations, from the KCTU to various social movements to revolutionary organizations, decided to sever their solidarity relationship with the Korean branch of the IST, which changed its name to Workers Solidarity in 2014, because of its aggressive and repeated mishandling of sexual harassment and sexual violence that occurred around and in the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2017, the CCFRW experienced a fierce internal dispute over the current task of the revolutionary socialists. The minority argued that in the current situation, the revolutionary socialists should not have asserted the KCTU general strike because it was impossible and that their task should be to organize ordinary and regular practices to raise workers’ consciousness. Eventually, the CCFRW reached an agreement to split, and the majority formed the Struggle Solidarity for Workers’ Liberation (SSWL) in 2018. The SSWL sought to continue the tradition of the SWA and CCFRW of actively intervening in militant struggles and asserting the need for general strikes by broad workers to organize counteroffensives in the context of the deepening crisis of global capitalism. The SSWL also sought to develop its politics further, especially in the direction of workers’ hegemony, as the feminist reboots and climate strikes unfolded around the world. In this regard, the SSWL gained valuable insights from exchanges with the Trotskyist Fraction-Fourth International, particularly through direct meetings with the Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas in Argentina, the Revolution Permanente in France, and the Left Voice in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the SRWP, the drive for the popularization of socialism began in 2019 with a mixed understanding from different viewpoints. In 2021, the majority of the SRWP, longtime centrists, argued for merging with the LP as a way to popularize socialism. The minority strongly opposed it, arguing that merging with the reformist party wouldn’t lead to the popularization of socialism, but to the abandonment of it. After the decision was made at the conference, the minority left the party. The SSWL made an open statement in support of the minority. The former minority of the SRWP and the SSWL organized political discussions and joint actions for a year and finally agreed to merge and form a new organization, March to Socialism, which was officially launched on October 1, 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Exceptionally, after the Korean War, Korean capitalism experienced more than 60 years of consecutive growth despite several moments of crisis. This was because, on the one hand, the Korean capitalists were able to exploit and oppress to a very high degree after the Korean War destroyed the workers’ movement and created an extreme right-wing political terrain and, on the other hand, Korean capitalism was able to receive special patronage from the United States as the edge of the Cold War until 1991 and then was able to receive special benefits from the rise of China as the second largest economy as the closest country to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The quantitative growth of Korean capitalism, based on highly intensive exploitation and oppression, accompanied the qualitative misery of Korean society. The rapid growth of Korean capitalism brought workers a significant increase in real wages. But the terrible neglect and repression of workers’ rights resulted in the highest level of working hours in the world, the highest rate of fatal occupational accidents, the highest proportion of irregular workers, the highest gender wage gap, and so on. Now, under the guise of mythical economic growth from one of the poorest countries to a developed country, Korean society is experiencing the world’s worst suicide rate, the world’s highest elderly poverty rate, and the world’s lowest birth rate, only 0.78 in 2022, which is so low as to seriously threaten the maintenance and reproduction of society itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The notorious exploitation and oppression of the Korean capitalists made the workers’ struggles highly militant and dynamic as a reflex. The great strike wave of 1987 and the general strike of 1996-97, which showed the potential of the Korean working class, attracted the attention of many workers and socialists around the world. But the suppression of workers’ basic rights, such as the right to organize, bargain, and strike, through various bad labor laws has kept the rate of unionization very low and made the workers who lead or even participate in the struggles face extreme adversity. The suppression of thought through the National Security Law has severely hindered Korean workers from having a working-class consciousness toward workers’ revolution or socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a result, the Korean workers’ movement has a unique characteristic, a structural imbalance between dynamic mass struggle and fragile class consciousness. Even after experiencing a period of dynamic workers’ struggles after 1987, the Korean socialist movement couldn’t overcome its low level of development. Because of this, the Korean workers’ movement once grew without hesitation on the basis of the dynamics that erupted from below, but it wasn’t able to advance steadily and regressed due to the lack of activists with class consciousness. In particular, the strategic section of the workers’ movement has failed to move toward uniting all workers across the social and economic divisions of the working class and is limited to its own economic unionism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now that the crisis of world capitalism is deepening sharply, Korean capitalism is also plunging into a deep crisis. The external conditions that have so far made possible the extraordinary continuous growth of Korean capitalism are being turned upside down into the conditions that are forcing its most serious downfall as the confrontation between the United States and China for global hegemony becomes more and more fierce. The crisis of capitalism, which from now on will also unfold in South Korea, will push the misery of Korean society to a further extreme state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is the task of the socialist workers’ movement in South Korea to lead the Korean working class to overcome the weakness of its fragile class consciousness, to maximize the strength of its dynamic mass struggle, to realize the strong unity of all workers, and to forge itself as the central force leading all the oppressed. Only in this way will the Korean working class be able to advance, shoulder to shoulder with the working class in other countries, towards the workers’ revolution of the world against the multiplied crisis of capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is the task of the socialist workers’ movement in South Korea to lead the Korean working class to overcome the weakness of its fragile class consciousness, to maximize the strength of its dynamic mass struggle, to realize the strong unity of all workers, and to forge itself as the central force leading all the oppressed. Only in this way will the Korean working class be able to advance, shoulder to shoulder with the working class in other countries, towards the workers’ revolution of the world against the multiplied crisis of capitalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"crp_sub_category":"South Korea","crp_read_time":"","crp_featured":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,83],"tags":[42,20,23,7],"coauthors":[92],"class_list":["post-405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-asia","category-south-korea","tag-asia-pacific","tag-history","tag-labor","tag-south-korea"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n