Labor rights

Among the key worker struggles during the Yushin Regime of Park Chung Hee were those waged by women at the Cheonggye, Dongil, and YH Unions. After watching the play 70 Women Workers by the Arts Collective for a New Era, we spent a weekend meeting up with its three protagonists. Our first day, we got a tour of Pyounghwa Market (the primary textile district in Korea) by one of its then-organizers Shin Soon Ae. Our second day, we sat down at a Gwanghwamun café to talk with Lee Cheong Gak and Choi Soon Young presidents of Dongil and YH Union during its most intense and fierceest struggles.

by Stephanie Park

Anyone with a passing knowledge of Korea’s labor movement knows the name of Jeon Tae Il, the iconic young male worker who self-immolated in protest of working conditions in Korean factories during the 1970s, as well as the words he shouted that fateful day in Seoul’s Pyeonghwa Market. I first learned about Jeon Tae Il through a college class on Korean cinematography, where we watched A Single Spark, a film that dramatizes his life and the events that led him to such drastic action.

Recently, demonstrations have been breaking out around the world demanding an increase in the minimum wage. This is the result of wages that have remained too low since the financial crisis exacerbated by the continuous inflation along with exchange rate increases which have made it impossible to guarantee a minimum standard of living. According to the “Global Wage Report 2012-13” by the International Labor Organization (ILO), the global average real wage (excluding China) has not increased since the 2008 financial crisis. Minimum wage became a big issue not only in Asia, known as the world’s factory due to its cheap labor but also in the US and the UK. In the US, the movement is spreading propelled by fast food workers.

By ISC Media Team

Contributors: Ben Cooper, Dae-Han Song, Kellyn Gross, Taryn Assaf

We are all leaders, not just as a collection of individuals, but as persons embedded in different kinds of institutions and communities of struggle. – Staughton Lynd

On November 9th, the ISC media team met with two women from the JEI workers union, Oh Suyeong and Yeo Minhee. They are union leaders in a six-and-a-half-year struggle against their employer, Jaeneung Educational Institution (JEI). The women’s recent struggle is a symbol of self-sacrifice for the special workers movement—one that is in the spirit of the venerable Jeon Taeil who self-immolated in 1970 on behalf of garment workers.