A People's History of Samsung's Rise: Korean Workers Make a Last Stand for Justice
Written by: Kelly Jarman
Photos by: Yeahwon Kang
Ground occupation with art that reads “Samsung Apologize” next to Gangnam Station.
I work as a contract instructor for a Korean startup in a new gleaming office sharing tower in Gangnam replete with free beer and perks to keep tenants comfortable and happy. To get my coffee, I walk down the hall, at times glancing into the clear walls of office mates: traders debating market strategies, a dog whining from inside begging to be taken out from behind the glass. In the kitchen, designers and international traders eat gourmet meals delivered by startups. I look out the window waiting for the microwave to heat up my burrito. As impressive as our building is, it’s still dwarfed by Samsung’s massive headquarters. Gangnam is the beating heart of South Korean capitalism and in a country that South Koreans sometimes wryfully call “Samsung Korea,” Samsung’s massive skyscraper complex is, naturally, at its center. Beneath the shade of its towers in the middle of a Gangnam intersection one worker stands on top of a CCTV tower, defiant, for over 250 days. Another sits inside an occupation tent. Amidst the new promise of a competitive Neo-Liberal South Korea driven by startups and foreign venture capital, workers stand defiant in the shadow of Samsung’s corporate offices.
An invitation by the International Strategy Center (ISC) to a cultural performance in solidarity with the occupation allows me to go deeper than auto-translating the slogans in banners hanging from the tower and in the tent below. I want to learn why someone would occupy a small tower for more than two hundred and fifty days. I leave my office’s perk of 24/7 heating to descend into the underground shopping center and out of Gangnam Station’s exit eight. Fellow ISC members and associates are sitting in the back against the ledge of a building. The Maru Art Collective perform and then a worker emerges from his tent fashioned out of vinyl and plastic on top of the CCTV tower. His voice plays over a speaker from his cell-phone. His fiery passion and determination boom through the mics. We listen in silence as an ISC member translates for me and the other foreigners. He repeats again and again the importance of unions and the dangers he encountered working for Samsung.
During my lunch hours, as a follow-up to the event, an ISC member helps me understand an article in Korea detailing the two men’s 25+ year struggle against Samsung. The occupation is led by two workers and consists of a tent on the ground and on top the CCTV tower. The occupation is one of many protesting Samsung’s head offices: Workers, small business owners, and customers accusing Samsung of denying insurance claims, union-busting, and unfair competition. The CCTV tower occupation itself began on June 10th, 2019, a month before Kim Young-hui’s retirement age. It began as a protest by workers fired for organizing unions in order to be reinstated. Occupying the tower was a last ditch effort to escalate the struggle and be rehired if, even symbolically, before retirement. A worker named Kim Young-hui stays in the tower while another named Lee Jae-young (no relation to the Samsung executive of the same name) runs the occupation on the ground. The top of the tower has less than one pyeong (3.3 square meters) of space. Every night Kim Young-hui has to fit his 1.8 meter frame into the 1.2 meter long platform. Below, Lee Jae-young stays in a tent on the ground during the day and at 24-hour public bathhouses at night due to the cold weather. While I learn all this from the article, there is only so much a translated article can convey. So, the ISC reaches out to the occupation to do interviews.
It’s cold at exit eight of Gangnam station and members of the ISC shiver waiting for stragglers. Lee Jae-young offered to meet us in person but the logistics to contact Kim Young-hui are still too difficult. Five ISC members including a photographer and a musician all agree to come. Lee Jae-young himself is patrolling the occupation while wearing a blue vest calling for the Samsung executive of the same name’s arrest. He stumbles onto us first and we greet him with a bow and exchange awkward pleasantries translated into Korean through our group members. He invites us to the tent and we file inside.
ISC members meet to interview Lee Jaeyoung inside his occupation tent, joined by his supporters.
The tent is relatively warm as it is elevated off the cold winter ground. The members of the occupation turn on a heater. Clothes dry on racks and the space is full of food, supplies and books. It is warm enough for us in our coats, but I imagine what it must be like for an older man to spend his entire day here in the winter. Lee sits at the other end of us while some supporters of the occupation sit in on our meeting. Lee is often silent and chooses his words while his supporters enthusiastically offer their translations of phrases or emphasize Lee's words.
Lee in front of his tent.
Lee’s interview follows: He introduces himself, joking that people “give him flack” for sharing the same name as the head of the Samsung group. Lee relates how Samsung treats workers. It’s been fifty years and Samsung still has not acknowledged unions. “When there were industrial accidents, Samsung would just deal with it in-house and just pay for the medical costs. Even with fatal industrial accidents, Samsung would block it from being reported in the media. There was so much enforced silence around these accidents, that even if someone died in one workplace, the workplace nearby would be completely ignorant of it. At that time, if we wanted to create a workplace where workers didn’t have to suffer, get injured, or died, then a labor union was desperately needed.”
In 1987 he attended a “labor school” organized by the Catholic Women’s Association that taught him about current events, including the Gwangju Uprising, and union organizing. Despite the management's attempts to dissuade and distract him, Lee continued taking classes and started organizing a union. For his efforts organizing a union, Lee was constantly reassigned to different tasks.
Eventually, he ran for president of the Samsung labour council on one demand: to form a union. After a runoff, he received 70% of the vote. Upon taking office, Lee publicly rejected gifts of money from management, cutting up the labour council’s company credit card and rejecting the billion won offered to him to stop organizing unions at Samsung. After finishing his term as president, Lee was given menial jobs that kept him at a distance from other workers.
In the middle of the interview, a woman bursts into the tent yelling in broken English that Samsung is attacking before launching into Korean to tell Lee Jae-young. Lee looks tired but slowly gets up and follows her to the sidewalk. Samsung security guards are attempting to dismantle another occupation and everyone is being called to defend it. While Lee goes to see what is wrong, we wait outside the tent shivering in the cold as pedestrians pass by without even a second glance. After things settle down, Lee returns to say goodbye walking at the same slow pace. He’s not surprised by the assault, almost seems used to it.
Bribes and threats aren’t the only tactic used against labour organizers. In a follow-up interview with ISC members, Lee discusses how attacks on an organizer’s reputation stifle organizing. One night he was out with friends for a birthday party when he was knocked out by a billiard stick and placed in a car. He woke up next to a terrified woman from his workplace. The heavily-bleeding Lee and the woman took a taxi to a hospital and then went to the police. Despite attempts to defame him with rumors that were spread around his workplace, the woman stood by Lee’s account of the night. Later, a police investigation revealed no fingerprints on the car making Lee suspicious that this was a tactic used to frame organizers.
In 1997, Lee was fired for organizing a union right before Mayday. The timing allowed him to organize a few hundred workers at the front gate of the Samsung compound to protest the firing. Seven protesters were arrested and a warrant was placed for his arrest. Twenty-two years later, he’s still fighting Samsung. Since then, he’s organized other fired workers and created the Samsung branch of the National Association for the Struggle to Reinstate Fired Workers. During his over two decades struggle, one moment made him seriously reconsider continuing. One day, his (at the time) elementary school age children refused to go to school. They were labeled the children of a “red,” a serious accusation in South Korea where families’ lives have been ruined and loved ones disappeared based on such accusations. Even today, the existence of the National Security Law can still land one in jail for it. He recollects, “I wondered if I should continue when it was hurting my family like that.”
When prompted to imagine his life without this decades long struggle, he responds, “If I’d not struggled to build a union and simply lived my life as an ordinary Samsung worker, then I would have retired at the end of last year. I would have lived the ordinary life of a worker.” He makes sure to add, “I have no regrets or disappointment for the life I’ve lived.” Lee concludes the interview stating that it’s time for Samsung to hear their demands and end the occupation lest it leave irreparable damage to Kim Young-hui’s health, especially after not being able to properly rehabilitate his body after a 55 day hunger strike. “The [longer this goes on the] more his body deteriorates.” Talking to Kim Young-hui is crucial in finding out why he willingly puts it all on the line.
Atop a small cramped tower, going on for over 250 days, Kim Young-hui weathers both the scorching heat of summers and the freezing cold of winter in protest. Supporters fear the impact that the prolonged occupation is having on his health. Before the occupation reached two hundred days supporters made a last ditch effort to get their demands met and conclude the occupation.
After a few failed attempts at securing a phone interview, we finally manage one. A translator, editor and I sit in the slick conference room of my work-sharing office watching a smartphone as it dials Kim Young-hui’s number. Often used by designers to sketch designs or for managers to have one-on-ones, today, it is being used to connect with a worker on top a CCTV traffic camera tower less a 5 minute walk away. We have the phone set to record with two others as backup. It finally connects. We are greeted with the shrill of sirens coming through the phone at full volume. A taste of what Kim Young-hui must endure daily.
Kim Young-hui’s occupation lies in the middle of Gangnam intersection. Below him are inflatable pads to cushion a fall.
Kim’s interview follows: His voice is relaxed and his passionate fury is replaced by a calm voice at times marked by emotional strain. He begins by outlining a typical day on top of the CCTV tower. From 7-9 AM, he greets the morning commute waving his flag accompanied by workers songs blaring from speakers. He repeats this for the lunch crowd from 11AM to 1 PM. Finally, he bids goodbye to commuters from 5:30 PM to 7 PM. The rest of the time he spends eating, surfing the internet on his phone, and reading books. He quips, “The day passes by very quickly.” He eats food provided by religious groups which is brought up to him, along with battery chargers and other items, by a worker from KIA motors named Pak Min-hee, who has been fighting KIA motors since being fired for being a whistleblower. The most difficult thing for him is staying on the CCTV tower. Standing at 180 centimeters tall, he must cramp his body in a curved space with at best a 120 centimeters of length. We ask him what it’s like to sit atop the tower squarely facing the Samsung headquarters complex. He responds, “At the beginning I used to stare up at the Samsung offices a lot, but it made me feel bad, so I try to avoid looking at it. I focus instead mostly on the road and traffic below.”
From 7-9 AM, 11-1 PM, and 5:30-7 PM, Kim waves his banner to protest Samsung.
We inquire about his health. After fasting for 55 days, he refused medical treatment. With his digestion system in disrepair, he can now only eat a third his usual quantity of food. Inhabiting such a small space, his body can’t get proper circulation. Standing at 180 cm, Kim must curl up “like shrimp” to fit into the circular platform at best 120 cm long. His right arm and leg are semi-paralyzed.
When asked about the history of his struggle, he easily recounts a story likely repeated countless times. After witnessing the 1987 June Democratic Uprising and the Great Worker’s Struggles that followed, he became involved in union organizing attempting to change the local Samsung labour council to a union. Management violently opposed his struggle. In one incident, he was hospitalized for 20 days after being struck by a piece of wood. Nonetheless, in 1991, he became the chair of a committee to create a union at Samsung. In March, the day of the general assembly to create a union, he was fired and then arrested by the police. After his wrongful firing, he began a protest in front of Samsung and filed a lawsuit against them.
After he was fired, his father was approached by Samsung employees who told him, “If your son continues trying to make a trade union, it can get very dangerous for him.” Soon after, in May 1991, Park Chang-soo, a union leader for Hanjin Heavy Industry, died under mysterious circumstances. The police took the body, preventing an autopsy from happening. Spooked, his father came to dissuade him from organizing a union. When he couldn’t, Kim’s father left home leaving a living will that stated that he would only return once Lee gave up his organizing. The next six months, he spent it traveling the country looking for his father at temples and churches. Unable to attend the court hearings, he lost his lawsuit.
Realizing the need for legal help, he hired a young human-rights lawyer named Moon Jae-in. Kim still lost his next trial when key evidence failed to be submitted by Moon. Kim appealed the case and submitted the missing evidence on his own and won the case. He was approached with a settlement from Samsung. Kim Young-hui and Moon Jae-in’s paths would cross again decades later.
While negotiating a settlement, his father was still missing and the struggle continued taking a toll on his family. In May 1992, his wife was targeted and sexually assaulted by a plainclothes detective after a meeting with the wife of a Samsung HR manager. When the detective was arrested, the police force offered a 10 million won settlement. Kim refused, demanding that Samsung take full responsibility for their involvement in the incident. He pressed charges against the detective who was arrested.
In 1993, Samsung offered a settlement for his original lawsuit including reinstatement if he dropped the lawsuit. He accepted the terms and was dispatched to work for Samsung in Russia. After refusing to stop his organizing, he was framed as a North Korean spy and was captured and restrained. The charges were ultimately dropped but his evidence against Samsung was set on fire. After a hunger strike in protest, he was allowed to return to Korea in 1995. In 1997, the factory he was assigned to closed and he wasn’t assigned another position. He was never handed formal notice that he was fired. Yet, he couldn’t enter his workplace. He continued trying to enter his workplace and was arrested for protesting Samsung. He eventually became the head organizer of a KCTU committee for the reinstatement of fired workers.
In 2017, over two decades after they first met, Moon Jae-in became president in the wake of massive protests that toppled President Park Geun-hye. Kim met Moon before he became President of South Korea and then never again. Even their meeting that had been photographed by journalists never appeared in the newspapers. Our earlier interview with Lee Jae-young revealed that aides from Moon’s administration told Kim that they couldn’t help Kim due to the statute of limitations. So, Kim started protesting in front of the Blue House. “Moon Jae-in is as guilty as Samsung,” Kim tells us. He then went on a hunger strike for 115 days; his weight fell from 80kg to 49kg. During the hunger strike he held a picket that asked Moon Jae-in “Can you stand up to Samsung with a clean conscience?” The occupation outside Samsung’s headquarters began afterwards in 2018.
On July 10, he would have turned 60. If he’d hadn’t been fired, he would have retired. A month before his retirement date, Kim made a last stand: He climbed atop a 20 meter CCTV camera tower in the middle of the main Gangnam intersection and began a hunger strike that would continue for 55 days. His goal was to draw attention to his struggle and be reinstated even if symbolically for a few days before reaching retirement age. He explains, “If a person goes up a tower to die, surely it will be covered in the media. So, that’s why I went up.” His struggle continues.
International support is key for the occupation to put pressure on Samsung. Kim is aware that workers in other countries are being repressed by Samsung. He mentions, “In Indonesia, they were trying to build a union and were fired right away. In Vietnam, Samsung bought off government officials and the government banned the trade union activities.” In response to what workers around the world can do, Kim tells us that workers in other countries can “picket in front of the Samsung headquarters or factory in their country, or write about Samsung’s crimes in their media.”
As Gangnam embraces startups and looks towards the future, the occupation is a physical reminder that the past will not be ignored. Lee Jae-young isn’t satisfied with the prosecution of Samsung executives: “Some of its managers that’d repressed unions have been prosecuted, but they are still unwilling to recognize their past wrongs. Time may have passed, but what is wrong is still wrong, and we need to at least get an apology, but Samsung doesn’t seem prepared to apologize to workers or the public.” The occupation fights to force Samsung executives to acknowledge all their past crimes. When asked about how he continues the occupation, Kim Young-hui concludes, “Forgiving yesterday’s crime condones it tomorrow. This is something that I must correct. This goes beyond my life. I’ve dedicated my whole life in the struggle for reinstatement. The courage, the patience, the will to do this comes from a comrade in the struggle that took his life by self-immolation.” His voice strains with emotion, “When I think about that comrade, at times, I’m thankful to be alive in this struggle.”
A special thanks to Lee Jae-young and Kim Young-hui for their time and stories and for the ISC team for translating, editing, photographing and helping with interviews.