Betrayal of Public Square Democracy: Precarious and Irregular Working Hours (May 2025)
– The 21st Presidential Election: What is the Occupational Safety and Health Movement’s Slogan?
Ju-hee Jeon
Labor Time Center of the Korean Institute of Labor Safety and Health
Translated by Michelle Jang
Korea Institute of Labor Safety and Health
Citizens in the public square and workers in high-altitude sit-ins
What characterized the candlelight rallies that ended with the impeachment of President Yoon Seok-yeol in 2025 was the connection between ‘individual’ citizens and ‘collective subjects’ such as workers and farmers. However, this was not the only feature of the rallies. Workers and farmers, intersecting genders and sexual identities, and minorities who were marginalized due to class, education, region, disability, age, ethnicity, and race, and those who could be called “the grassroots people” filled the public square.[1] However, while workers and various citizens awakened each other and connected more strongly in the public square, Jeong-hye Park and Hyun-sook So, workers at Korea Optical Hitech who had been continuing a high-altitude sit-in before the impeachment, still could not come down to the public square, and eventually, workers at Sejong Hotel, a long-term struggle site, and workers at Hanwha Ocean (formerly Daewoo Shipbuilding) in-house subcontractors also chose to hold high-altitude sit-ins amid the impeachment situation.
Why didn’t they come down even when public square politics was in full swing? Why did these workers choose high-altitude sit-ins rather than horizontally linking their movements in the middle of public square democracy?
An uneasy premonition that public square democracy would not be able to cross the threshold of the workplace would have forced them into vertical movement. The ‘iron law’ that has remained unchanged since neoliberalism took over world – that even if impeachment was successful, workers’ right to survive would still be threatened – must have pressured them into vertical movement. The moment the Democratic Party tried to pass the ‘Special Act on the Semiconductor Industry’ in response to the Korea Enterprises Federation, which demanded ‘deregulation due to the severity of the economic crisis’ without even blinking an eye in the face of the December 3rd insurrection, served as a chilling warning that workers’ lives would be the same under a new regime after impeachment and that would have sent workers upward once again.
There is no clearer image that so clearly shows that workers have no expectations before the expected ‘Lee Jae-myung Democratic Party government’ comes into power. Their high-altitude protest seems to at least show the limitations of the Democratic Party’s neoliberalism before it takes power.
Debunking Progressive Neoliberalism
American political philosopher, Nancy Fraser, defines neoliberalism in two ways. One is Trump’s ‘reactionary neoliberalism.’ These are racist, patriarchal, nationalistic, and oppressive policies. On the other hand, ‘progressive neoliberalism’ represented by Bill Clinton embraces liberal discourses such as feminism, anti-racism, multiculturalism, and environmentalism, and combines with progressive forces in civil society to dress up neoliberalism as an egalitarian and progressive discourse.[2]
In South Korea, progressive neoliberalism continued under the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations followed by the Moon Jae-in administration. The fact that the Lee Jae-myung-style Democratic Party emphasized ‘growth and integration’ and the ‘Special Act on the Semiconductor Industry,’ including deregulation of working hours in the midst of the impeachment process and declared itself ‘moderately conservative,’ shows that the hegemony of this progressive neoliberalism has weakened. In the second phase of impeachment, they no longer put progressive discourse and values at the forefront. Ironically, the Democratic Party responded to the public square politics of ‘anti-martial law’ and ‘protection of democracy’ with a more conservative governing strategy.
The Democratic Party has shed its half-naked “progressive” cloak and has passed through the impeachment process with its bare face of conservative and authoritarian neoliberalism exposed. Public square democracy has not only failed to cross the threshold of the workplace, but also seems to have stopped in front of parliamentary politics and the invisible barrier of the National Assembly building.
Why did the People Power Party’s ‘4.5-day workweek’ promise come out now? If the Democratic Party’s ‘Special Act on the Semiconductor Industry’ did not exist, the People Power Party’s ‘4.5-day workweek’ promise would not exist either. While the Democratic Party touched on the issue of exceptionally long working hours by allowing deregulation of working hours in the semiconductor industry, the People Power Party’s 4.5-day system distorts the reduction of working hours in that it is a shortening of the workweek in exchange for flexible working hours.[3] The Democratic Party and the People Power Party have become a more solid unit after the insurrection and impeachment.
Flexibility of working hours and dismantling of statutory working hours
During the presidential election campaign, working hour pledges are centered around ‘reducing working hours’ regardless of whether the candidate is progressive or conservative. Of course, the business community opposes this, citing the ‘economic crisis.’ Their premature argument ‘adjusts’ the scope and timing of working hour reduction, and divides and fragments the effects of the time reduction. In this process, time inequality increases. As a result, South Korea has become a society in which working hour flexibility is strengthened as long as working hours are polarized with long working hours and ultra-short working hours coexisting and long working hours are maintained. The important point is that the deepening time inequality means that the ‘statutory working hours’ system is collapsing. It is not simply a problem of ‘polarization of working hours.’
The flexible working hours system was introduced in 2009, but due to COVID-19, it has been significantly expanded in terms of both location and time. This has accelerated the deregulation of statutory working hours. The flexibility of working hours and work locations will standardize and popularize tools for measuring workers’ performance and build more sophisticated digital monitoring and performance measurement technologies. In addition, wages centered on a pay grade system will be quickly reorganized into wages centered on performance.
All these changes brought about by ‘flexibility of labor’ have increased precarious work and irregular working hours. We live in a society that is becoming more individualized and losing its commonality regardless of the working hours system.
The problem is that this is combined with a discourse about increased ‘freedom’ and ‘choice,’ giving it a progressive appearance. According to a survey conducted by Job Korea in 2025, 82% of Millennials and Generation Z job seekers responded that they prefer companies that offer flexible working hours. What is particularly noteworthy is that 64% of respondents preferred the introduction of flexible working hours over a salary increase.[4]
The competition between the Democratic Party and the People Power Party over working hours in the midst of public square politics goes beyond the issue of working hours. It foreshadows reactionary neoliberalism that arrived earlier than the presidential election.
[1] Chang-gyu Kwon (2025) The Memory Struggle of Rainbow-colored Comrades, Cultural Science, Vol. 121.
[2] Nancy Fraser (2019) The Old Is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born: From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump and Beyond, Verso Books, ISBM 9781788732727
[3] Kim Jong-Jin and Park Kwan-Sung (2025) Long Working Hours in Korea and the Search for Reducing Working Hours, Korea Worker Institute – Union Center
[4] Flexwork (2025) The Complete Guide to Flexible Work Arrangements to Make Your Organization More Competitive in Hiring, MobiInside https://www.mobiinside.co.kr/2025/01/03/flextime/
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