Workers’ Committee of the People’s Democracy Party (‘Republic of Korea’)
Today, the world is facing a grave turning point. The aggressive imperialist war and the chronic global economic crisis, the industrial shift and the arrival of the AI era, and the climate and energy crises are overlapping, pressing down on the worldwide working class and the people.
As the war expands, transnational financial capital and the military-industrial complex acquire massive super-profits, but workers are experiencing inflation such as soaring exchange rates, facing a decline in real wages, and are in a situation where they must endure employment insecurity and welfare reduction.
Due to the aggressive imperialist forces’ aim to reorganize the world order, the working class and the people are being turned into “cannon fodder for war.” In particular, the ‘Republic of Korea (‘ROK’)’ has never not been a “global powder keg” since the Korean War. Had it not been for the DPRK’s war deterrence and “strategic patience,” and the ‘ROK’ people’s December Uprising two years ago, a war in the ‘ROK’ would have certainly broken out at that time.
Is the ‘ROK’ economy currently in a boom? The reality hidden behind the numbers says it is not.
While the KOSPI has easily surpassed 8,000 points and the operating profits of comprador capital, such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, are recording historic highs, the economy and the people’s livelihoods have long fallen into an irrecoverable state as the polarization between the rich and the poor has become increasingly extreme. While the internal reserves accumulated by large corporations reach a maximum of approximately 3,000 trillion won (approximately 2.2 trillion US dollars), the scale of real household debt also reaches approximately 3,000 trillion won. Youth are suffering from unemployment, non-regular workers from employment insecurity, and ordinary people from the burden of living expenses such as housing, education, and medical costs.
Homeplus workers, who should be at their workplaces, have instead become victims of predatory private equity funds and have been driven onto the streets, where they are engaged in relay hunger strikes, risking their lives in a desperate struggle. This fight for the right to survival against such “eat-and-run capital” is being waged fiercely across the country, from Gwanghwamun Square and the vicinity of the Blue House in Seoul to numerous other locations nationwide. The government, which has shown endless leniency toward financial capital such as private equity funds, has thoroughly ignored the voices of the working class. The phrase “everything has gone up except wages” has become the everyday reality of the ‘ROK’ working class.
The reality behind the illusion that the ‘ROK’ is leading the AI industry is the large-scale restructuring and mass layoffs of workers, carried out in proportion to the accumulation of capital through the use of AI by chaebol (conglomerates) and transnational financial capital. For example, in the financial-sector call center industry, the rate of AI adoption has exceeded 60 percent, while the dismissal rate of subcontracted and non-regular workers has remained in the double digits every year.
This phenomenon is taking place across all industries. Today, in particular, transnational financial capital is absorbing the surplus value produced by the working class on a global scale and constructing a transnational monopoly system. In the cases of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, BlackRock ranks as the third- and fourth-largest shareholder, respectively. In Vanguard’s case, its stake is estimated to be around 2–3 percent each, but this is merely because passive funds, by their nature, maintain diversified investments.
Transnational financial capital has effectively monopolized ownership stakes in military and civilian capital throughout the world, completely stealing the fruits of the working class’s labor. This is the worst consequence produced by the contradiction between highly socialized production and the private ownership of the means of production.
Under such conditions, no matter how hard the workers and people of the ‘ROK’ struggle, the dependency and deformity of the economy will only deepen further, while the rights of workers and the people to survival and development will continue to be thoroughly violated.
The society of the ‘ROK’ is a colonial semi-capitalist society. The ‘ROK’ remains subordinate to US imperialism in the military, political, economic, and cultural spheres in their entirety, and the economy of the ‘ROK’ is determined by the US-centered economic order and the pro-US comprador bourgeoisie. Today, the core industries of the ‘ROK,’ including semiconductors, the defense industry, energy, and finance, are being restructured within the framework of the interests of global monopoly capital, while the costs of industrial transformation are being passed on in their entirety to the working class.
Therefore, the labor movement must not become immersed in economic struggle alone, and trade unions must struggle against economism and trade-unionism. The struggle for wage increases and improved working conditions is indispensable, but this alone cannot fundamentally realize the independent orientation of the working class. The labor movement must develop from economic struggle to political struggle and ultimately to revolutionary struggle.
To achieve this, the working class—the leading class of the revolution and its main force—must be organized into an independent political force. Today, the most important issue facing the labor movement in the ‘ROK’ is the paralysis of class consciousness and fragmentation among workers. The regime and capital deploy the full apparatus of media, education, digital platforms, algorithms, and social media to dominate workers’ consciousness.
The capitalist class’s framing designed to obstruct the unity of the working class has become normalized and entrenched. Within this framework, workers’ class consciousness is being paralyzed, and unions in large corporations and major factories are becoming “labor aristocracy”-style unions, with their capacity for struggle being electively neutralized.
The working class is the bearer of production and the subject of social revolution. In order to properly fulfill this historical and epochal mission, the fundamental premise is to carry out ideological work that awakens workers to their class position and enables them to recognize who is the master of society. The mass of workers who are not ideologically conscious will never be organized. Only when the working class achieves unity can it rally a broad range of allied forces—including peasants, youth and students, and the urban poor—into a single united front.
Trade unions’ most reliable way of breaking away from trade-unionism and economism is to come under the leadership of a revolutionary party of the working class. As history has shown, when unions function not as labor aristocratic unions but as transmission belts of a revolutionary party, they transform and develop into organizations that represent the interests and demands of the working class. Only when workers firmly unite around a revolutionary party and revolutionary trade unions can they finally begin to forge their own destiny as the working class.
The fundamental tasks of the Workers’ Committee of the People’s Democracy Party are the awakening, organizing, and combat strengthening the working class, and our main objective is to transform the working class into the party’s leading class, its principal mass base, and its first transmission belt.
Although the number of regular jobs is shrinking and non-regular jobs are increasing, the two major national trade union federations have been unable to respond swiftly to this change. The unionization rate of the two major federations barely exceeds 10 percent, and even this is concentrated in large factories and regular workers. Our party places its main emphasis on organizing the most precarious workers who are not protected by unions—non-regular workers across various industrial sectors. Organizing non-regular workers and elevating them into conscious subjects of revolutionary transformation is the most important immediate task of the Workers’ Committee of the People’s Democracy Party.
The actual proportion of non-regular workers in the ‘ROK’ exceeds half of the total workforce.
Non-regular employment in the public sector is increasing exponentially. Under the constraints of so-called ‘public interest,’ these workers are placed in a blind spot of the three basic labor rights. It is ultra-short-time, low-wage workers who are sustaining the employment rate increases touted by the government. Workers responsible for social services, such as senior care and child care, are being driven into the most precarious labor conditions. Call center workers suffer from emotional labor all day long, yet there is no principal employer who takes responsibility for them. Manufacturing workers, far from getting a wage increase, are in a position where even securing a company’s guarantee of employment retention is considered fortunate, and where they must be prepared to accept wage cuts in order to avoid mass layoffs.
The vast majority of the working class remains outside of trade unions, as unorganized entities.
Social service workers, special employment workers, and subcontracted workers are prime examples of them. If trade unions fail to organize this overwhelming majority, there is no future for the working class. We hope that the World Anti-Imperialist Workers’ Platform (Workers’ Platform) will become a vessel that rallies unorganized workers into one under the position of proletarian internationalism and ‘Workers of the world, unite!’—serving as a new type of working-class organizational platform.
The Lee Jae-myung Democratic Party regime is self-praising the amendment of Articles 2 and 3 of the Trade Union Act as an achievement. Although the amendment was made specifying the principal employer status for subcontracted workers, actual principal employer bargaining is virtually non-existent in reality. Lee Jae-myung says that the government must become a ‘model employer,’ but out of 243 local governments, only a single one has responded to principal employer bargaining.
The legal amendment is a mere facade, and the anti-worker, anti-people nature of the government and corporations has not changed in the slightest Since its founding, the Workers’ Committee of the People’s Democracy Party has consistently maintained policies and political lines for the collectivization of key industries, an economic system centered on the working-class and the people, the realization of people’s welfare—such as free education, free medical care, and free housing—as well as independent peaceful reunification and anti-imperialist independence.
Past history and practice demonstrate the scientific nature and righteousness of these party policies. The Workers’ Platform, which is launched today, will serve as an important momentum to share the experiences of the working class in each country and strengthen internationalist solidarity.
We are convinced that the Workers’ Platform will overcome the reformism and division within the working class and the labor movement, properly establish the political status of labor organizations in each country as the transmission belt of each country’s revolutionary party, and develop into the pivotal center of proletarian internationalist unity that correctly combines the class struggle and the anti-imperialist struggle.
The Workers’ Committee of the People’s Democracy Party successfully performed its role as a transmission belt by actively organizing and rallying the working class during the 2023 and 2024 Gwangju, ‘ROK’ Rallies of the World Anti-Imperialist Platform.
At the time of forming the “21st Century Che Guevara” (international brigade) at the end of 2025, the working class gathered in a representative region of the ‘ROK’ to hold a resolution rally to form the 21st Century Che Guevara and support the anti-imperialist struggle of the Nicolás Maduro regime, practically demonstrating the noble spirit of internationalism.
Historical experience confirms that unless our working class rallies as a transmission belt for the revolutionary party, it cannot become a true revolutionary force, nor is it possible to form and strengthen the world anti-imperialist front, which is the most crucial organizational task of the current period.
Just as imperialist forces and transnational capital exploit the blood and sweat of the workers and the people beyond borders, we too must unite and struggle beyond borders, transcending all differences. We are convinced that the Workers’ Platform will play a crucial role in realizing the historical cause of strengthening the world anti-imperialist front and achieving the international unity of the working class. The Workers’ Committee of the People’s Democracy Party will stand together and take the lead on that path of revolution, that path of justice, and that glorious path. Unity! Struggle!