South Korea’s Combative Working Class, Bridled by Opportunism Calls for More Democracy

The recent political chaos that has plagued South Korea provides further confirmation of the lessons that communists have learned throughout the historical course of class struggles.

Both the democratic and fascist form of the state are nothing but a different masquerade of the essence of bourgeois power, which is constituted by its class domination over the proletariat. Even if widespread and combative, any descent by the proletariat into the terrain of political struggle that is not framed in terms of class organizations and led by the Communist Party can only have an outcome entirely compatible with the bourgeois order.

The Class Domination of the Bourgeoisie Is Still Firmly Established Despite the Internal Political Crises of Past and Present

On the night of Dec. 3rd, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol announced martial law as a measure to protect the country and “eradicate despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces.”

Meanwhile, the army was mobilized and any political activity—including both parliamentary activity and any form of protest—was prohibited.

The reaction to this attempted coup was manifested both through a growing protest mobilization in the streets and through parliamentary channels. The opposition went to parliament to vote on lifting martial law.

On the labor side, however, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) immediately called for an all-out general strike until martial law was lifted and the president resigned.

The measure was withdrawn within hours, as soon as 190 of the 300 deputies—including several from Yoon’s own party—were able to gather in Parliament and approve the lifting of martial law.

Immediately after the vote, the military abided by the parliament’s decision.

The street pressure continued in the days that followed. On December 14, a Saturday, the South Korean parliament voted in favor of impeaching the president.

The bourgeois press identifies the country’s political instability as the motivation behind President Yoon’s attempt at a coup. This instability began with the bitter clash over the passage of the budget law.

South Korea’s political system is essentially dominated by two political forces, the center-left Democratic Party and the center-right People’s Power Party (PPP). Although they oppose each other, they are both bourgeois parties that stand in defense of the class domination of the bourgeoisie. Both stand in the interests of national capitalism, though they sometimes have differing views on how to do this. Both take turns in leading the country’s government.

Since bourgeois political factions are bent on the interests of national capitalism, they are unable to improve the living and working conditions of the workers. This inability results in a general discontent that—in the absence of an extensive strike movement—reverberates in periodic vote counts.

President Yoon’s own narrow victory in the 2022 presidential election was due precisely to the discredit of the previously ruling Democratic Party, which used to be able to count on a large majority of votes.

But in a short time, widespread discontent was also directed against the new government. This was expressed through the vote for the April 2024 legislative elections that resulted in a parliament dominated by the Democratic Party.

The result has been that the PPP government is opposed by a National Assembly dominated by the opposition party, the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party holds a parliamentary majority and obstructs government measures. This was the case for the Budget Law for 2025, which produced a bitter confrontation between the two parties. As a result, the opposition significantly scaled back initial government measures.

One must also factor in the scandals, allegations of nepotism, and corruption which involve the president’s circle.

But recent Korean events cannot simply be explained by the country’s contingent political situation. Like the rest of the bourgeois world, this is systematically shot through with bitter fighting between bourgeois factions and scandals involving politicians of all parties.

The whole affair fits neatly into Korean political history.

Since its inception in 1948, South Korea has had alternating democratic governments and a series of military juntas. These juntas were always backed by the United States and took power in coups that led to violent clashes.

General Chun Doo-hwan led the last coup. He seized the government in late ’79 after an attempted transition following the end of General Park Chung-hee’s 18-year dictatorship since the 1961 coup, which imposed martial law throughout the country and unleashed a violent crackdown. Such violence culminated in May 1980 in the Gwangju massacre, where student demonstrations had triggered a workers’ revolt with the characteristics of a full-blown insurrection. This ended with the army occupying the city, which caused hundreds of deaths.

Following mass protests in 1987, the Korean political regime adopted a democratic form and direct election of the president was introduced. This succeeded in ensuring some internal political stability based on the alternation of the two main antagonistic sides.

The new democratic guise donned by the South Korean state is certainly more functional to the impetuous development of national capitalism that made South Korea one of the so-called “Asian tigers.” But democracy has not undermined the hard fist traditionally used by the bourgeois state to suppress workers’ struggles. All democracy has done is put all those emergency measures such as martial law back in the “toolbox.” Such measures  can be pulled out as soon as the need arises, and they will always be justified with the defense of the homeland, that the homeland is in danger, etc. Democratic trappings are erased, and the bourgeois can now unleash military repression against the labor movement.

The tendency on the part of the ruling class to drop the democratic form will be destined to develop with the rise of proletarian struggles, an inevitable consequence of the deepening crisis in the capitalist world.

For Now, the Korean Proletariat’s Combativeness Remains Channeled Within a Bourgeois Solution

There is one positive sign, however, and that is the belligerence expressed by the Korean working class.

Moreover, even here, the living and working conditions of the proletariat are constantly threatened by the crisis of the capitalist mode of production.

For example, the number of fatal accidents involving subcontracted workers and migrants remains high. Last June in Hwaseong, 22 workers—including 18 Chinese migrants—were killed in a lithium battery factory following a fire.

The government then worked to further extend working hours. They passed a reform that increased overtime to a total of 69 hours per week.

The attitude toward workers’ organizations was characterized by particular harshness. The labor movement and its militants were criminalized, the labor unions were smeared (they were called “a great plague that needed to be eradicated”), and they countered union activities with the judicial system.

Unsurprisingly, as soon as martial law was declared, the  KCTU president was immediately arrested.

But in addition to widespread discontent, the Yoon administration has also faced a growth in labor struggles.

Of particular importance was the strike at Samsung which lasted five weeks between the beginning of July and the beginning of August. Despite a limited membership in terms of numbers, it struck one of South Korea’s major “chaebols,” i.e., those industrial conglomerates owned by a single owner or family. It also undermined the compactness of the Samsung giant.

Continuous strikes have also involved doctors, whose struggle has been going on since last February and which. However, their demands express a certain defense of corporate interests, such as opposition to the government’s plan to expand the number of enrollees in medical courses. Nevertheless, this is a sign of the intolerable social tensions present in the country.

In fact, once martial law was proclaimed, the military leadership explicitly mandated that the strike be broken. They ordered that the workers return to work within 48 hours.

The attempted coup found strong opposition among workers and labor organizations.

In particular, the KCTU, which has 1.1 million members and has a history of leading numerous large-scale strikes on its shoulders, moved against martial law from the very beginning by proclaiming an indefinite general strike.

The willingness of the Korean working class to enter the terrain of struggle has thus been channeled into the defense of democracy, which in any case constitutes an epilogue aimed at bourgeois preservation of the political crisis that has hit South Korea.

The Korean events will have to serve as a further lesson, not only for the Korean working class, but for the entire international proletariat. In order to prevent its combativeness from being subjugated to bourgeois fronts in struggle, the solution can only be one that leaves the scaffolding of class domination intact.

It is not in the historical interest of the proletariat to defend democracy. Democracy is simply a political form that the bourgeoisie has already shown it can easily cast aside in favor of fascism as soon as it has the need to do so. Whatever it takes to better subjugate the proletariat.

Today democracy and tomorrow fascism:

The Korean chaos has shown this by sounding the sirens of national emergency in order to justify these exceptional measures. Martial law is contemplated by every bourgeois state.

The bourgeois state’s change of face is already heralded by the imperialist contention that will sweep the entire world and require the framing of proletarians to support the endangered homeland.

The Korean Peninsula on the Fault Line of Inter-Imperialist Confrontation

The political form of the bourgeois Korean state has alternately donned the fascist and democratic guise (which does not compromise its foundation of class domination over the proletariat). However, the Korean state, due to its geopolitical location, is firmly embedded in the system of US imperialism in the Far East.

Since the late 1940s, South Korea has been a trusted ally of the United States. South Korea still lets the US have a military contingent of nearly 30,000 soldiers in its territory. In terms of the number of American soldiers, Korea ranks third in the world, after Germany and Japan.

The American influence in the country is enormous, and neither of the two bourgeois parties questions the international position of the United States.

In this context, there could be no shortage of important signals from the American side even during the recent political crisis.

The US did not support Yoon’s venture because they could not afford to destabilize a valuable ally like Seoul. This lack of support led to some pressure to withdraw the measure and even influenced members of the president’s own party to take a stand against Yoon’s maneuver.

The Korean domestic political crisis is part of an international context in which inter-imperialist contrasts are worsening. This drags down all those states positioned on the fault line of the tectonic clash between opposing imperial blocs into the vortex of political chaos.

The violent aftershocks of the war in Ukraine have reached all the way to the Korean Peninsula. North Korea is sending its own contingent into the Russian-Ukrainian meat grinder, in support of the Russian military. The current government of the South is considering arming Ukraine, and, as a result of the Ukrainian conflict itself, it has seen its arms exports grow tremendously. There was a 39% increase (SIPRI data) in 2023, mainly due to purchases from European countries, such as Poland.

Note that the proclamation of martial law was justified as the fight against pro-North Korean Forces. The very issue of relations with North Korea marks a split in the South Korean home front as the democratic opposition has taken a less bellicose stance toward Pyongyang.

In contrast, since taking office in 2022, the Yoon administration has been aggressive toward North Korea. This has resulted both in political and military escalation on the Korean Peninsula.

On the other hand, in late December 2023, Kim Jong-un declared that he no longer considered the reunification of the two countries possible.

During 2024, tension between the two countries manifested when North Korea launched more than 2,000 “garbage balloons” in response to South Korean propaganda along the DMZ.

In June, South Korea decided to suspend the 2018 inter-Korean military agreement with the North, which was aimed at reducing military tensions. The South resumed military exercises near the border shortly thereafter.

During October, North Korea sanctioned the worsening of relations with the South by formally renouncing its policy of peaceful reunification of the peninsula through an amendment to its constitution. The North also blew up some road and rail links between the two countries.

In addition, during 2024, there has been a rapprochement in relations between North Korea and Russia through the recent ratification of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty. Among other things, this treaty provides for an immediate bilateral negotiating channel in the event of a direct threat of armed invasion against either party, and, if either party is in a state of war due to armed invasion, the other party will provide military and other assistance.

There are two reasons for Yoon’s party’s harsh backlash against North Korea. First, the close proximity of sectors of the South Korean bourgeoisie to the United States. Second, the escalating tensions between the imperialisms have led the various states to take sides as war approaches.

This prompted Yoon and his political supporters to pursue closer commercial and military cooperation with the United States.

This perspective is framed by the geopolitical situation in the Far East. US imperialism’s is interested in weaving an anti-Chinese front not only with Australia and the United Kingdom—as AUKUS implies—but by incorporating other powers in the region, such as Japan.

In this regard, under Yoon, South Korea has moved closer to the United States and Japan. This has strengthened trilateral coordination in anti-North Korean and anti-Chinese functions. Over the past year, there has been movement aimed at institutionalizing the structure of this cooperation.

This line is internally opposed by those bourgeois sectors that consider Korea too close to Washington and Tokyo. This position is grounded in the interests of the South Korean economy, which is nevertheless linked by trade interchanges with the enemies of US imperialism, like China and Russia.

Yoon’s fall might complicate the ongoing process toward closer ties with the U.S. and Japan. However, it will not challenge the country’s international position, which remains heavily subordinated to U.S. imperialism.

In such a framework of intricate struggles between domestic and international factions of the capitalist class, the South Korean proletariat has no choice but to fight for its class interests.

This implies the ability to avoid the bleak prospect of being used in the internal struggle between bourgeois factions which pushes the proletariat to take sides in the sham opposition between fascism and democracy.

South Korean proletarians, like those in all countries, must also reject the attempt by the domestic bourgeoisie and the most powerful imperialist giants to employ them as cannon fodder for the next inter-imperialist war on the horizon.

Framing these issues in genuinely classist organizations and the leadership of its Communist Party is the only way to remove the proletariat from the influence of opposing bourgeois forces and lead it to fight for its own specific class interests.