1996–1997 strikes in South Korea
series of strikes in South Korea
In December 1996 and January 1997, South Korea experienced the largest organized strike in its history, when workers in the automotive and shipbuilding industries refused to work in protest against a law which was to make firing employees easier for employers and curtail labor organizing rights.
Among other things, the Korean government intended to postpone the legal recognition of the recently established Korean Confederation of Trade Unions until the year 2000. The officially recognized Federation of Korean Trade Unions then called upon its 1.2 million members to go on strike on December 26. This was its first call for a general strike since the union's founding in 1962.
After a single day, the strikes started spreading to other sectors including hospitals.
On December 28, South Korean riot police used methods such as tear gas against the strikers in order to dispel crowds. Strikers responded by throwing bricks.
In late January 1997, the strike ended after the labor laws were amended by the government.
Overview
In December 1996 and January 1997, there was a massive four-week nationwide strike in South Korea in protest against newly passed labor laws which gave employers more power to lay off employees, made it easier to hire temporary/strike replacing workers and put off allowing multiple unions to be formed at a given enterprise. This resulted in the mobilization of three million workers, which shut down auto/ship production, disrupted hospitals, subways and television.
The public source identifies “1996–1997 strikes in South Korea” as series of strikes in South Korea. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around strikes, South and Korea.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4591921. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1996, 1997, 2000 and 1962.
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This entry incorporates text from “1996–1997 strikes in South Korea” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.