At the top of a slender 98-foot-tall traffic camera tower in central Seoul, Kim Hyoung-su is living under a tarpaulin shelter. It is so small he can’t stretch fully when he sleeps. But Mr. Kim has been up there for 77 days, protesting one of the biggest economic problems in South Korea — labor inequality.
It’s an issue that is sharply dividing candidates campaigning for the presidential election next Tuesday.
“I feel like an animal in a cage, eating, sleeping and relieving myself in the same place,” Mr. Kim said from his midair protest site. “But I will persist if this is what it takes to let society know the reality workers like me face.”
Mr. Kim, 52, is one of thousands of subcontracted workers at the Hanwha Ocean shipyard, one of the largest in an industry that is a pillar of South Korea’s economy. Workers like him commute by the same bus, wear the same uniform, eat at the same factory mess hall and work on the same ship as those hired directly by Hanwha at the shipyard, located on the south coast. But they are paid only half of what the others earn, Mr. Kim said.
Mr. Kim climbed the tower in front of the Hanwha headquarters in Seoul on March 14 to protest the “discrimination I couldn’t stand anymore.”
South Korea’s manufacturing industries, including its shipbuilders, are struggling to remain competitive against China. So they are increasingly filling their work force with subcontracted workers, who are cheaper and easier to shed. But as economic inequality has widened, the humiliation and despair these temporary workers face has become one of the most sensitive issues in South Korea and emblematic of broader economic woes.
South Korea’s quarter-to-quarter economic growth has slowed to a snail’s pace in the past year, even contracting 0.2 percent between January and March. The county fears that its export-driven economy may face tougher times ahead, as the Trump administration has slapped steep tariffs on its key exports like cars and steel.
The hardest hit by the economic slump are those in the lower income brackets, as wages have not increased as fast as consumer prices. The economic gap between the rich and poor is the largest ever, while all presidential candidates have been stressing the need for economic growth rather than wealth distribution and welfare spending.
But the cause that Mr. Kim, the shipyard worker, is highlighting — more labor rights for temporary workers — has secured one major supporter. The front-runner for the election, Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party, has vowed to pass a bill giving subcontracted workers greater rights for collective bargaining and to strike. (Former President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was impeached and removed from office after declaring martial law, repeatedly blocked the proposed legislation.)
When South Koreans took to the streets to demand Mr. Yoon’s removal, among them were subcontracted workers and others who had been laid off. They called for “equality” and “a world without discrimination.”
Ko Jin-soo was one of them. The 52-year-old had worked for a hotel in the Myeongdong tourist district of Seoul for 20 years as a chef until he and 11 other unionized workers were fired in 2021, during the pandemic. Now that tourists are returning in droves, Mr. Ko is demanding his job back.
To make his case, he has been staging a sit-in for 107 days at the top of a 33-foot-tall traffic-control structure in central Seoul. “The constant exhaust, noise and light from the cars racing below me are the worst part of my life up here,” he said.
Like Mr. Kim, Mr. Ko gets food, recharged cellphone batteries and other supplies by rope from colleagues on the ground. With the same rope, he sends down his waste. During commuting hours and lunch time, he stands on his platform, shouting his demands with a megaphone.
“I am not coming down until they give my job back,” he said.
South Korea has a history of desperate workers taking their grievances up in the air. In 2003, a shipyard union leader demanding better working conditions staged a sit-in at the top of a 116-foot-tall crane in Busan on the south coast for 129 days until he hanged himself there. In 2011, Kim Jin-sook, a female welder, climbed the same crane and refused to come down for 309 days until management agreed to rehire laid-off workers.
A taxi driver staged a midair sit-in for 510 days between 2017 and 2019. That record may soon be broken by Park Jeong-hye, who has been protesting on the roof of a burned-out factory for 509 days as of Friday.
“People with power, money and authority — none of them protect our livelihood,” Ms. Park, 39, said when she climbed to the roof in January last year after her employerclosed its factory in Gumi, in central South Korea, after a fire.
The company used to supply optical films for South Korea’s LG Display, whose panels were used in Apple products. Ms. Park and her colleagues are demanding that they be transferred to another company’s factory in South Korea, which they said had taken over fulfilling the orders.
Subcontracted workers like Mr. Kim are finally getting political attention as the election looms. The number of irregular or temporary workers has been rising in recent years, reaching 8.4 million last year, up from 8.1 million in 2023, according to government statistics. Those workers account for more than 38 percent of the country’s total paid work force.
They want the country’s labor law revised to empower them to negotiate directly with — and if necessary, strike against — the end users of their labor, like Hanwha. The current law allows them to negotiate only through their subcontract companies, which they call the puppets of big corporations.
Big business lobbies have opposed a bill revising the labor law, saying that it would lead to a proliferation of violent labor strife. Mr. Yoon vetoed the bill twice when he was president. Kim Moon-soo, the presidential candidate from the conservative People Power Party that Mr. Yoon had belonged to, has vowed to resist it.
But his main rival, Mr. Lee, who is leading in the polls, has promised to pass the bill if elected, saying that it was recommended by the International Labor Organization. That would mark a major step forward for workers like Mr. Kim, though they have complained that the bill proposed by Mr. Lee’s party does not cover workers in fields like trucking, delivery and repair who also work for big businesses on contract.
Hanwha officials said that given the shipbuilding industry’s notorious cycle of boom and bust, shipyards inevitably hire many temporary workers. Hanwha Ocean currently has 18,000 subcontracted workers, including thousands of migrants from poorer Asian countries, compared with 10,000 regular employees, many of whom hold office jobs.
The subcontracted workers’ claim that they were paid only half of what regular workers earned, despite doing more dangerous work, was exaggerated, Hanwha said. It said its regular workers did more skilled labor.
Hanwha said that it was willing to discuss improving the workers’ benefits, but that it was illegal under current law for the company to negotiate directly with them.
Mr. Kim, who began his midair sit-in against Hanwha after a 22-day hunger strike brought no change, isn’t budging.
“We subcontracted workers feel like we’re digging a well in a desert but not being allowed to share the water,” he said.
Choe Sang-Hun is the lead reporter for The Times in Seoul, covering South and North Korea.
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