Labor activist Chon Tae-ils death: a wake-up call

By Andrei Lankov

On Nov. 13, 1970, Chon Tae-il, a 22-year-old worker in the garment industry in Seoul, poured gasoline over himself and then set

himself on fire, instantly transforming into a human torch. His self-immolation was very public (it was meant to be): it occurred shortly before noon, in the middle of the busy industrial area, known as Pyonghwa (Peace) Market, a part of the larger Dongdaemun market and light industry district.

Before Chon Tae-il lost consciousness he still had enough

strength to shout: “Observe the Labour Law!”, “We are not machines!”, “Let us rest on Sundays!” These were very moderate demands, but in those days they seemed almost revolutionary. Bystanders managed to extinguish the flames, and Chon was rushed to hospital, but he died nonetheless.

Chon hoped that his self-immolation would alert people’s attention to the darker side of the ongoing “Korean economic miracle,” to the suffering of the country girls who were toiling in the countless sweatshops scattered across the country. To some extent, Chon succeeded. His death was widely reported in the Korean media, and many more people began to wonder what could and should be done about the dire situation in the sweatshops which had mushroomed across the country.

Chon Tae-il was born in Daegu on Aug. 26, 1948, on the eleventh day of ROK history. During the Korean War his family fled to Busan where he spent his early childhood in the refugee camps. Soon after the war his family moved to Seoul – like many other Koreans they believed that in the capital it would be easier to make a living.

The first years in the capital were hard: for a while the entire family virtually slept under a bridge. By the late 1950s, though, the situation began to improve: Chon’s father started a modest sewing workshop, they lived in a hut, not in a dugout, and Chon could attend primary school.

Paradoxically, the family’s moderate success was undermined by the 1960 students’ revolution which overthrew Syngman Rhee’s regime. Just before the mass uprising of the Seoul students, Chon Tae-il’s father secured a large and seemingly profitable order: he was supposed to produce a large number of school uniforms. He borrowed money to buy the cloth and other necessary items, only to discover that the order was cancelled due to the revolution. The family was again broken and saddled with a large debt.

Chon had to withdraw from school and look for a job. He briefly earned some money as a street vendor, but since he had learned something about sewing machines from his father, at the age of 17 he found a job in the garment industry. In those days it was rapidly becoming the major export industry of the country, and one of Korea’s leading currency earners. Chon Tae-il worked in Seoul, in a huge complex at Dongdaemun market where many sweatshops were located. Despite his brief schooling, he was an intelligent young man, an avid reader of books and a good writer. Like many other smart and idealistic Koreans of his generation, he had a habit of keeping a diary.

Chon Tae-il’s personal situation improved much. He soon was promoted to a technician position and drew a salary of 3,000 won, reasonable by the standards of the period. His family (he lived with his mother and younger siblings) began to crawl out of extreme poverty again. But Chon Tae-il was more and more shocked by the things he began to witness.

In its early stages, the Korean economic miracle was based on the extensive use of cheap labour. Actually, the abundance of cheap labour was the only competitive advantage South Korea had in the 1960s, and the cheap workforce was the only ‘product’ the country could sell within the international market. In the long run this strategy proved extremely successful, but it required a great deal of sacrifice from the common people, and these sacrifices were by no means voluntary (sacrifices seldom are, as every serious and unbiased student of history will confirm).

The government essentially gambled, in the hope that the sale of products manufactured by cheap labour would eventually create conditions for further economic growth. The government happened to be correct in this assumption, but back in the 1960s the outcome was by no means certain. At any rate, it was the common people who had to pay for the gambles of the elite (successful in this particular case, ruinous in many others).

At the Dongdaemun market area, the overwhelming majority of the workers were teenage girls from the countryside – in 1970, the average age of an employee in the industrial complex was 18, and some girls were as young as thirteen. The shifts began at 8:00 a.m. and continued until 11:00 p.m. They could hardly do anything in the evenings, but had to be back at work the following morning. In a month they had one, or on rare occasions, two days off – Sundays were just normal working days. In many cases, they remained hungry since their pay was not enough to buy sufficient food.

In 1968, Chon learned about the existence of the Labour Law which was blatantly disregarded by the shop owners. The young idealist – and a group of the like-minded young workers – tried to organize a trade union, but neither the employers nor the authorities looked favourably on this type of activity. First, independent unions looked subversive, almost communist; second, unions would mean an increase in wages, and this would undermine both the government strategy and the owners’ profits. Thus, Chon was fired.

He returned to Dongdaemun in September 1970. By that time, Chon Tae-il was 22 years old, with some marketable skills and good prospects of becoming a technician and, perhaps, a minor entrepreneur himself. However, his idealistic instincts pushed him towards a different road, away from pursuing individual success. Upon his return to the market, Chon resumed his campaign for the unionisation of sweatshops, but the entrenched resistance from the owners and authorities made him increasingly frustrated and angry.

Chon conducted a survey and collected a large amount of material about the working conditions at the Dongdaemun shops. In October 1970, using this evidence, Chon Tae-il decided to go to the media, hoping to bring attention to the plight of the sweatshops’ workers. At first he went to a radio station, but it did not show much interest. Soon afterwards, Kyonghyang Sinmun, a major national daily, used Chon Tae-il’s evidence and published an article on the appalling working conditions in the sweatshops. The article was much discussed nationwide; Chon Tae-il’s and his fellow activists bought 300 copies of Kyonghyang Sinmun to distribute among the workers of Dongdaemun market, but nothing substantial changed. To raise awareness, Chon Tae-il tried to stage a street rally, but the police did not grant permission.

Chon was driven to despair and decided to sacrifice himself in a way that would attract sufficient attention to the workers’ plight. A public suicide as a protest act has a long tradition in East Asia, and it seems likely that, the contemporary self-immolations in South Vietnam, then widely reported in the media, influenced his decision.

His death was not unnoticed. The Donga Ilbo, the major opposition daily of the era, labelled Chon Tae-il’s death the most important event of the year in 1970. Rallies in major universities instantly became a powerful symbol – and remains so till this day.

The death of Chon Tae-il was the first in a chain of self-immolations, with up to 40 Koreans, largely young leftist radicals, setting themselves ablaze during the next two decades.

These deaths had much impact on South Korean society. On one hand, it helped to attract popular attention to the social problems. Chon Tae-il became a symbol of resistance, and as such he inspired the South Korean labour movement which eventually, by the late 1980s, became one of the world’s strongest.

On the other hand, Chon Tae-il’s suicide (and public reaction to it) became a wake-up call for the South Korean elite who realized that in order to survive and keep their privileged positions in society they could not afford to ignore the common people. Many South Korean leaders had their own periods of infatuation with communism in their youth and they understood very well that revolutions were not produced by machinations of evil agitators. So, the government – partially, but by no means exclusively, driven by sheer self-preservation – initiated a number of campaigns aimed at improving the living standards of the common people and decreasing social inequality.