InterviewKorea's largest industrial union criticizes employers for shutting workers out of AI transition

In a logistics center attached to one of Korea's biggest auto plants, a robot quietly rolls across the floor, following a digital map to fetch parts that previously were hauled by a human worker. No one negotiated the shift from human labor to robots.

That, says Park Sang-man, head of the Korean Metal Workers' Union (KMWU), is the problem — and it is happening everywhere. His position is simple: "No AI deployment should happen without workers at the table."

Park, who started his three-year term as leader of the country's largest industrial union in January, warned that Korea's push into artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics is fast becoming a one-way transition, with companies and the government deploying machines far faster than they are writing rules to protect the workers those machines replace.

“If management unilaterally pushes robots and AI without any serious effort at negotiating with the union, I’m opposed to that,” Park said during an interview with The Korea Times last week. “If capital insists on pushing this through unilaterally, you may have to ask whether a Luddite-style movement isn’t exactly what’s needed.”

The former Hyundai Motor shop-floor worker-turned-labor union chief noted the new physical AI boom sweeping Korean manufacturing is driven as much by corporate balance sheets as by the technology itself. Major automotive groups appear to be already rearranging their empires to free up cash for large-scale AI projects, with signs of selling off subsidiaries and other non-core operations.

An Atlas humanoid robot walks while carrying a flat steel plate in its hand in an industrial setting, July 13, 2025. Courtesy of Hyundai Motor Group

At this year's CES in Las Vegas, Hyundai Motor Group unveiled a production-ready version of its Atlas humanoid robot, and laid out a plan to mass-produce the machines at its new U.S. plant starting in 2028 for sales and deployment across its assembly lines. The firm is pitching the project as the cornerstone of its physical AI future, in which AI-controlled industrial machines work alongside — or in place of — human workers.

The growing fear, Park says, is that once Atlas reaches mass production, the cost of running a robot for 24 hours a day could undercut the annual cost of employing a human by a wide margin.

“The Atlas demo Hyundai put out (at CES) was targeted very clearly at the sequencing work that Hyundai subcontractors do,” he said. “You could see the robot pulling parts from a rack, packing them into a kit and sending that kit down to the line — exactly the sequencing work that many Hyundai subcontractors do today.”

Park said similar machines are also creeping into logistics and warehouse operations, with autonomous carts and parcel-handling robots now moving parts and boxes that human workers used to haul by hand. In some logistics centers, he noted, robots follow digital maps laid into the factory floor, fetching components and finished goods and delivering them directly to workstations or loading bays with minimal human intervention.

“What used to be a human pushing a cart is now a robot quietly rolling across the floor,” he said, adding that for the people in those jobs, what Atlas symbolizes is not a far-off concept but the next stage of something they are already seeing.

Speaking at a meeting with senior officials earlier this year, President Lee Jae Myung likened union resistance to Atlas and other AI-powered emerging technologies to the 19th-century Luddite movement, saying that “you cannot dodge a great cart that is rolling toward you.” But Park disagreed with the president’s framing.

According to the International Federation of Robotics, Korea has the world’s highest density of industrial robots, with roughly 1,000 to 1,200 robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers, Park noted.

Park Sang-man, head of the Korean Metal Workers’ Union, gives an interview with The Korea Times at the union headquarters in Seoul, April 16. Korea Times photo by Jung Min-ho

“We are not against technology,” Park said, adding that previous waves of automation were introduced through plant-level negotiations and joint safety measures.

“The problem now is that companies are trying to bypass that tradition by pushing AI projects and restructuring unilaterally, and then labeling any criticism as anti-technology,” he said.

If AI and robots have to come in, he said they should be focused first on the most dangerous tasks, such as underwater work in shipyards or firefighting, rather than on the tasks where a great number of workers are currently employed.

“Left unchecked, capital will always try to focus AI on boosting productivity,” Park said. “If AI begins to concentrate on the very jobs that human workers are currently doing, I see that as a very serious problem.”

Park said his priorities during his tenure as KMWU leader will be to embed AI safeguards into collective agreements across union sectors and secure legal recognition for unions to veto or give consent over key AI deployments.

As part of these efforts, the KMWU is drafting model clauses to write AI directly into collective agreements by requiring firms to notify unions in advance, conduct joint impact assessments on jobs and working conditions, disclose what data and algorithms are used for personnel decisions using AI and guarantee that AI systems are not used to fully replace human judgment or secretly monitor workers without their consent.

“Our goal is not to stop the future,” he said. “It is to make sure that when the future arrives, workers still have a place in it.”