5 - The temporariness of migrant labour activism and the long-term struggle of migrant workers in South Korea

For the last thirty years, the South Korean government has maintained the principles of ‘temporary’ and ‘rotational’ (circular) migration and restricted labour market mobility in its labour migration policies — first in the name of ‘Industrial Trainee System’ and later ‘Employment Permit System (EPS)’. The short-term rotation of workers (a maximum of five years) has pre-conditioned the short ‘life-span’ of migrant workers and thus their fight for rights and wellbeing. Since the 1990s, migrant labour activism in Korea has been manifested through both individual expressions of grievances and collective protests. Drawing on the stories and experiences of a number of individual activists, this paper analyses how migrant labour activism in Korea has been shaped by the temporariness of workers’ working status. While many have internalized this ‘temporariness’, some migrant workers have strived to prolong their ‘life-span’ through different individual attempts and personal struggle, which in turn helped to expand the survival space of labour activism.