Criminalizing strikes: crisis, morality, and punishment in post-1997 South Korea

This article examines how strikes were criminalized during the Kim Dae-jung administration (1998–2002) amid South Korea’s neoliberal restructuring following the 1997 financial crisis. Drawing on the 1999 Seoul subway strike and civil damages claims against striking workers, including the case of Bae Dal-ho, it analyzes how criminal punishment and civil liability operated as distinct but interconnected mechanisms of labor control. The government and conservative media portrayed resistance to restructuring as selfish conduct that threatened national recovery and harmed ordinary citizens, helping legitimize punitive responses to strikes. While police intervention, detention, and obstruction-of-business charges directly constrained collective resistance, damages claims and provisional attachments imposed financial pressure that could isolate workers socially and economically without imprisoning them. These measures not only suppressed strikes but also reconstructed striking workers as threats to the public interest and as individuals responsible for the economic losses attributed to collective action. Extending Wacquant’s analysis of the neoliberal penal state to organized labor, this article demonstrates how the criminalization of strikes contributed to the moral and legal reconstruction of labor conflict and helped sustain neoliberal restructuring in post-1997 South Korea.