She was arrested 3 times

Trade union justice in South Korea 37 years after her dismissal

Part of a union activity in South Korea.

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Kim Jin Suk became known after her nearly year-long sit-in protesting the use of a giant crane for shipbuilding.

The labor activist was symbolically returned to her company on Friday, 37 years after she was fired for her union activities.

Seok attended her honorary replay at the Hanjin Shipyard in the coastal city of Busan.

During the ceremony, the former activist said, "The door that did not open even though I knocked until I bled, it opened today."

The former welder was fired, five years after joining the company, for her union activities in 1986, under the authoritarian Chun Doo-hwan government, which severely suppressed the country's burgeoning labor movement.

She was arrested three times, and tortured for two and a half months, by anti-communist police interrogators.

"It's been 37 years since I was taken away with a black cloth over my eyes," Sock says.

It has been 37 years since the horrific days of such abuse.”

She has fought a legal battle over the past 37 years to get her job back.

In 2011, it staged a sit-in on a 35-meter-high crane at the shipyard for 309 days to protest the company's mass layoffs.

Her struggle yielded a deal to re-hire fired workers, one of the biggest victories in the history of the South Korean labor movement. The company and the trade union finally agreed to give Seok an honorary reintegration, and the worker passed the retirement age in 2020.

"I have come here thanks to your support," the union said, during the honoring ceremony, continuing, "I am ending 37 years of struggle today."

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