I recently stumbled upon the story of Bae Ok-byoung, a labor activist who was imprisoned & tortured after she organized a labor union at a factory in Seoul. She was an assembly line worker who worked 14-16 hour days producing wigs, one of the top Korean exports in the 1970s.

One-third of the wigs worn by North Americans in the 1960s and '70s were actually manufactured in Korea AND it was the country's #2 export at the time, if you ever needed another example of the impact of U.S. imperialism on global labor conditions.

Bae's story follows a much longer history of Korean women organizing unions, going as far back as the early 20th century. The first documented women's union was organized at the Gyongseong Rubber Factory in Seoul, "over the harassment & mistreatment of women factory workers."

Radicalized student activists often collaborated with factory workers, and in sharing their understanding of the Marxist theory of political economy, women labor activists argued "that the class nature of the state & of the haves & have-nots deprived workers of their rights."

"Young women activists' observations of women workers' experiences as an exploited class & their participation in the labor movement during this period provided the foundation of the feminist movement in the 1980s, [defining] the women's movement as being for oppressed women."

While Korean women made only 43.4 percent of men's wages in 1978, "young female factory workers in the export industries were in the vanguard of industrial labor activism," and their solidarity & class consciousness contributed to the collapse of Park Chung-hee's regime.

Bae Ok-byoung's past "criminal" charges actually remained on her record through July 2015, until she was finally acquitted of the false charges. The full story is from Elizabeth Shim: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2015/07/27/Labor-activist-from-South-Koreas-dark-past-finally-finds-justice/1461437739689/

I also want to recommend Hriday Narayan's "Women's Participation in Korea since the Late Nineteenth Century: Dichotomy of Development", which offers some interesting historical context and is available for free here: http://kiss.kstudy.com/thesis/thesis-view.asp?key=3370534