A follow-up report that tracked three years of the workers collectively dismissed from Korea Wiper (한국와이퍼) was released on the 6th at an afternoon forum in the main building of the National Assembly. As of 2025 the employment rate was 75%. But their average monthly wage was 2,719,000 won, short of the Ansan area average of 2,950,000 won, and their weekly working hours came to 47.1, eight hours longer than the regional average of 39.1 hours. Being back at work and having a life restored were not the same thing.
Korea Wiper was the Korean subsidiary of Denso, a Japanese auto parts company, and made vehicle wipers. When Denso Korea announced liquidation in July 2022, employment at the entire plant was cut off at once. The workers formed a union and occupied the plant, and traveled as far as Japan to campaign there. In August 2023, about a year later, a labor-management agreement providing for a social employment fund was reached.
Out of that agreement, the foundation "Ttubugi, a Steady Step Toward a World That Respects Labor" (노동존중세상을 향한 우직한 걸음 뚜벅이) was launched. This forum was held jointly by the KCTU and the Korean Metal Workers' Union, the labor committee of Minbyun (Lawyers for a Democratic Society), the Ttubugi Foundation, and lawmakers Park Hae-cheol (Democratic Party of Korea), Yong Hye-in (Basic Income Party) and Jeong Hye-kyung (Progressive Party). It is an unusual record in that a case closed by agreement was taken up again and examined three years on.
The share of workers with experience of changing jobs recorded in the report was 39.1%, and the number of job changes over the course of 2025 averaged 1.7. That means switching workplaces nearly twice in a single year. Employment as unsteady as this is contained within the figure of a 75% employment rate.
At the forum, Choi Man-bok (46) spoke about his own three years. At the time of the dismissal his children were in middle school and high school. He has since moved through three workplaces, and now works under an in-house subcontracting arrangement.
Shin Mi-hyang (57), who worked at Korea Wiper for 13 years, said she had changed occupations five or six times over three years. The work she had learned in her body over 13 years lost its use along with the dismissal, and the process of learning a new job began again from the start every time. The narrow range of jobs open to a woman in her 50s in manufacturing appears plainly in that repetition.
Son Jeong-sun, a research fellow at the Institute for Social and Labor Policy, also spoke on this case. The basis on which the two figures comparing wages and working hours were calculated was not disclosed when the report was released. Even so, the pattern of low wages appearing together with long hours is clear. When wages fall, hours are extended to make up the difference, and when hours are extended, the time to meet people disappears.
A foreign-invested company's decision to withdraw is made in the country where the head office is, and the result is borne over several years by the workers at one plant in Ansan. This is why this follow-up survey is rare. Coverage of mass dismissals usually ends on the day the agreement is issued, and the three years that follow are not captured in statistics. Even in a case where a mechanism called a social employment fund was created, the quality of the jobs sank this far.
The report has now entered the National Assembly. How far institutions will take responsibility for what comes after dismissal depends on the discussion ahead, and 2,719,000 won and 47.1 hours have been placed at the starting point of that discussion. Choi's children have grown three years older in the meantime, from the middle and high school students they were. Their father moved through three workplaces.
