Why Workers Are Going to the Presidential Office

Go Young-gi has spent 157 days clinging to a 20-meter communications tower near Incheon’s Gil Hospital intersection. He went up because he wants taxi drivers employed by companies to receive monthly wages based on the hours they work. Yet the higher he climbs, the harder it seems to make the issue visible.

Company-employed taxi drivers still pay daily company charges, known as “sa-nap-geum,” with shortfalls deducted from their wages. A monthly wage system was introduced in 2020, but the practice has not disappeared. Taxi companies argue that they cannot properly calculate working hours because they do not know whether drivers observe them. The government and National Assembly have continued to waver.

Go’s protest challenges that explanation. In a taxi system where data records work activity, he asks why working hours cannot be calculated. He is also asking the government and ruling party why implementation of the Taxi Transportation Business Development Act, which includes a full monthly wage system, was postponed until 2028 instead of beginning in August.

Taxi workers have demanded monthly wages since the late 1980s. The proposal appeared in presidential campaign pledges in the 1990s, and lawmakers from both governing and opposition parties passed legislation in 2019. Activists therefore see Go’s protest as more than an objection to a two-year delay. They see it as a longstanding question about why workers’ demands keep being pushed aside.

A civic support committee is preparing a cultural rally beneath the tower, gathering speeches and songs to tell Go that people are listening. It also plans a news conference in Seoul. Activists say workers go to the area around the presidential office because people with authority can spread their words from where they stand, while those with less power must search for places where they might be heard. They believe the solidarity surrounding Go could bring closer the day he comes down.

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