“Toxic industrial lubricant container found at SPC Sihwa factory where worker was killed in entrapment accident”, 16 June 2025

Cargo Truckers Solidarity (CTS) has been regarded as a primary target of the Yoon administration’s campaign against organised labour. In November 2022, the union launched a general strike demanding the extension of the Safe Rates System, which was facing expiry under a sunset clause… In response, the government deployed a range of measures, including an unprecedented back-to-work order intended to break the strike, and intense prosecutorial pressure.

The Fair Trade Commission (FTC), for the first time in its history, filed a criminal complaint against a trade union—claiming that CTS was not a union but a business association, and had therefore violated competition law. It took two years before CTS was acquitted in August 2023… Prosecutors have since appealed the ruling.

…“Prosecuting us under antitrust law was a new tactic to suppress unions by exploiting the ambiguous legal status of special employment types,” said one CTS organiser.

Judge Park Chan-beom of the Seoul Central District Court, who handed down the not-guilty verdict, remarked that the Safe Rates System was “a means of ensuring minimum subsistence.” He noted that the system was introduced to protect truck drivers from the dangers of overloading and speeding, adding: “It is not merely a demand for higher rates, but a legal guarantee of workers’ survival and safety… Collective refusal to transport goods under such circumstances should be seen as legitimate strike action.”