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Korea’s Labor Day gets a name change, but who counts as a worker?

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Korea's Labor Day gets a name change, but who counts as a worker?

South Korea will mark its first Labor Day on Friday, ending more than six decades in which the May 1 holiday was officially known as Workers’ Day.

The change restores the holiday’s Korean name to Nodongjeol, replacing Geulloja-ui Nal, a term adopted in 1963 under an anti-communist government wary of the word “labor.”

The change may appear symbolic, but the name has long carried political, historical and legal weight in South Korea. For labor groups, replacing “Workers’ Day” with “Labor Day” is a step toward recognizing a wider range of people who work, including those outside regular employment.

For critics, the shift risks turning a public holiday into another front in Korea’s politcial divide.

The National Assembly passed a bill renaming the holiday last year, with the Lee Jae Myung administration spearheading the change as part of its push to promote what it calls a labor-respecting society.

The holiday has also been designated an official public holiday from this year, expanding it beyond a paid holiday that had mainly applied to workers covered by the Labor Standards Act.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, one of the country’s two largest labor groups, welcomed the name change, saying it marked the beginning of long-overdue labor reforms.

Conservatives, however, have expressed concern that the change could deepen social divisions and create confusion.

“The Democratic Party is only trying to buy votes from the KCTU by invoking anti-Japan sentiment,” a lawmaker from the conservative People Power Party told local media last year, referring to claims that “geullo” is a term created by Japanese colonialists.

Controversial etymology

Although the first recorded commemoration of May Day in Korea dates back to 1923, the term “Workers’ Day” was first officially adopted in 1963.

The Korean word used for “worker” in Workers’ Day, geulloja, is composed of three Hanja characters: geun, meaning diligent; ro, meaning labor; and ja, meaning person. The word roughly translates to “hard-working person.”

The term has long been criticized by some labor advocates for suggesting an ideology of diligence under state or employer control.

In 2025, Democratic Party lawmaker Lee Soo-jin claimed that the word geulloja was first created in 1920 as part of Japanese efforts to compel Koreans to work more diligently.

The claim is incorrect. Historians point out that the word was used long before Japanese colonial rule, citing the Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty, where geulloja appears 22 times and geullo, a related term meaning “diligent work,” appears 199 times.

Korea’s first modern textbook, published in 1895 before Japanese rule, also uses the word geullo.

Beyond its historical origins, critics say the term remains problematic in a contemporary context. Some point to the paradox of defining workers by diligence, while others question why such diligence is demanded of laborers but not of management.

The KCTU has also argued that South Korea’s early authoritarian governments used “worker” to avoid the word “laborer,” because they feared the political power of organized labor.

Others argue that the word should not be treated as inherently political, noting that “worker” and “laborer” have at times been used interchangeably by groups across the political spectrum.

Legal definitions and excluded workers

The debate is not only about language. Labor groups say the former name also reflected a narrow legal definition of who counted as a worker.

The Korean name for May Day had been dictated by the Designation of Workers’ Day Act, a short law mandating a paid holiday for those subject to the Labor Standards Act.

Labor groups argued that this led to an overly narrow definition of who was a worker, excluding many people who do not earn regular wages or work under standard contracts.

Household workers, golf course caddies, tutors, delivery workers, daycare providers and freelancers are among those who have often fallen outside full protection under the Labor Standards Act, according to labor organizations.

They argue that May Day, which is meant to recognize all forms of labor, has long overlooked large segments of the workforce under Korea’s legal framework.

Public servants were another group historically excluded from the May 1 holiday. Although they are salaried employees, civil servants are not classified as workers under the Labor Standards Act and are instead governed by the State Public Officials Act.

That meant more than 1 million public officials often continued working on May 1 while many private-sector workplaces closed. The gap created practical difficulties, particularly for dual-income civil servant households with children, as many private daycare centers closed on May 1.

This year’s designation of Labor Day as an official public holiday addresses part of that gap by extending the day off to civil servants and teachers. But labor groups say changing the name and expanding the holiday are only first steps toward creating a more inclusive May Day.

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