President Lee Jae Myung pledged unwavering commitment to workplace safety in his Labor Day address at Cheong Wa Dae on May 1. He stressed that worker welfare and business growth are mutually dependent. Amid AI job threats, he prioritized people over productivity.
SEOUL, May 1 (Yonhap) -- President Lee Jae Myung pledged on Friday at a Labor Day event at Cheong Wa Dae that "I will neither compromise nor make concessions on workplace safety." He vowed to build a "normal" country where no worker risks their life at work.
"Safeguarding workers is the most basic responsibility of any nation and any business," he added. He pushed back against outdated thinking that being pro-business means being anti-worker, stating "growth has a future only when labor stands behind it."
Amid concerns that artificial intelligence (AI) will replace human labor, the president said "it is not right to ask workers to sacrifice themselves in the name of productivity." He called workers "the backbone of our economy." This marked the first Labor Day event at Cheong Wa Dae, with both the Federation of Korean Trade Unions and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions attending together for the first time.
The event gathered some 130 participants, including key figures from labor, management, government, and workers from diverse occupations. South Korea originally observed May 1 as Labor Day before renaming it "Workers' Day" in 1963; the government restored the name last year and designated it a national holiday earlier this year.
