South Korea marked its first Labor Day on Friday, ending more than six decades in which the May 1 holiday was officially known as Workers' Day—a change that has ignited fierce political debate over language, identity, and who counts as a worker.
The shift 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." While the change may appear symbolic, the name has long carried political, historical and legal weight in South Korea.
Etymology and Political Controversy
The Korean word used for "worker" in Workers' Day, geulloja, is composed of three Hanja characters roughly translating to "hard-working person." The term has been criticized by labor advocates for suggesting an ideology of diligence under state or employer control.
In 2025, Democratic Party lawmaker Lee Soo-jin claimed the word geulloja was created in 1920 as part of Japanese efforts to compel Koreans to work more diligently during colonial rule. However, as the Korea Herald reports, historians have shown this claim to be incorrect—the word appears 22 times in the Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty, and a related term appears 199 times, predating Japanese colonial rule.
Korea's first modern textbook, published in 1895 before Japanese rule, also uses the word. Yet critics say the term remains problematic in contemporary context, questioning why diligence is demanded of laborers but not of management.
Conservatives have expressed concern that the name change could deepen social divisions. "The Democratic Party is only trying to buy votes from the KCTU by invoking anti-Japan sentiment," a People Power Party lawmaker told local media last year, referring to claims about the term's Japanese origins.
