Talks resumed in Sejong on Monday.
Choi Seung-ho walked into the National Labor Relations Commission building in Sejong on Monday morning, about 110 km south of Seoul, and told reporters he would ‘participate in this second round in good faith’.
The head of Samsung Electronics’ largest union, on Friday’s evidence, had been preparing to talk to the company on 7 June, three days after his members ended an 18-day strike. By Monday, the calendar had shifted forward by three weeks, and the picket-line clock had moved to three days.
Between those two appearances, three things happened in public. Samsung’s chairman Lee Jae-yong bowed his head on Saturday and apologised, in the formal Korean register reserved for chaebol leaders speaking to a national audience, for the ‘worry and anxiety’ the dispute was causing.
The country’s president, Lee Jae-myung, posted on X that ‘in South Korea, which has adopted the basic orders of democracy and free market economy, labour should be respected as much as companies, and corporate management rights should also be respected as much as labour rights’.
