Speaking at a Labor Day ceremony at the Blue House on Friday — the first such event ever held at the former presidential compound — Lee said the country could only move forward by abandoning the "outdated binary" of pro-labor versus pro-business politics. About 120 figures from labor, business, government and civil society attended the gathering.
"A society that respects labor and a country that is good for doing business are not mutually exclusive. There are no workers without companies, and no companies without workers," Lee said.
The event marked the first time the country's two rival umbrella unions, the Federation of Korean Trade Unions and the more militant Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, jointly attended a government Labor Day ceremony, an unprecedented show of unity that the Blue House described as a response to the administration's labor-respecting agenda.
Lee, a former teenage factory worker, pledged to expand basic labor rights to non-regular employees, subcontractors, platform workers and freelancers, and said workplace safety would not be compromised.
He framed safety as "a fundamental duty of the state and corporations, not a cost or a choice," cautioning against forcing workers to bear one-sided sacrifices in the name of productivity gains driven by artificial intelligence.
The remarks come amid heightened labor tensions in South Korea, including a planned large-scale walkout by the Samsung Electronics union as well as Samsung Biologics, and follow legislation that restored the holiday's original Korean name, Nodongjeol, and elevated it to a statutory public holiday for the first time in 63 years.
Lee, who said he was proud to have once been a "boy laborer" himself, vowed to answer workers' voices with "a heavy sense of duty" as the country navigates the twin pressures of the AI transition and the climate crisis.
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