ABSTRACT
On 16 February 2001, at the behest of the state, Daewoo Motor management laid off 1,750 production workers from the Bupyŏng factory, the main manufacturing facility and union headquarters of the company.1 The unprecedented action provoked a protracted standoff between the union and the state. The “Daewoo Motor Struggle against Mass Redundancy Dismissals” (hereafter “Struggle”) was one of the most contentious and fierce challenges to the state’s drive to restructure the labour market in the wake of the Asian financial crisis that began in 1997. It marked a litmus test of militant labour’s strength and the state’s commitment to neoliberal reform.2
