quote [ The real-life 77-day SsangYong strike resulted when the company unexpectedly laid off 43 percent of its entire workforce (2,646 workers) to facilitate a profit-driven transfer of its assets to global investors; the company was purchased by a Chinese company, Shanghai Motors, and then purchased again by an Indian company, Mahindra & Mahindra.

After the strike was violently suppressed, the strikers were blackballed from employment with other large Korean companies. In addition, SsangYong and local police used civil courts to sue them for damaging the company. Union members were ordered to pay hefty “economic damage” fines of about $9 million—a sum that these workers did not have and would never see in their lives. What’s more, the deferred interest on these fines was to increase by 620,000 won per day, soon exceeding 1.5 times the principal owed.

To pay these astronomical fines for their union activity, workers’ wages and assets (including even their homes) were sometimes seized by courts. They were delivered to SsangYong Motor Company or the police under Korea’s harsh anti-union “economic damage” compensation laws. ]