Kang: Hello. I'm Kang Soo-yeon, president of the Seoul National University branch of the Korean Graduate Employee Union (KGEU). The KGEU is affiliated with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions' Public Service and Transport Workers' Union and has university-level and regional-level branches. The SNU branch was established in March 2025, and I was appointed its inaugural president. My involvement with the union began when I was a teaching assistant in my department (Korean History) in the College of Humanities. I joined for the simple reason that it seemed like I could due to my job, and that's how I ended up here. I worked as a teaching assistant for two years, but I no longer do.

Kim:I’m Chan-ho Kim, chair of the SNU branch’s policy committee. The policy committee develops and advises on necessary policies, and also does things like announcing [the organization’s] position at press conferences or public relations tasks to promote policies. I joined the union without much hesitation once I enrolled in graduate school here in the second semester of 2022, and later was asked to chair the policy committee, which I took on. My major is Asian History.

Kang: Our branch currently has about 70 members, and membership has been increasing recently. There are some differences between fields, with a slight majority of students coming from the humanities and social sciences, but we have a diverse range of majors, and the gender ratio is about 50-50. There are no international students yet.

The SNU Branch was the first national-university branch formed after the KGEU was officially established. Did you face any difficulties during this process?  

Kim:The preparatory committee stage was quite long. I chaired the committee, and the biggest challenges were that not many people showed up [at first], and it was of course difficult to unite all the diverse individuals that did. I think the political events of last year brought in more people who were interested.

Kang: The number of union members surged after the martial law declaration incident in December. It seems like people who are hopeful for real change have shown up.

Press coverage of the union mentions several of its founding principles—among them, the protection graduate students’ labor rights and human rights. What do you want people to know about these issues?

Kang: We believe labor rights and human rights are inextricably linked. Recently, there was a graduate student death at another university, as you know. I want to direct the focus of my activities toward labor rights. Graduate students hold the dual identity of ‘student and worker’. They are indeed working, but this is not properly recognized, including by the graduate students themselves. Ensuring economic stability, a sufficient living, and a good research environment are issues that cannot be resolved without recognizing that graduate students are workers. This is why the labor union is necessary. The concrete solutions are employment contracts and collective bargaining agreements. I believe these are the minimum safeguards. Only once they are in place can our labor rights and human rights be guaranteed.

Kang: The four major types of graduate student workers—administrative assistants, teaching assistants, lecturers, and student researchers—perform the same work as [those seen as] laborers. However, [graduate students’] being workers is not properly recognized. I believe the concept of research labor should be used to recognize their labor as a form of knowledge production within the academic ecosystem. This requires improving awareness of labor rights, ensuring institutional guarantees, establishing employment contracts and collective bargaining agreements, and actively utilizing the concept of research labor.

Kim:It's difficult to define the nature of being a worker simply, because the definition of labor has diversified in modern society, and there are diverse types of labor, such as freelancing and specially employed work [gig work], and I think graduate students’ labor is one of them.

Kang: When I think about how gapjil arises, I believe it stems from dual status. It's often difficult to translate the relationship between professor and student into an employer-employee one, as it's essentially a teacher-student relationship where learning takes place. Although research labs operate like small businesses, there's no clear distinction between management and labor. There's a rationalization that what the students are doing is not labor but a learning process, so it’s something they naturally have to do. And graduate students themselves put up with a lot, so we need to address this.

While the traditional master-pupil relationship has changed significantly, it's surprisingly common for professors to ask students to perform personal tasks unrelated to their research. For example, there have been cases where advisors ordered their graduate students to pick them up at the airport without compensation. However, the very existence of the labor union is proof that the environment has changed significantly. During a recent meeting, I heard from union members that there was even an instance where a location tracker was attached to a graduate student. These incidents go unreported because people either quit after having enough, choose death, or simply go along with it.

Kim: I worked at the SNU Human Rights Center, and it was common for people to say they didn't know if what they were experiencing was eligible to be [formally] reported, and many felt burdened by the fear that their having made a report would be exposed.

Kang: And I think a lot of people are wondering what difference it would make if they spoke to the Human Rights Center. It seems like effective approaches are limited. Judging by the sheer volume of reports coming in since the union's launch, it seems many graduate students feel the Human Rights Center on campus can't help them. The branch officially accepts reports via a Google Form, and the branch's Gender Equality Committee handles sexual violence cases. When we receive a report, we try to verify the facts and other necessary information in accordance with our internal regulations.

Kim: If it’s a legally serious case, we get professional legal advice from the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions’ legal center or an external organization.

According to a survey published in 2024 by the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency and the Empathy Occupational and Environmental Medicine Center, one in five graduate students considers suicide, and nine in ten feel burned out. I'm curious about what measures you’re considering to address this.

Kim: A recent nationwide survey of graduate students came up with similar figures. About 87% felt burned out, and 25% were seriously considering suicide. A quarter of graduate students seriously contemplating suicide is a very serious issue. Most students are reluctant to let others know about these problems, and blame themselves. This is a case of neglect due to a lack of institutional support, you know. About half of all graduate students have received professional counseling, which suggests that there needs to be proactive collaboration with institutions like the university’s Health Service Center and the Center for Campus Life and Culture. For example, the College of Humanities has a counseling center [the Career Development & Counselling Center] nicknamed SaengSaengWon, but the posters indicate that only students in the College of Humanities can use it, which means some people in need will be left out. While this may be due to the fact that each college operates its own counseling center, for those who are struggling mentally, these small things can add up to become significant.

Kang: The on-campus medical system is relatively well-established, and its accessibility is good, with free or inexpensive counseling and psychiatric care available. However, when I visit the on-campus center, I feel like the workers there are burned out, too. Furthermore, I hear from people around me that many students are afraid others will find out if they go to counseling on campus, so they often seek out outside services. I believe a major reason for burnout is financial instability. If SNU, despite its exceptionally favorable academic environment, suffers from this level of burnout, won’t things be even more severe at other universities? While American universities offer full scholarships and living allowances, ours vary significantly depending on the professor you work for. It would be helpful to have institutional support to reduce this instability. In particular, awarding scholarships on a two-year basis rather than a semester-by-semester basis would be a significant improvement.

If you’ve been engaging in any activities to create and expand a culture of respect for diversity, can you tell us about them? 

Kang: The union's gender equality committee conducts an annual training for all union members. We invited Lee Han, then-president of the organization "Feminism with Him," to teach all union members about a culture of equality within organizations. This training provided an opportunity for reflection on our organizational culture.

I’m very curious about the results of your recent survey. And could you tell us about any joint activities you’re doing with other university-overseen or self-governing organizations, or your plans to collaborate with them in the future? 

Kim: We conducted a nationwide survey of graduate students in order to inform our policy recommendations. There were significant results relating to mental and physical health, with 20% of respondents reporting that they had experienced violations of their physical safety or personal rights, and 80% reporting directly witnessing or hearing about such violations. Examples included clawing back already-distributed research funds or personnel expenses, not allowing students to graduate due to the need for additional research personnel, and installing CCTV in their labs to monitor students. Fifteen percent reported experiencing discrimination based on sexual orientation, nationality, or ethnicity, but the figure rises to over 20% for those who are not male. Twenty percent reported directly experiencing verbal or physical violence, while the figure for those who are not male was over 30%. 

Kang: The SNU branch will also prioritize conducting its own fact-finding survey on the current situation here. To date, there hasn’t been any research specifically focused on the working environment and labor patterns of graduate students. The real challenge with collective bargaining agreements is that it’s extremely difficult to determine in which cases they apply to a given worker. Even for, say, teaching assistants [jogyo], it's difficult to put the independently-employed workers [jachejikwon; those employed by a smaller body like a college or laboratory], corporate employees [those employed by the university proper, which was incorporated in 2011], TAs, and RAs into a single group. Furthermore, some people have signed employment contracts or service agreements, while others haven’t. Therefore, conducting a basic fact-finding survey will be crucial for developing a strategy, and I believe this should be a key project during my two-year term. Going forward, we plan to collaborate with numerous organizations for this survey. The organizations we’re considering are the SNU Faculty Union, the Non-Regular Professors Union, the Public Transport Workers' Union, and the SNU Labor Union—all of which are affiliated with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions—as well as the National Council of Professors and Researchers for Democratic and Equal Society, and the Diversity Council. Currently, we’re affiliated with BiSeoGong (Affinity Group for the Abolition of Precarious Work in Seoul National University), and I believe it's crucial to build solidarity with as many organizations as possible.

Can you tell us a little about the other branches of the KGEU, such as what their situation is and how they’re run?