President Yoon Suk Yeol vowed to protect the "value of labor" as he marked Labor Day on Wednesday. Yoon also said in a Facebook post that South Korea's remarkable growth was thanks to the "sweat and efforts" of its 28.4 million workers. "The government and I will protect the precious value of labor without fail," he wrote. "We will make your workplaces safer and fairer, and thoroughly see to it that you can find the meaning of life through labor." Meanwhile, the nation's two major umbrella unions held a Labor Day rally in downtown Seoul, with an estimated 33,000 people joining the event Wednesday. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, the more militant of the two major umbrella unions, began a rally in the central district of Jongno at 2 p.m., calling for the passage of a pro-labor bill known as the "yellow envelope law" and the resignation of the Yoon Suk Yeol government. About 25,000 people joined the rally, according to the union. At the same time, about 8,000 members of the Federation of Korean Trade Unions, the other major umbrella union, gathered in front of the National Assembly to call for labor rights, including a four-day workweek, and urged the government to stop its effort to differentiate the minimum wage by business sector. Source: Yonhap News Agency
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