Memories of C’s feet – Why did Incheon International Airport become that shape

“Senior C foot.” Long or short, it’s one of the few masterpieces of my social media life. No, maybe I shouldn’t call it a masterpiece. Because among the things I’ve created, there are memes that have been used by more than millions of people, even if they’re not. I’m sure everyone knows what it is.

In any case, the abusive language is deeply related to Incheon International Airport, which has recently been strongly reprimanded by the president for its poor handling of various smuggling cases, and it seems that there are many controversies over the recent anger of passengers using Incheon International Airport due to the delay in departure time.

Many people, however, are not aware of the fact that Incheon International Airport did not become like that all of a sudden one day, but that abusive language is surprisingly closely related to what Incheon International Airport became like.

Let’s turn the clock and go back to the days of the Moon Jae In administration. It was a time when the Moon administration was ambitiously pushing for the regularization of non-regular workers, and the first targets were ‘security search personnel’ at Incheon International Airport. At the time, it was only known as ‘regular workers becoming regular workers’, but the most important fact was that their job was ‘security search personnel’.

The attempt was met with great resistance. The name was not fair. Incheon International Airport Corporation is a place where you can enter only with good qualifications (as it is now), but after studying hard as a teenager, how could you put a full-time job on a backdoor through policies of such lowly non-regular workers who had not studied at all.

The debate took place at the heart of the chronic problems of the Korean labor market, namely “double structure” and “hardness.” Still, many think the inability of Korean companies to arbitrarily fire regular workers is responsible for the rigidity of the labor market, but this neglects the fact that the proportion of non-regular workers among wage earners has approached 40 percent as of 2024. The biggest reason for the rigidity of the labor market in Korea is that regular and non-regular workers have become class types rather than types of labor, and thus the mobility between the two types has been completely cut off.

Originally, regular and non-regular workers are normal only when there is no significant difference other than “setting the period” by definition, but since Korea has expanded non-regular workers since the IMF, regular workers have been in charge of “important affairs” and non-regular workers have completed a dual structure that allows them to be in charge of so-called “huddle days” for nearly 30 years, non-regular workers have become a kind of class that only low-skilled workers can run.

The problem is, when we come back to the case of Koreans, the security guards who were subject to regularization at the time were actually labor forces that required considerable skill. Indeed, even in the United States, which is perceived by some Koreans as a cutting paradise, airport security guards are completely part of the Transportation Security Administration under the Federal Department of Homeland Security. In other words, the United States was doing it right, having learned that skills must be high through difficult procedures to keep aviation safety at the price of the 9/11 attacks, and Korea was abnormal in the first place.

However, despite the fact that the fundamental mechanisms of the labor market must also be determined by supply, demand, and proficiency according to the principles of capitalism, Korea eventually left the standard of college and entrance examination grades as a standard for dividing regular and non-regular workers, and security guards were converted to a subsidiary called Incheon International Airport Security instead of becoming regular workers in Korea.

Isn’t there no problem anyway because you’re a subsidiary?

No, the problem persists. While Inguk Gong hired a subsidiary company, he put up a job posting as an indefinite contract worker rather than a regular one. The average annual salary of Inguk Gong is over W90 million, but it has already been verified by numerous media reports that security guards only paid around W40 million. Even looking at the salary statements for security guards at Incheon International Airport in 2020, the basic salary was only W1.79 million per month. It is almost the same as the minimum wage at that time.

At that time, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions’ public transport union estimated that about 1,135 additional workers were needed for the operation of the facility when the fourth stage of expansion of Incheon International Airport was completed, such as the expansion of Passenger Terminal 2, but only 200 additional workers were actually employed by Incheon International Airport. Why? Because of insufficient recruitment. Why not recruitment? No wonder. This is because a workforce that requires considerable skills was treated as a second-class worker and part-time worker.

As a result, the number of international passengers at Incheon International Airport reached an all-time high of 70.66 million in 2024, and the opening of the second passenger terminal forced the physical distribution of manpower, but the number of security guards increased by only 70 from 1,783 in 2020 to 1,854 in 2024.

As a result, wasn’t it a self-evident phenomenon that the time spent on arrival and departure increased without countermeasures.

What did the innocent young men in our society think about while using the airport after believing that the value given to their studies should be much higher than the value given to the work of others to be fair? I think the friend who cursed at me also used the airport after that. I’m sure he complained that it was taking a long time.

But does the situation itself realize that the small and small selfishness, who thought it was great to do what others were doing, gather to form distorted public opinion, and that their responsibility clearly exists in one part of the public opinion.

After that debate, I tried not to put the word fairness in my mouth at all. Fairness discussed in Korea is not just infinite competition in capitalism, but it is justified only when capital is driven to the examination power, not socialism of any kind