This study focuses on popularity as a condition of working class literature in the 1980s. The popularity of working class literature is a component that constitutes the subjectivity of the working class and a methodology of literary practice that allows the ideology of class to be accepted in the daily life. In order to analyze this, the junction of 1987 should be noted. This is because the essence of working class literature in the 1980s will be revealed only when the period around 1987 is understood to mean change and response, not disconnection.
 Yi Taek-ju’s An old worker’s song and Ahn Jae-sung’s The strike are the main texts of this study. The two works are differentiated in the way they constitute the subjectivity of workers. While Yi Taek-ju’s work reproduced the labor movement in the 1980s based on its historicity from the 1970s, The strike set the direction of the ideology of reflection and overcoming. Ahn Jae-sung tried to practice the ideology of a worker as a class by putting politics at the forefront. In addition, solidarity with ‘Hakchul’(student-turned laborers) is presented as a practical method. However, the possibility of solidarity is also possible through solidarity or expansion at the daily life’s level experienced by workers. This possibility is read as an aspect of the popularity of working class literature.
 Popularity planning is developed in a way that pursues homogeneity at various levels. The inner world of emotion is the most realistic experience world experienced by actual workers, and the sense of reality formed through it is an important element of the inner completeness of labor novels as literature. In addition, the inner reality is closely related to the working class’s knowledge system, that is, “The Working class Literacy”. Workers produced working class knowledge that would be used effectively in Korean society in the 1980s through daily experience and inner life. Working class literature showed the reason for the popularity of working class literature by reproducing the scene in which literacy is produced to meet the needs of the times through defects with various surrounding popular art styles.
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