This project investigates the dynamics between labor and environmental movements in Taiwan and South Korea. Both are export-oriented, well-acclaimed newly industrializing countries. Why has Taiwan developed a configuration of strong environmental movements and weak labor movements but South Korea the opposite? Through this paired comparison, this dissertation analyzes the historical processes through which Korea's labor movement and Taiwan's environmental movement successfully attracted the participation of intellectuals who forged a potent counter-hegemonic ideology which helped put together an anti-establishment, cross-class alliance. This project also hypothesizes that, as long as either the labor or the environmental movement dominates, it seeks to absorb the energy and imagination of other potentially contending movements, constraining the expansion of its counterpart. Finally, labor and nature represent two major social contradictions growing out of the process of industrialization. This dissertation will theorize the structural difference between labor and environmental movements in the capitalist economy in general, and in late industrialization in particular.