The Night Before Strike was mainly shown in university campuses around the nation and the government sent riot police in order to prevent the showing of the movie but the university students formed "battle platoons" in order to allow its showing and in this way, the movie was shown to hundreds of thousands of university students around Korea. (Source)

It was said that watching this movie itself was a struggle. The government tried to block the screening of the film, claiming it incited a strike , and the university tried to force the screening, resulting in clashes. Baekgoldan and combat police were dispatched to interfere with it by firing tear gas, but it was secretly screened mainly by students in college towns, albeit illegally. It is said that at least 150,000 to 300,000 people watched the movie, which was a considerable box office record considering that only the number of audiences in the Seoul area was officially counted at the time. (Source + Auto Translation)

The film takes place around the time of The Great Worker's Struggle in South Korea in the 1980's. (More information about that in English and in Korean)