By Norm Dixon
The South Korean government is reeling under the pressure a month-long wave of huge demonstrations by students and workers which have forced the resignation of the country's prime minister. Tens of thousands of riot police have battled to keep the demonstrators off the streets, arresting hundreds.
While the immediate catalyst was the cold-blooded murder of a student by police, the underlying cause for this explosion of protest is the pent-up anger of millions of South Koreans at the failure of the much-touted economic "miracle" to deliver democracy, human rights, improved quality of life and economic security after decades of dictatorship and exploitation.
The passions aroused have also led to a spate of protest self-immolations. These deaths have added to the anger that the murder of Kang Kyong Dae unleashed.
Kang, with hundreds of other students, was protesting against school tuition fees and the arrest of their student council leader outside Myongji University on April 26 when riot police attacked the demonstration. As he tried to escape, he was set upon by at least five officers and viciously beaten to death with iron pipes and sticks.
Revulsion at the murder quickly spread across the country. Demonstrations began immediately. President Roh Tae Woo, taken aback by the sudden response, sacked tough-guy Interior Minister Ahn Eung Mo and charged five of the police involved with homicide.
The demonstrations continued to grow in size and intensity, surpassing the student-led mass protests that toppled the dictatorship of Chun Doo Hwan in 1987. The central demands raised by the protests were for the resignation of Roh, the dismissal of authoritarian Prime Minister Ro Jai Bong and his cabinet and the disbanding of the riot police.
On May 1 in Seoul, 20,000 students and workers fought pitched battles with riot police after holding a May Day rally on the campus of Yonsei University. Using tear gas and water cannon, thousands of riot police tried to prevent them marching into the city. In Kwangju, 300 kilometres south, 10,000 people gathered at a central plaza to denounce the government and police.
Over the May 4-5 weekend, a coalition of 40 radical student and dissident groups, Chonminyon, mobilised 200,000 people nationwide. Central Seoul was taken over by 75,000 protesters chanting "Down with Roh Tae Woo". At least 2000 militants attempted to storm a US diplomatic building.
The protests swelled to over 400,000 on May 9. In Seoul, an estimated 250,000 protesters swamped riot police and again took control of major streets in central Seoul for six hours, answering the cops' volleys of tear gas with homemade fire bombs and ripped-up paving stones.
Second killing
A significant increase in participation by workers followed the death on May 6 of union activist Park Chung Soo. He plunged to his death ital while in police custody. Police claims that it was suicide have been dismissed. On the May 11-12 weekend, another 300,000 people turned out, this time in protest at Park's death.
The daily escalation of demonstrations continued, as did the regime's counterproductive attempts to crush them. In one of the Roh government's more disgraceful decisions, an attempt to hold Kang Kyong Dae's funeral in Seoul on May 14 was frustrated by 22,000 riot police armed with clubs and shields, the largest deployment of police in the capital since 1987. Street battles raged for hours. A crowd estimated at 150,000 people had joined the funeral procession. Another 150,000 took part in protests in 15 other cities.
The protest movement was broadened even further by the decision of the moderate parliamentary opposition party, the New Democratic Union (NDU), and its leader, Kim Dae Jung, to join the mourners. Kim was tear-gassed early in the protest when he tried to negotiate with police.
The NDU's involvement signalled that South Korea's restive "middle classes" were being drawn into the movement. This sent tremors through the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, who cast their minds back to the powerful coalition that was created when this sector of the population joined with the students and industrial workers to remove Chun Doo Hwan.
Nervous sections of the party asked Roh to ease his hardline approach to the protests and to sack his prime minister in order to defuse the crisis. Leaders of Korea's major business groups also publicly criticised the government's handling of the protests, warning that the continued violence damaged Korea's reputation as a safe place for investment.
Roh offered to release 200 political prisoners, but this failed to dent the momentum of the protests. Another attempt to bury Kang was made on May 18 in Seoul (the anniversary of the bloody crushing of the 1980 uprising in Kwangju by government troops). As many as 400,000 people in 75 cities demonstrated, and again were met with tear gas and water cannon.
In the face of this unrelenting pressure, Roh was forced to accept the resignation of Prime Minister Ro on May 22. Roh is banking on the NDU pulling back now that its primary demand has been met. Whether this ploy is successful or not, the underlying tensions in South Korean society are too strong to be dispelled by such relatively superficial political changes.
Sacrifices
At the bottom of the South Korean crisis is the population's desire for an end to the authoritarian political structures and the huge sacrifices they have endured for decades to create South Korea's fragile economic "miracle". Ironically, it is these demands for democracy and improved living standards that have undermined the "miracle".
The bedrock of the South Korean economic "miracle" has been the superexploitation of its working people over three decades. A string backed military dictatorships have maintained this system.
Over the last 30 years, South Korea was transformed from a backward war-shattered rural economy to an industrialised export-orientated "tiger". From 1963 to 1978, while the volume of world trade grew 184%, the volume of South Korean trade grew by 5858%. Between 1960 and 1980, the country experienced an average annual growth of 10% in its real GNP, as against 3.7% for the advanced capitalist countries. South Korea increased its per capita income 23-fold between 1961 and 1987.
South Korea's impressive economic growth has been propelled by some of the world's lowest wages, longest working hours and most dangerous working conditions.
- The average manufacturing wage in the early '70s was US$40 a month at a time when it was estimated that an urban family of four required $90 to survive. In the textile industry young women, working 10 hours a day for six days a week, earned only $12 to $25 a month.
- In 1987, workers in South Korea worked longer hours than in any other country, according to the International Labour Organisation. Over the early '80s, the average work week increased to 54 hours for men and 59 hours for women.
- In 1985, a worker in South Korea was more likely to be killed or injured at work than in any other industrial country. In that year almost 2000 workers were killed. According to government statistics, all industrial accidents that year cost the equivalent of 1.3% of the GNP.
- In 1986, one-third of all families lived in just one room and another third in just two rooms.
- In 1979, the Korean Catholic Youth Council reported that the wealthiest 0.3% of the population received 43% of the GNP.
Beginning in 1987, a major labour upsurge began. Workers organised in militant unions independent of the state stepped forward to demand that they get their long delayed share of Korea's economic "miracle". Vast demonstrations by students, workers and the middle classes dislodged dictator Chun and forced elections to be held.
The new unions took advantage of the limited democratic space to organise militant strikes. The slowing of the migration of rural people to the cities, and the end of the post-Korean War baby boom also led to severe labour shortages. These combined to force wages in some industries to more than double over the past four years.
The government has also been forced to introduce a range of overdue reforms. These included ordering companies that employ more than 1000 women to set up children's day care centres, launching a crash apartment building program to defuse anger at the housing shortage, the introduction of a minimum wage — currently $266 a month — and the introduction of a pension scheme to cover all workers by 1995. n forced to concede a shortening of the work week to 48 hours.
The government last year and this northern spring began renewed repression of the labour movement in an attempt to reverse a slump in exports, and this has contributed to the anger of the latest street protests as it highlighted that South Korea's economic strategy is based on authoritarianism and exploitation.
In the last decade, the economy grew at an incredible 12% or more a year. In 1989, however, it dropped to 6.6%. Exports grew just 2.6% compared to 28% the year before. South Korea also experienced its first trade deficit in five years.
The government has attempted to put the entire blame for the country's economic slowdown on the workers' gains, but these have been only one of several contributing factors. These included a rapid rise in the value of the currency, the won, which made exports more expensive, and import restrictions against South Korean goods by the US, Japan and the EEC.
South Korea has been squeezed between its inability produce price-competitive goods technologically comparable with those of Japan, Europe and the US and its loss of its low-wage advantage to countries like China, Malaysia and Indonesia.