BY IGGY KIM
The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions has called its members out for a one-day national strike on July 5, in a determined response to an unprecedented wave of government repression which has included the arrest of several top union leaders.
The ostensible cause of the government's crackdown is the rolling strikes since June 12 called by the KCTU, the more militant of Korea's two trade union federations, opposing the austerity program of President Kim Dae-jung.
Both the Federation of Korean Industries and the Korean Employers' Federation have been screaming for the government to deal sternly with the "illegal" strikes. The head of the American Chamber of Commerce in South Korea, Jeffrey Jones, added his voice too, declaring, on June 12, "the biggest millstone around the economy's neck is labour-management relations".
The government crackdown began on May 26, when special forces in helicopters swooped on workers occupying a tower in the Hyosung nylon factory, arresting eight unionists.
On June 12, the director of the KCTU's organising and disputes department, Shin Un-jik, was seized by police during the KCTU rally held to kick off the strikes.
Then, on June 14, frenzied meetings were held by the bosses' unions, the government, and the ruling Millennium Democratic Party.
At 4.30am the next morning, 30-40 cops stormed the KCTU head office in a search and seizure operation. Arrest warrants were issued for KCTU general secretary Yi Hong-woo and 14 leaders of the Korean Airlines Flight Crew Union, a key union in the rolling strike campaign. The latter turned themselves in that afternoon, with four formally charged.
On June 16, the secretary of the KCTU external relations department, Park Ha-soon, was detained at another union rally. Two days later, an arrest warrant was issued for KCTU president Dan Byeong-ho. On June 19, police brutally cracked down on a tent embassy of concrete mixer truck drivers.
Arrest warrants were also issued for Shin Hyeon-hoon, the director of KCTU external relations, three branch presidents of the hospital workers' union, another key contingent in the June 12 offensive, and Yang Gyeong-gyu, the president of the Korean Federation of Public Service Unions.
The arrest of national leaders of the democratic labour movement is unprecedented in the years since the 1987 mass upsurge against the Chun Doo-hwan dictatorship and the subsequent partial democratisation; the unions have never faced such a concerted assault in all that time.
The bitter twist is, it's happening under a president who is a Nobel peace prize laureate and a long-acclaimed sufferer for human rights and democracy.
Although the pretext for this unprecedented attack is the June 12 strikes, the regime's strategic goal is to permanently cripple workers' resistance to its economic blitzkrieg. The next wave of restructuring targets key public industries, including rail, and remnants of the Labour Standards Law.
The South Korean capitalist class, much-shaken by the financial crisis of 1997-98, is fighting to keep its head above the volatile waters of intensifying global competition.
Since the early 1990s, South Korea has begun to be squeezed out of the tiny fracture in the world's imperialist-dominated industrial markets it had occupied. This is now made more desperate by the downturn in the US economy — South Korea's biggest export market.
Hence the only reason the May current account showed a US$2.3 billion surplus was that imports fell more than exports did. The fall in the latter amounted to 7.7% year-on-year, with the export of semiconductors plummeting 40.8%, and information and communication equipment 20.2%.
To make matters worse, a corporate debt of US$27.9 billion is due for repayment in the second half of the year. Already, the debt burden has claimed dozens of conglomerates, most spectacularly the Daewoo Group in late 1999. The capital account recorded a deficit of US$890 million in May, largely made up of increased debt repayments.
No room to move
South Korean capital can do nothing else but turn up an already-frenetic restructuring drive. The only thing in its way, of course, is the vocal and militant workers' movement. And while the KCTU has been afflicted by vacillation and confusion in the last few years, its very survival is now at stake.
Unlike the advanced capitalist countries, there is no material basis for a strong labour bureaucracy in even a highly developed Third World country like South Korea. In fact, the nearest equivalent — the pro-government, pro-boss Federation of Korean Trade Unions — has also begun to be pushed to the brink of confrontation itself.
On June 24, a FKTU march clashed with police blocking the entry into the grounds of Myoungdong Cathedral, resulting in 30 injured workers.
Due to the tremendous force of economic circumstance, Kim Dae-jung's attempt at dangling the democratic carrot has failed — a fact most clearly reflected in the momentum generated by the KCTU's call for Kim's resignation.
This politicisation of the union movement has raised the ire of not just the conservatives, but also the liberals, for whom Kim represents the only choice in politics. Without Kim, the ruling class really has no "human face".
Even with Kim at the helm, however, the regime's mask is slipping as its repression escalates.
This year alone, 113 workers have been jailed. With a total of 552 in prison, Kim has jailed more unionists in three and a half years than did his predecessor, Kim Young-sam, in his entire five-year term in office.
The July 5 strike also kicks off a new round of rolling industrial action, in support of the collective bargaining negotiations still going on in many workplaces.
Indeed, the decisive variable for July 5 is the logjam in negotiations at 10 of the large-scale strategic enterprises in shipbuilding, automobiles and heavy industries — where the strongest unions are located.
Not only will they make up the core of the strike but they actually provided the initiative and drive for the strike decision.
At meetings of union delegates in the 10 factories, there were unanimous votes for upping the ante on both the stalled negotiations and the regime's violence. This then came together at a meeting of representatives of the 10 workplaces, called by the Korean Metalworkers Federation, on June 22.
This buildup was the real force behind the June 22 decision of an emergency KCTU Central Committee meeting to call the July 5 national strike.
It remains to be seen whether this means the large plant unions are on the move again, after some years of passivity following their big wins in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But the unprecedented attack on the KCTU, as well as the plummeting working conditions creeping into the large workplaces, seems to have generated new dynamics in the workers' leaderships.