Another Migrant Leader Arrested

Another migrant worker activist was just arrested. This follows on the occupation of the National Human Rights Commission by the Migrant's Trade Union in protest of the continued detention of their chief officer Anwar Hossain. Most of the members of the MTU are undocumented migrants whom have been protesting the Korean government's policies towards migrant workers, which they see as the maintainence of a labour migration system that encourages illegality.

Here's the story from labourstart.org's labour news network.

Another MTU Leader Arrested

At about 8:30pm, Radhika, a key leader in the Migrants’ Trade Union in Korea was arrested in a crackdown at Uijeongbu Station. Rhadika was traveling to Uijeongbu to help a friend obtain a job. Rhadika is the main organizer of female migrant workers in Korea and has been involved in the struggle for migrants rights for several years. Last year, she participated in the sit-in struggle at Myeong Dong Cathedral and went on a 30 day hunger strike to oppose the implementation of Korea’s regressive and racist immigration law, EPS (Employment Permit System). It is too early to know which detention center she will be taken to, so please stay tuned for updates and be ready to take action for Rhadika!

To add a further comment, in the short time that I've known the MTU and their predessor the ETU-MB, virtually all their key activists have been detained or deported. Hence, this news is not surprising. Thankfully, whenever a key organizer is detained another politicized migrant tends to fill his or her shoes.

APEC to WTO

Kotaji and I recently completed a story on the APEC/upcoming WTO protests in addition to what has been covered on the blog below. It appears in Japan Focus and ZNET, the former has some good pictures included. Here's the link. I'll also reprint it below.

Read more...

From APEC to WTO: trajectories of protest in Korea and East Asia


By Jamie Doucette and Owen Miller



Angry protests in Busan, South Korea during an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference there in November have alarmed Hong Kong police preparing for a mid-December World Trade Organization ministerial conference. Hong Kong police fear that the some of the groups who showed up to protest APEC may also bring strident street protests to Hong Kong. This article examines some of the trajectories of protest apparent at the APEC events by looking more closely at the national and international dynamics of Korean activism, revealing growing coordination between workers, farmers and anti-war activists, and the implications for the Hong Kong meeting.



The specter of farmer protest


Since Korean activist Lee Kyeong-Hae screamed "WTO kills farmers" before taking his life at the WTO protests in Cancun, Mexico in 2003, Korean farmers have directly targeted global trade talks as well as the Korean government's own plans to liberalize its rice market. Under a deal negotiated last year with rice-exporting countries and the World Trade Organization, South Korea pledged to raise its rice import quota to 7.96 percent of total domestic consumption from the current four percent in exchange for a 10-year grace period before it must fully open up to rice imports. The Korean government has also tried to ease the pressure on Korean farmers by providing incentives to grow different grains and other agricultural products.



According to South Korea's Citizens' Coalition for Economic Justice (CCEJ), however, the Korean government has confused the public by claiming that it only plans to increase the imported rice quota to 7.9 percent. The CCEJ maintains that the 1988-90 statistics on which this figure is based are inflated compared to current levels of consumption; furthermore, the government has established separate quotas for rice importation for use in food and beverage processing which would also considerably inflate the amount of rice imported.[1]



Nearly 150,000 Korean farmers rallied across the country in October to protest the bill and they also showed up en masse to protest APEC in Busan where WTO agricultural policy was one of the key topics tabled at the APEC leaders' summit. Protests began on September 12 with a march of 20,000 in Seoul organized by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and People's Action against APEC and Bush. They were quiet enough until 15 November, when the Korean Peasants League held a protest in Seoul. The League's protest turned into a four-hour confrontation with police, leaving seven police buses burned out and many police and protesters injured, including Korean farmer Jeon Yong-cheol, who later died of head injuries. This was a precursor to the larger protest that took place in Busan on 18 November. Protest organizers had expected over 100,000 to show up; however, police stopped at least 70 busloads of protestors from the neighboring province of South Cholla from reaching the rally, in some cases stealing the keys from bus drivers. Still, 30,000 managed to rally in Busan and march on the summit. Korean farmers carried ceremonial effigies for two farmers who had committed suicide by drinking herbicide in the week previous to the conference as a protest against South Korea's plan to liberalize its rice market.



In anticipation of a confrontation, riot police used armored buses and a double layer of shipping containers to seal off the bridges leading to the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center (BEXCO). In response, the protestors -- mainly farmers -- tied ropes to the containers and pulled them down, succeeding, under a barrage of water cannon, in dragging some of them into the sea.[2] What happened next was captured and circulated by the international media: well armed police -- equipped with batons, shields and in some cases, three-meter steel pipes -- clashed with protestors brandishing bamboo poles well into the evening.



Fearing that Korean farmers might contribute to similar mayhem at the WTO meeting in Hong Kong this month, officials sent police to South Korea for the APEC summit in order to "assess the characteristics of Korean protestors and devise ways of dealing with them,"[3] and have warned the 1,500 Korean farmers who plan to join the protests that gatherings of 50 people or rallies of more than 30 require written notice in advance or will be considered illegal and broken up. In addition, anyone who organizes or participates in illegal gatherings or rallies faces up to five years in prison or more if property is damaged or traffic disrupted.


Growing internationalism?


There is something of a gloomy atmosphere hanging over the Korean left these days, primarily due to the recent corruption scandals in the left union federation, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), and the loss of the Democratic Labour Party's seat in the worker concentrated city of Ulsan during recent by-elections. The unity between the KCTU and Korea's other large labour federation, the FKTU, has recently crumbled over the issue of labour market restructuring. Besides the evident crisis in the labour movement there has also been talk of divisions in South Korea's famously leftwing student politics. Nevertheless, changes are afoot that could bring the Korean left closer to global movements, such as the 'anti-globalization' or global justice movements.



Korean workers did not come out in full force in Busan, but they joined protests leading up to it and participated in larger coordinating bodies such as NO to APEC and Korean People's Action against the WTO. The KCTU has instead been focusing on a domestic battle against labour market restructuring. Contingent or non-regular forms of work have been expanding since the 1997 economic crisis in South Korea, after the union reluctantly agreed to concessions on labour reform. Recently, as the Roh government tries to position South Korea as an economic hub in the Northeast Asian region, there has been increased pressure to make the labour market more flexible, both to attract foreign investors to South Korea's financial sector and to compete with other export oriented manufacturing economies.



The "Non-Regular Workers' Protection Law," which was expected to be passed in the April extraordinary session of the National Assembly was postponed till the present session due to labour protests and the breakdown of tripartite negotiations. The new law is comprised of three different bills that would expand use of temporary workers, 'dispatched' workers (casual or contract workers through staffing agencies), and revise labour arbitration processes. In a January 2005 report to an OECD mission, the KCTU criticized the government's failure to commit to the principle of "equal pay for equal work" for non-regular workers. "Without a written policy statement on the principle of equal pay for equal work," the reports states, "there is no standard on which to judge discrimination. The major problem that irregular workers face is the infringement of their three basic labour rights---the right to organize, the right to strike, and the right to a collective bargaining agreement---due to a clear lack of accountability from employers."[4]



The KCTU's criticism was strengthened in the spring by a report from South Korea's National Human Rights Commission criticizing 'unreasonable discrimination' against irregular workers. The Commission's report was the product of a two-year taskforce study on irregular workers which reviewed their situation in light of the UN's International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as major ILO conventions and the Korean Constitution, which guarantees the right to equal treatment for employees. Cho Young-hoang, president of National Human Rights Commission, urged adherence to the principle that non-regular forms of employment be adopted only 'exceptionally and limitedly.' Emphasizing equal pay for equal work, the commission stated that any new draft of the bill should clearly stipulate that a company can hire temporary workers only when there is an understandable need and, in addition, there should be a limit on the period that temporary workers can be used.[5]



On 1 December, the KCTU launched a nine-day general strike against the new labour package, despite the lack of support from the FKTU and disarray in some of its own unions. The KCTU allied with many of the farmer and student groups present at the APEC protests, holding a large joint protest on 4 December in Seoul in opposition to both the labor and rice liberalization bills, whose joint effect, they claim, will be a proliferation of low-paid, irregular forms of work.



While Korea's social movements are simultaneously fighting rearguard actions on a number of fronts, and despite a lower-than expected turnout for the anti-APEC protests, many activists have positively assessed the results. Writing in the socialist newspaper Ta Hamkke, Kim Kwang-il noted that the protests exceeded earlier anti-globalisation demonstrations in Korea, and, perhaps more importantly, they revealed the sort of 'unity in diversity' that has become the trademark of the global justice movement. The throngs who converged at the bridges to the convention center on 18 November included farmers, workers, students, street vendors, environmentalists, health workers, women anti-war activists, gay rights activists and foreign migrant workers. Kim also notes that the protests represented the growing internationalism of the social movements in Korea as activists were inspired by recent events both in Argentina (the Mar del Plata demonstrations against the Summit of the Americas) and Washington (the massive anti-war demo of 24 September).[6]



This global outlook was well illustrated by the largely student rally that took place during the afternoon at the T'ogok junction before the group of around a thousand headed off to join the other protest marches converging at the bridges over to the BEXCO Center. The rally passed a resolution containing the following passage: "We oppose the neo-liberal globalization and war that are pushing the people of the whole world into greater poverty and inequality and threatening our peace."[7]



A separate rally of protesting farmers of the Peasants League issued a statement that reveals a more nationalist attitude to the issues surrounding liberalization and the WTO, while at the same time recognizing the global dimension of the problem:



"We stand resolutely against the APEC summit, which prioritizes free trade and tramples on our national agriculture .... We proclaim to the whole world the determination of 3.5 million Korean farmers to defend our nation's 'food sovereignty' by halting the APEC talks taking place in Busan today and preventing the opening of our rice market."[8]



After the protests, there was some criticism that the organizers had placed too much emphasis on the anti-Bush theme and not enough on the substantive issues of neo-liberal globalization, thus risking the potential of falling into a kind of blunt anti-Americanism that had been apparent on some placards and internet sites. Others expressed concern that the nationalist left had dominated the protests while the internationalist left had been too weak.[9] Both of these point to an older fault line on the Korean left between the long dominant nationalist tendency, with its focus on the issues of unification and the continued presence of US troops in South Korea, and the more outward-looking 'new left' and internationalist left. This tension existed in the older divisions between 'National Liberation' and 'Peoples Democracy' activists of the eighties and to some degree has continued to inform the trajectories of the radical left and civil society groups that emerged out of the democracy movement. Of course, similar tensions are found in social movements across the global south and even, to an extent, in the developed world where tension exists between initiatives aimed at stronger state control and economic sovereignty as part of the solution to the problems of neo-liberal globalization on the one hand, and grassroots initiatives that are more ambivalent concerning both state and market power.



In this context it is worth considering how the nature of the current South Korean government inflects social movements. The government of former human rights lawyer Roh Moo-hyun has continued his predecessor's 'sunshine policy' of engagement toward the North and instituted a more independent and nationalist stance toward the US that is widely supported among the younger generation of workers and urban professionals who grew up during the era of rapid development and anti-communist military dictatorship. This seems to reflect something of a fundamental divergence between the interests of South Korea's newly ascendant political class and its traditional ruling groups, as well as the current US administration. While Bush administration policy toward North Korea has been rather indecisive over the past few years, the overall tendency has been to maintain the status quo in Northeast Asia, possibly as part of a more general China-containment strategy. This does not sit well with the views of those who seek a peaceful resolution to the Korean peninsula's six-decade division, and is also at odds with sections of the South Korean elite who seek a 'soft landing' for North Korea and even have long-term ambitions for a future united peninsula that will become a major economic and political player in the region. With its recent joint industrial development in the North Korean city of Kaesong, South Korea can be seen as slowly integrating the North, while also potentially tapping cheap, North Korean labour as a source for greater competitiveness. A diluted version of this ambition to become a regional power can perhaps be detected in Roh's recent pronouncements about Korea's role as a 'power balancer' between China and Japan.



The Roh government is often described by the opposition Grand National Party (GNP), and by other forces on the right and far right of Korean politics as a 'leftwing' government, mainly for its allegedly pro-North and anti-American stance and for its perceived 'pro-labour' policies. The Korean political reality is, however, more complex. It is true that labour and students supported Roh during the impeachment moves against him, however, labour groups have maintained strong opposition to his labour reform proposals all along. Though the Roh government may have had some success in strengthening the social safety net, it has continued to suppress segments of the labour movement, failed to reform the outdated National Security Law and, perhaps most significantly, continues to pursue labour market reform, market liberalization and privatization policies with some vigour. Ironically, the GNP itself has slowly begun to support the policy of engagement with the North, while Roh Moo-hyun has demonstrated his loyalty to the United States by dispatching ROK troops to serve in Iraq, a move he felt necessary to give South Korea more room to maneuver on initiatives involving North Korea but which alienated many of his supporters.



These developments coincide with the rise of a new and more confident nationalism among the South Korean public that no longer sees North Korea as the main enemy. It is a double-edged sword that can be expressed in a cultural and at times chauvinistic nationalism, as has been seen in recent sporting events such as the 2002 Football World Cup and, perhaps more famously, the 2002 Winter Olympics controversy around the disqualification of South Korean speed skater Kim Dong-sung; the controversies with China over the history of the ancient Koguryo kingdom and Japan over the disputed Tokdo islets; or most recently, the public uproar over allegations made in a TV documentary against cloning pioneer and new national hero, Hwang Woo-suk. But this nationalism can also take on a left hue, with anti-imperialist undercurrents, as seen in the huge demonstrations that followed the killing of two middle-school students by a US armoured personnel carrier in 2002, or the current protests over the expansion of a US Army base at P'yongt'aek. These often contradictory nationalist currents inform the responses of the Korean left to neo-liberal globalisation and the spaces of resistance it chooses to occupy -- spaces, sometimes, where there is the potential for a more internationalist outlook.



From APEC to WTO


Like the APEC protests, those planned for the WTO meeting in Hong Kong have the potential to increase future cooperation between social movements opposed to neo-liberal politics. Years of coordination at the World Social Forum and various regional and national social forums has led to stronger networks among activists than has been seen in past decades with numerous East Asian students, farmers and workers' groups expected this year to protest the WTO ministerial. Thus, the protests are likely to take on a strong regional as well as global dimension.



The weeklong Hong Kong protest will provide these activists with a chance to explore their common interests and create new dimensions of protest. A remarkable amount of effort has been put into organizing the protests by local foreign migrant workers and their supporters, many of who are particularly apt at bridging between issues important to farmers, workers, and anti-war activists and providing a more internationalist focus. Foreign activists will also be joined in Hong Kong this month by domestic trade unions and human rights groups, as well as Anti-war activists who will be using the WTO meeting to protest the war in Iraq. Indeed, evidence of some synthesis of these interests is already apparent. South Korean farmers' groups have printed protest headbands that read: Against WTO and BUSH, and events have been planned that draw on connections between multiple campaigns.



Nonetheless, certain groups are likely to be more prominent than others at the protests. The extensive farmers' network of Via Campesina will be present in full force to continue to protest WTO talks on agriculture, as it has at previous WTO meetings; meanwhile, the presence of trade union movements is likely to be much more uneven. Though representatives from the larger international labour federations will be attending events, there seems to be less grassroots mobilization of workers than farmers, with the strongest foreign contingent of labour activists likely to be coming from India and Malaysia to protest the WTO's general agreement on trade and services. Observers note that the fact that Hong Kong trade unions have come out against the WTO is also a positive step.



Alan Chen, a Hong Kong-based activist recently interviewed at chinaworker.org, is excited about the potential for WTO protests to draw in new constituents. Specifically, he discusses the prospects for involving more mainland Chinese activists in the global justice movement.



"In December, if there are 10,000 demonstrating against the WTO, it will come across in China and it will be reported all over the world, on the internet and so on. It will be a good opportunity to tell Chinese working people that... it is common farmers and workers who have come to protest against the WTO, which the Chinese government has always hailed as a great success."[10]



Chen notes that workers at mainland Chinese firms have cause for concern about the WTO, as their wages are influenced by the Chinese government's ability to intervene successfully and build up its larger state-owned enterprises -- a task which will be made more difficult when China's full accession to the WTO is completed. It seems though, that any potential integration of Chinese workers and farmers into global protest networks is likely to be a very gradual process, as has been witnessed in the ongoing attempts at dialogue between the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the All China Confederation of Trade Unions. Nevertheless, if the spark of interest in the global justice movement that Chen feels Chinese people may attain from witnessing large anti-WTO protests on Chinese soil is realized, it is possible that a variety of new alliances may be made.



There are fears that opposition to the WTO may cause Hong Kong police to crack down on protest in ways similar to the repression in Busan and at other international meetings. From the inside alone, the WTO faces challenges: there has been sharp divergence between members of the WTO over its agricultural policies, with delegates from poorer countries increasingly organized collectively against any policy that could potentially displace farmers. Walden Bello of Focus on the Global South has speculated that disagreement over agriculture alone may cause trade talks at the WTO to collapse in coming weeks.[11] Thus, activists fear that the Hong Kong administration may try to minimize public images of dissent using similar methods to the South Korean government. Prior to the APEC protest, the Korean government prevented 998 members of foreign NGOs with records of protesting global trade meetings from entering the country. It also circulated a list of 400 other activists who were to be closely monitored. Busan was no exception to the pattern of excessive policing at other international summits, with some 47,000 police and additional private security forces on hand to prevent protesters from getting anywhere near the BEXCO convention center.



Like South Korea, Hong Kong has circulated lists of protestors that will be prevented from entering the country, among them many South Korean farmers. Hong Kong has also created a designated protest pen for demonstrators, and surrounded it with fencing, while 10,000 police will be patrolling conference venues and protests. Locally, the Hong Kong People's Alliance, a network comprised of some 30 local farmer, worker, and other activist groups, from trade unions to organizations of foreign domestic workers, has been negotiating with authorities over venues for rallies and public protest. Organizers expect around 10,000 participants for their Action Week against the WTO beginning on 13 December.



The upcoming WTO demonstrations provide an important venue with the potential for expanded regional and international coordination among farmers, workers, and anti-war activists, and the potential to expand the movement to China. If the APEC protests were any indication, East Asian activists are increasingly involved in the difficult task of overcoming national and international tensions among themselves and organizing against neo-liberalism and war, at home and abroad.



Notes



[1] Citizen's Coalition for Economic Justice. "Withdraw the rice negotiation and reconsider the process." CCEJ website, 11 January 2005:



[2] Kim To-gyun, et al., "Kungmin taehoe mamuri... kyongch'al, swaep'aip'u tulgo chinap." [As the citizen's rally comes to an end... police attack with steel pipes.] Minjung ui sori, 18 November 2005.





[3] Hong Kong police official Alfred Ma, quoted in "Hong Kong urges Korean protestors to behave at WTO meeting." Chosun Ilbo, 23 November 2005.



[4] KCTU Report on Recent Situation of Labour Laws and Industrial Relations, For the Meeting with OECD Mission 18th January, 2005.



[5] Korea Herald (2005.04.15)



[6] Kim Kwang-il. "Sam man myong i pusi wa ap'ek e pandaehae haengjinhada." [30,000 march to oppose Bush and APEC.] Ta Hamkke 68, 26 November 2005.



[7] "1 ch'a kungmin taehoe mamuri." [The first citizen's rally comes to an end.] Ch'am sesang, 18 November 2005.



[8] Kim To-gyun, et al., as above.



[9] Ra Un-yong, "Pan ap'ek t'ujaeng ui namgin kot."[The legacy of the anti-APEC struggle.] Ch'am sesang, 22 November 2005.



[10] Interview with Alan Chen, Chinaworker.org. 30 November 2005.



[11] Walden Bello, "Nothing to gain, everything to lose: Developing Country Prospects." 25 November 2005.





Jamie Doucette in Vancouver edits a blog on Korean social movements at http://twokoreas.blogspot.com. Owen Miller lives in London and writes a blog on Korean and Northeast Asian history and politics http://kotaji.blogsome.com.

Migrants occupy NHRC office

Breaking News: Migrant worker activists have occupied the offices of the National Human Right's Commission. They are demanding the release of Anwar Hossain, the Migrant Trade Union chief, who has been in jail since May.

Here's the story from the MTU website:

Migrant workers in S. Korea’s capital Seoul are occupying the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC, actually a part of the S. Korean government). Here a report from the situation yesterday and today, local Korean time.

Several activists of the Migrant Workers‘ Trade Union ( MTU ) occupied yesterday (Dec. 5) the Commission 13 th floor office at 10 a.m. after they held a press conference where the workers criticized a recent proposal made by the Commission.

The Commission decided that the Immigration Office should NOT be held accountable for the arguably 'illegal' arrest and detainment of Anwar Hossain, the elected chairman of MTU, the migrant workers' union leader.

The proposal means that it was perfectly legal to arrest and detain him. So Anowar Hossain cannot be temporarily released from the detention center. Angry at the proposal, migrant workers occupied the Commissioner's office at 13th floor. And the occupation is still going on. (Dec. 6, a.m. 1:30)


Dec. 5, the beginning of the occupation of NHRC

It's the second day of the occupation today (Dec. 6, a.m. 12:00).
As of this moment, there is no urgent danger of arrest. Occupying migrant workers will hold a press conference at 11 a.m. today. One of the migrant workers' demands is to have a meeting with the Commissioner of the NHRC so that they can openly criticize the National Human Rights Commission's hypocricy and it's biase to the Immigration Office.

Read More...


Today, Dec. 6, the morning press conference in the occupied NHRC


A lawyer for the Migrant Workers' Trade Union (MTU) consulted to the occupiers that if this occupation lasts for a long time, then the police may use force to break the occupation or/and arrest them.

In the mean time, MTU is trying hard to get the word out that Anwar Hossain was illegally arrested and he must be released immediately. Also the Commission should admit their responsibility. According to the law, the Commission cannot make another proposal on the same issue. Once it is made, it is final. And so migrant workers' union considers filing another petition regarding to Anwar Hossain.

The MTU members have said that they will not leave until the issue is resolved to their satisfaction. That is that the NHRC reverse their decision and recommend the full release of Anwar from the Cheonju detention center.

Following the text of MTU’s last urgent appeal
and the background of the story:

Demand the Immediate Release of Anwar Hossain,
President of MigrantWorkers' Union, KCTU!
Stop Crackdown on Migrant Workers!




A. Hossain behind bars, in the "Immigration Processing Center", aka prison in Cheonju

On May 14, 2005, Anwar Hossain, president of the Migrants' Trade Union in
Korea, was forcibly arrested by more than 30 Korean immigration officials
in the early hours of the morning. Anwar was beaten by immigration police
and had to receive treatment for the injuries that were sustained at the
time of his arrest. Anwar has been languishing in Cheonju Detention
Center, about two hours south of Seoul, since his arrest in May. In the
detention center, Anwar was been isolated from detainees who speak Korean
or Bangla, and is only allowed association with those he cannot
communicate with. He physical health has also been steadily deteriorating
since his capture.

Immediately after Anwar was arrested, MTU filed suit in Korea's courts and
appealed to the Korean National Human Rights Commission requesting a
temporary release of Anwar. In their investigation, the KNHRC found that
Anwar's arrest was actually illegal. According to Korean immigration law,
a warrant must be issued within 48 hours of an arrest. In Anwar's case,
more than 52 hours passed before a valid warrant for his arrest was
issued. It was later found out that there was actually a warrant issued
within the initial 48 hour period, but it was signed by an employee who
doesn't have the authority to issue warrants. However, due to this
evidence, the KNHRC has sided with immigration officials and denied
recommending the full release of Anwar, as well as the temporary release
of Anwar. This means that Anwar will have to remain in the detention
center until the outcome of his court case, which could take several years
to resolve as it is still in the lowest level of the court system and will
likely be appealed until it reaches the highest level of the Korean court
system, the Special Court.

Anwar is not a criminal. The KNHRC investigation has shown that his arrest
was illegal, and continuing to detain him is not only illegal according to
Korea's own immigration laws, but also inhumane. Demand justice for Anwar!
Please send a letter to the Korean Ministry of Justice and the Korean
National Human Rights Commission demanding the full release of Anwar
Hossain. A sample letter follows.

Take Action!


The English history and reports about MTU's and formers ETU-MB's activities you can read here.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------


Please send a copy of your letter to

Send a letter to Cho Young-hwang, the Chief of the KNHRC: cyh@humanrights.go.kr


Dear Mr. Cho,

It has come to my attention that Anwar Hossian, President of the Seoul-Gyeonggi-Incheon Migrants' Trade Union is still in detention at the Cheonju Detention Center just south of Seoul. While in detention, his health has been steadily deteriorating and he has been denied association with people he can communicate with. This isolation is making his mental health suffer in addition to his physical health, and is a form of torture. Furthermore, you found through your own investigation that his arrest was actually illegal because an arrest warrant was not issued within the legal time frame set forth by Korean immigration law.

Mr. Hossain is not a criminal and it is not just treat him like one. I implore you to release Mr. Hossain immediately, pending the outcome of his lawsuit. To do otherwise is clearly politically motivated and an obvious ploy meant to thwart the Migrant' Trade Union organizing efforts.

Yours sincerely,

Send a message to the Minister of Justice: (This is a little difficult because the website is in Korean, but please try. Here are instructions. )
Use this link to access the freeboard on his homepage: http://www.jb21.or.kr/netizen/list.asp?bid=1
Next, click on the green button on the far right hand side. It looks like this:
This will open a new page. At the very bottom of that page, there is a small grey icon that looks like this:

It means 'write'. Click on it.
The first line asks you for a subject: "Release Anwar Hossain"
The second line asks you for your email address.
The third line asks for your name.
Finally, you can enter the text below.
The last thing you have to do is enter a password at the bottom of the form. You can write anything here and it will work.


Dear Mr. Cheon,


It has come to my attention that Anwar Hossian, President of the Seoul-Gyeonggi-Incheon Migrants' Trade Union is still in detention at the Cheonju Detention Center just south of Seoul. While in detention, his health has been steadily deteriorating and he has been denied association with people he can communicate with. This isolation is making his mental health suffer in addition to his physical health, and is a form of torture. Furthermore, it was found through an investigation conducted by the Korean National Human Rights Comission that his arrest was actually illegal because an arrest warrant was not issued within the legal time frame set forth by Korean immigration law.

Mr. Hossain is not a criminal and it is not just treat him like one. I implore you to release Mr. Hossain immediately, pending the outcome of his lawsuit. To do otherwise is clearly politically motivated and an obvious ploy meant to thwart the Migrant' Trade Union organizing efforts.


Sincerely,


A Brief History of the Migrants' Trade Unions

MTU was officially formed on April 28th, 2005, after a 14 year history of struggle against Korea's oppressive and racist immigration laws, as well as unfair, unsafe and discriminatory workplace practices. The history of the migrant workers struggle started in 1991 in the small town of Maseok, when migrant workers banded together to fight an employer who refused to compensate an employee for a workplace injury. Through direct actions such as strikes and protests, migrant workers were able to achieve victories at their work sites. These victories led the formation of a larger group of migrant activists who began challenging not only employers, but also the Korean government. Eventually, in 2002 they would come together to form ETU-MB- the Equality Trade Union, Migrants' Branch.

Starting in November of 2003, ETU-MB staged a 377 day sit-in struggle at Myeong Dong Cathedral in protest of the crackdown on migrant workers in Korea, as well as the implementation of Korea's immigration law called Employment Permit System (EPS). After the sit-in struggle in Myeong Dong, MTU was formed so that migrant workers could have power within their own organization and make decisions for themselves. MTU is the only organization in Korea that is organized and led solely by migrant workers in Korea. They are still struggling against EPS and the constant crackdown on Korea's migrant workers.


CRACKDOWN AGAINST MIGRANT WORKERS


From the beginning, the South Korean government refused to recognize the Migrant Workers Trade Union (MTU) and publicly announced that the MTU could not have the three basic labor rights---the right to organize, the right to strike, and the right to collective bargaining. In addition, the South Korean government launched an all-out campaign to repress the MTU. During a press conference held by the MTU to announce its formation, immigration officials secretly videotaped the proceedings in an effort to specifically target migrant workers participating in the MTU. Clearly, the arrest of President Anwar is a direct attempt by the South Korean government to repress the MTU and crackdown against migrant workers in South Korea.

The recent repression by the South Korean government is not new. The government has consistently targeted migrant workers activists who have been arrested and deported. In 2003, many migrant workers were labeled as “terrorists” and forcibly deported. Samar Thapa, a key leader of the ETU-MB and the Myeong Dong sit-down demonstration was “kidnapped” in broad day light by immigration officials and deported in an effort to stop the mobilization efforts by migrant workers.

Like all workers in South Korea, migrant workers should be treated with dignity and respect. Migrant workers should be guaranteed the same fundamental labor rights that are enjoyed by native workers. Despite the government crackdown and threats of deportation, the MTU will continue to organize and fight for the rights of migrant workers. On behalf of more than 400,000 workers in South Korea, MTU calls on the South Korean government to stop the crackdown against migrant workers and recognize the labor rights of migrant workers.

Death of a Farmer

An article in the Korea Times yesterday made the first mention in the English language media of a death at the hands of riot police which occurred last week:

About 4,000 farmers gathered in Taehangno, central Seoul, to protest National Assembly’s ratification of a rice market opening deal.

The protesters urged the government to punish the police officers responsible for the death of a farmer, Chun Yong-chul who was severely beaten by riot police during a mass protest in front of the National Assembly building on Nov. 15.

The farmers' protest at the National Assembly on November 15 was the large one against the opening of the rice market which took place just before the APEC summit, which Kotaji covered here. As he mentioned, some of the farmers were seriously injured, and on November 24, the aforementioned farmer, Chun Yong-chul, died from a cerebral hemorrhage. An article by the Asian Human Rights Commission gives a more detailed account of the protest and Chun's death:

Mr Jeon was reportedly beaten on the back of his head, right eye and chest by riot police attached to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency during their crackdown at about 7pm. Although his external wounds did not seem serious and he left the rally with other protesters without obtaining any medical assistance, on his way home he was overheard speaking to two witnesses, saying that his head was very painful after being hit by a police shield.

On November 17, Mr Jeon was taken to the Boryeong Asan hospital as he was unable to control his body movements. He was then transferred to the Chungnam National University Hospital, where he was hospitalized and treated for a cerebral hemorrhage. He underwent brain surgery twice but died at around 6:30am on November 24.

An autopsy pointed to a skull fracture as the cause of the hemorrhage, but did not say how the fracture occurred. The police maintain the fracture occurred when he fell down at home.

Ohmynews has several articles which are accompanied by photos and links to many videos (of the Nov. 15 protest, and of the response to his death). Many more photos can be found here and here. Obvious in the video of the Nov. 15 protest is the number of the riot squad, 1001, which is well known as a particularly brutal squad; one photo of this squad at Thursday's protest shows that they have no numbers on their shields. Whether this has anything to do with the anger that has been directed at the police since Chun's death, I don't know. On Nov 28, after several days of mourning, at which several members of the Democratic Labour Party were to be found, a protest took place at the Seoul Metropolitan Police station.

The aforementioned protest at Daehangno on Dec. 1 was in fact the starting point for a march down Jongno to Gwanghwamun, where the marchers were greeted by this:


One has to wonder how long it takes the police to park all of those buses; I don't think I've ever seen the front line buttressed like this before. If I remember correctly, the plan was to march to the Blue House, but with such creative parking and the use of firehoses and masses of riot police, that wasn't very likely. Video of the protest can be found here and here, and a lengthy article on the protest with many photos can be found here (though it's in reverse chronological order).

The photo at the top of this post has photos of three other farmers above the large photo of Chun Yong-chul. They are of Chung Yong-pum, a 38-year-old farmer from Damyang County in South Jeolla Province, who committed suicide by drinking herbicide on Nov. 11; O Chu Ok, 41, director for cultural affairs of the Women Farmers' Association in Songju County, North Kyongsang Province, who committed suicide on Nov. 17; and Ha Shin-ho, 73, who attended the protest at Yoido on Nov 15 and collapsed and died suddenly on his way home.

Of interest may be an article (in Korean) comparing the deaths of Kang Kyung-dae (beaten to death by riot police at a protest at Yonsei University in 1991) and Chun Yong-chul.


Updates:

Dec. 16: The police finally admit the possibility that Jeon Yong Cheol died as the result of being hit by riot police at a farmers' protest.

Dec. 18: Hong Deok-pyo, a farmer injured during the November 15 Yeouido protest, dies of his injuries.

Dec. 26: The National Human Rights Commission concludes that Jeon Yong-cheol and Hong Deok-pyo died from injuries inflicted by riot police during the Nov. 15 rally.

Dec. 27: President Roh apologizes on television for the actions of the police, but also criticizes the violent actions of the protesters. Police Chief Huh Joon-young also apologizes, but refuses to voluntarily step down.

Dec. 28: Police Chief Huh is pressed to resign by members of Uri party and the DLP.

Dec. 29: Despite saying he would not, Police Chief Huh resigns, saying he did not want to "burden the administration".

Jan. 8: Families of riot police hold a protest against violent protests.

January 15: A plan to have riot police wear name tags while on duty is announced by the National Police Agency. It draws a great deal of criticism before being withdrawn.

Jan. 19: A government panel is formed to promote peaceful rallies, saying a policy package is due in April.

Feb 12: A protest in Pyeongtaek against the relocation of US bases there is celebrated for being non-violent.

general strike is on

Even though it has been declared illegal. Here's the first story about it.
Update: numbers are diminishing in the general strike: read more here.

Update 2: In another article, the KCTU said 60,000 people, or 10% of its membership, have taken part in the strike; the government estimate is quite smaller.

More than 10,000 striking unionists staged a rally in front of the National Assembly in Yoido, Seoul, [Thursday] afternoon to protest the bill and call for more rights for non-regular workers.

Footage of this demonstration can be found here, and over at his blog, Christian has a very long video of the protest, which can be found here.

General Strike Thursday

The KCTU is set to begin a nine-day general strike Dec 1st in protest of the government's labour reform plan. Here's a short story on it at today online. Check in here for further updates.
Update -- here is a good story that sets the tone a night before the strike. Seems the FKTU and KCTU have split over the issue, but the KCTU is enjoying support from farmers and teachers' groups. You can also see my older article on the issue here.

APEC protest: sources

(Pusan Protests)

Well, there is lots of coverage and analysis to provide on Friday's APEC protests which will take a little more time than I have today, so this post will be more of a nod to other posts so readers, and I, can try to grasp exactly what happened.

CNN has a short story and video on the farmers protest against plans to open the rice market. Monsters and critics also had an early report on protests but their numbers, along with CNN's are inaccurate. As mentioned earlier, protests groups expected around 100,000 participants in Friday protest, but, as Kotaji remarks, the police (combined, thhere were over 50,000 police and other security personel) interferred with the buses that protest groups had hired and were also able to block many from congregating near the bridge leading to the Haeundae Beach resort area where the conference was being held, nevertheless, between 15-30,000 still made it to the bridges near the BEXCO convention center. From Kotaji's blog:

As the day wore on it seems that protestors converged towards the bridge connecting the city to the area where the summit was being held. Here they were met by thousands of riot police (a total of 30,000 were deployed in all apparently) with a barricade of buses and shipping containers. As might be expected, some some pitched battles broke out between the bamboo-spear wieldingfarmers and the riot police, who began to respond with water cannon. In the tradition of Korean demonstrations things got quite extreme with riot police apparently wielding 3-metre-long metal pipes at demonstrators and angry protestors responding by using ropes to pull the shipping containers from the barricades and into the sea. The fighting went on after dark, but it seems that the police were eventually able to disperse the protestors without too much trouble.

Read more...

The Korea Times also reports that protests continued on Saturday, this time at the subway station in Haeundae, about 4km from the conference site, but protestors were surrounded at the station and no skirmishes broke out.



Apec has sparked a tradition of oppositional protest to its yearly meetings, a brief, and not very critical, summary of which you can find in the globe and mail's article on Busan here. For a more interesting look on how the protest was percieved on the ground in Busan, here is an article in the Asia times.

In terms of the summit itself, I'm not exactly sure what was accomplished as APEC tends to act more as a coordinating body rather than a specific framework for economic and political issues. However, for Korea directly, there has been pressure to expand the rice import quota to 7.96 percent by 2014, under WTO rules. In a joint statement, APEC leaders didn't say much except promise to help fight bird flu and express their support for the Doha development round of the WTO which still may collapse anyways over the issue of agricultural subsidies.

This is all I have time to post at the moment, but in the next few days it would be worthwhile to discuss some of the issues around the nature of APEC itself, perhaps hazarding a few comments on why farmers and students seem to have had a bigger role than workers (please hazard your own comments as well if you have time); I think it's also worthwhile to think about the geography of the protest and the role of the police and local government played in obstructing routes to the meeting and limiting other sites of protest. Some of their other spatial strategies seem common to APEC and WTO protests in general (such as designated off-site protest pens and other such zonal strategies). There is also the issue of hype created around 'anti globalization' activists coming to protest which you can read on our earlier posts.

All for now.....

Come Friday

About 12,000 Korean farmers took part in strident protests outside of the National Assembly Tuesday night against the proposed liberalization of the rice market (for more info see APEC Busan section below). Here are two short reports and pic from Radio New Zealand, and American Journal-Star. Farmers have vowed to continue their protests in Busan on Friday.


(Burning Police Bus in Seoul)

Internationalized Chaebol

Here's some interesting news. Ssamgyoung Auto's union has just announced a strike vote against its Chinese majority investor, the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC). The strike is against technology relocation and I wonder if their idea for a strike may come from similar strategies such as those employed by the movement of reclaimed factories in Argentina whom have occupied factories that have been shipping or selling off their fixed capital investments to overseas buyers and locations in the wake of economic crisis. Here's more on the strike from Joongang Daily:

Unionized workers at Ssangyong Motors Co., Korea's fourth-largest carmaker, said they will go on strike if the company's largest shareholder reneges on a pledge to invest in the company's domestic factory. Ssangyong Motors' workers want Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. to invest $1 billion in Korea, fulfilling a 2004 pledge made when the Chinese company bought 48.9 percent of Ssangyong for $500 million. The workers oppose Shanghai Auto's plan to build Ssangyong Kyron sport utility vehicles in China."The union took a vote and 79 percent of the workers were in favor of the strike," said Cho Young-jin, spokesman for Ssangyong's union. "We won't stage a strike immediately but wait to see what Shanghai Auto does."

The Korea Times also reports that union leaders claimed that SAIC Motor, which holds a 50.91 percent stake in Ssangyong Motor, has no plan to invest even a penny in the Korean subsidiary since its acquisition last year.

In my opinion this strike vote is interesting in that the chaebol have become increasingly internationalized (both in their activity and ownership) and, thus, so must labour tactics. Of course, the Argentinia case is somewhat different in that the domestically dominant class has long been internationalized at least in terms of its colonial origins and dispositions thus its forms of allegiance seem somewhat different then Korea's dominant groups which have, in general, been more economically nationalist when it has suited them, and now perhaps internationalist, when it doesn't. But the Ssamgyoung case is even different because we are no longer discussing a dominant class that is not simply internationalized in activity but in its constitution. Thus, how labour goes about attempting to woo an internationally owned corporation (ssamgyoung) to invest in a national space (Korea) might be an interesting problematic for the future. In some ways, the legitimacy of South Korean governments may rest on how well they can deal with this problematic, and how much more it will expand.

This is also something to continue to think about as we see what sort of agreements and protest the APEC Busan event (see below) generates.

APEC BUSAN

It seems that November 18th will main day for protests against the APEC conference, though there was a protest on Saturday with about 20,000 in attendance.

In other APEC news, here is a story from the Korea times about how the National Police Agency has banned about a thousand NGO activists. According to the Korea Times, they've also submitted a list of 400 foreigners who will be allowed entry but will be subject to close monitoring, as it is feared they could organize anti-APEC demonstrations there.

Notices will be distributed in and around Pusan (Busan) to inform foreign activists of possible punishments, including deportation, if they take part in anti-APEC protests, they said. The APEC forum is to take place in South Korea’s second largest city of Pusan on the southeast coast from Nov. 12-19, with a summit of the 21 leaders of APEC member states to be held on the final two days. Meanwhile, Pusan, host city of the APEC summit and forum, is trying to make potential anti-APEC protesters understand that the international gathering is not a rich man’s club, according to a senior city official.

Farmers protesting rice liberalization, one of the APEC side deals, have also set up camp at myeongdong cathedral and were part of Saturday's rally. The Minjok Dongshin reports that they expect up to or over 100, 000 in attendance for Friday's protest. Here's a more in depth look at the rice liberalization issue from the Citizen's Coalition for Economic Justice (they also a have more recent statement on chaebol reform here, fyi).

APEC is coming to town

APEC is beginning next weekend in Busan (I have a bit of interest in APEC, having participated in a over-a-year-long public inquiry into the policing of the 1997 summit here in Vancouver - read more here in the Canadian Encyclopedia). Here's some links for you. Here's the official site: www.apec2005.org and here's an early story on potential opposition and police response. I'll post more analysis as I get a chance...

Update -- Here's the link for the Korean anti-apec site, they have a small english section. Here is pretty stimulating flash intro for the bush protest in busan at the leader's summit.

Bad for tourists

Here's an older story from the Joongang Daily that I have to post in entirety.



(September 26, 2005)

(PIC) Policemen yesterday removing steel mesh from windows of buses used to transport riot policemen. The National Police Agency said it removed the mesh from all 1,131 buses, citing a drastic drop in violent demonstrations as the main reason. A symbol of the military government in the 1980s, the vehicles were dubbed "chicken coop cars," and used both to transport forces and blockade roads. Police said there were 809 illegal violent demonstrations in 1998 but the number fell to 215 in 2001, 91 last year, and only 34 by August of this year. "The buses also give a bad impression to foreign tourists," officials added.

Note: Looks like a positive step, I always found them unsightly, parked as they were at most prominent corners in the city (shin chon, jongro, etc). I would often get the suspicision that something was going down, even if these buses were just parked there for no reason. I wonder if the US embassy is still surrounded by a fleet of them. Hmmmm. Will the buses will still be parked around town, but cageless? Or are they going to hide them altogether?

The DLP loss, Elvis and the right

Kotaji has a short post up on the Democratic Labour Party's (DLP) recent by-election loss in the working class city of Ulsan that is worth reading. He makes the point that perhaps the growing number of non-regular and low wage workers there as well as the recent corruption scandals with the nation's two large labour federations may have something to do with this.

A Korea Times article focusing on the loss quotes DLP representative Sim Sang-Jung :

We should have paid more attention to the livelihood of non-regular workers and low-income earners in Ulsan, instead of focusing too much on the unionized workers of the big plant... Something unimaginable just took place in Ulsan, which is practically the land of laborers... The defeat is feared to seriously hurt the party and its leadership.

It should be pointed out that there have been strong efforts to regularize non-regular workers and fight for wage increases by the local, militant unions in Korea, and these struggles have been faily militant and puntuated with strong violence from the state, not to mention the protest-suicides of workers. However, the government continues to push for more and more labor flexibility in an economy that has some of the highest levels of subcontracting out there to the point that some workers have trouble identifying who indeed they are producing for or indeed who really owns their company -- there are lots of case of chaebol ownshership of smaller firms through dummy corporations or partial ownership and the like.

One wonders, in fact, if the ranks of younger, casual and non-regular workers, are following a trajectory similar to what has been happening in recent years in Japan, with younger people of this sort voting for the rhetoric of the right as they've become dis-illusioned with the potential of the left. I'm not exactly sure what current demographics are like in Ulsan but it would be interesting to see if there are indeed parrallels to generation of temps, freeters, and casual workers that Gavin Mccormack discusses in his recent article on the Koizumi election, postal reform and decline of Japan's developmental/welfare state -- worth reading if only for the picture of Koizumi's album of his favorite Elvis songs for karaoke.



Ok, I couldn't resist posting it, but, humor aside, Mccormack makes the point that Koizumi developed a rhetoric full of fun sound bytes and other publicity stunts that appeals to this youthful voters as it distances him from the culturally conservative image of his party, while promising to undertake 'reform.' Coincidentally, the only thing that he is reforming are the institutions that created a fairly equal distribution of work and weath in the post war years. Thus, appealing to images of 'cool' from the very generation cut off from economic equality, he secures the conditions to erode further these mechanisms of redistribution.

This issue is too complex to explore in this short post, especially in the Korean context so I'll only hazard a few more comments; namely, that I think its too early to attribute this loss to a growing depolitized electorate, but nonetheless I do think it is important to think about what the potential tendencies of a generation of workers lacking clear employment status and disciplined by retrenchment, restructurturing, and the vagarity of the market can or will be. Perhaps to do this we should look a bit more at how the GOP appealed to these voters (last time I checked the GOP weren't so 'cool,' but maybe they are), the development of working class youth culture in Korea (which doesn't seem as differentiated in Korea as it is in Japan at the moment), and, perhaps, how the DLP articulates itself in the context of the previous two.

Whither Tripartitism: Part 2

Changes are underway in the Korean labor movement today, as a new ad hoc executive commitee has formed in the wake of Lee Soo Ho' resignation (check here and here at the Korea Herald).

Though not oppossed to tripartite negotiation per se, the KCTU's new interim charman Jun Jae-hwan, from the Metal Intustry Trade Union, has said that he sees no point in rejoining the tripartite committee for as long as the government sticks to its labor reform plans (an issue you can read more about on our blog here, or here at the le monde diplomatique).

As for relations between the nation's two labour federations, the KCTU and the FKTU, it will be interesting to see if they continue to plan joint actions or if they begin to diverge in tactics and strategy -- for those interested in some of debate around different strategies pursued by Korean labour see this working paper by Kevin Gray.

In other Korean labour news, truckers are planning on going out on an illegal strike wednesday, as the number of non-regular workers active in the economy continues to rise one wonders if this sort of action will continue.

Update ----October 27, 2005 ---- The two truckers unions, Korea Cargo Transport Workers Union postponed their decision on a general strike yesterday until after it holds a vote on a government-brokered deal on Monday.
Meanwhile, dump truck drivers, who are part of a larger construction workers union, decided to end their strike Tuesday after union members voted to end their strike that started on Oct. 13 -- I don't think they got an agreement, however. Both unions are part of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions.

Whither Tripartism?

Judging from this recent Korea Herald article, it seems that the struggle against the governments attempt to "flexibilize" labor is still ongoing with no clear resolution in the future, but several possible trajectories. Currently the FKTU and the KCTU, Korea's two large labor confederations, are boycotting tripartite talks between management, government, and labor, demanding Labor Minister Kim Dae-Whan resign.

The article also reports that union leaders of the two federations said the government would "face increased troubles, including a general strike, if the government goes ahead with a set of measures pending at the National Assembly that would allow companies to expand the use of irregular workers."

At the moment labor groups are meeting with the prime minister Lee Hae-chan to get around the impasse. I'm not sure if the situation will continue like this or whether one will see a more gradual reincorporation of labor into the tripartite talks, but perhaps with a more unified voice both at the table -- in the form of a possible FKTU-KCTU merger?-- or in the streets, with more joint actions and protest -- something which has, indeed, picked up since last June. Both unions also boycotted an International Labor Organization regional conference which was scheduled to be held this month, but was cancelled when the groups withdrew.

Another set of issues that seem decidely off the table in triparte discussions are the work conditions for migrant workers, both documented and undocumented. Early this week, the Ministry of Labor announced their latest plans to curtail the use of undocumented workers and expand the use of permitted workers. However, their strategy looks certain to cause more social strife by giving employers incentive to help deport their own workers. The basic structure of the permit system, however, is not being altered in any fundamental way, so many of the problems that we have discussed previously on this blog are certain to continue (read more here).

For the full articles, continue reading.




Labor groups threaten to step up struggle

The nation's two labor umbrella groups threatened to heighten their struggle against government measures aimed to increase flexibility in the job market.

The Federation of Korean Trade Unions and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions reiterated that they would continue to boycott a tripartite dialogue table with the government and employers unless Labor Minister Kim Dae-whan resigns.

They said the government would face increased troubles, including a general strike, if the government goes ahead with a set of measures pending at the National Assembly that would allow companies to expand the use of irregular workers.

Their separate announcements came a day before their planned meeting with Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan today to discuss normalizing strained relations between the labor force and the government.

Representatives from the union groups said that they will convey their demands directly to the prime minister regarding the government's move to legislate a package of labor reforms.

The labor unions rejected dialogue with the government in July in protest against the labor-related bills.

Union groups said that today's meeting is aimed at seeking a new communication channel to the government since both groups have rejected Labor Minister Kim Dae-whan as a dialogue partner. Kim is expected to attend the meeting.

The meeting was proposed by the union groups when they asked President Roh Moo-hyun to become directly involved in resolving the confrontation between the government and the union community during a press conference held in August.

Labor unions expect today's meeting to be a turning point for both sides but said that it is hard to see how substantial changes mary occur unless the government changes its "anti-labor attitude."

Lee Yong-deuk, the FKTU and Union and Lee Soo-ho, the head of the KCTU reportedly had an urgent meeting on Sunday to organize one voice to tackle the government's labor policies and hamper possible disruption of the labor community.

The FKTU and KCTU have recently discussed a merger plan between the two major union groups to increase their bargaining power.

In a show of solidarity, the two groups have boycotted hosting an International Labor Organization conference which was scheduled to be held this month.


Korea Herald (2005.09.27)


Employers who make their illegal foreign workers voluntarily depart from Korea will be legitimately

ㅁThe Ministry of Labor will allow employers who make their illegal foreign workers voluntarily depart by the end of this year to newly employ as many foreign workers as they eject.
- The Ministry will also guarantee that illegal foreign workers receive no disadvantageous treatment when they are put on a roster of registered job seekers, if they voluntarily depart from Korea.

ㅁIf employers make their illegal foreign workers voluntarily depart from September 25 to December 31, 2005 and then submit a document confirming their departure issued by airports or harbors to an Employment Security Center when they apply for the issuance of employment permissions, they will be allowed to newly employ as many foreign workers as they eject.

* In this case, employers can hire the same number of new foreign workers as that of departed ones regardless of the number of foreign workers employed by a workplace.

○ However, replacement workforce will be supplied only to employers who receive employment permissions before the end of March 2006.

○ Employers who make their illegal foreign workers voluntarily depart during the special period will be exempted from fines and the restriction on issuance of visas to foreign workers will be lifted.

ㅁMeanwhile, illegal foreign workers who depart from Korea during the period under the guidance of employers will be exempted from fines and the period during which their re-entry to Korea is restricted will be shortened. Which is the same as what currently applies to illegal foreign workers voluntarily departing from Korea.

- If the foreign workers are those who came from the sending countries selected under the Employment Permit System, they will not be given any disadvantageous treatment in the process of registering themselves as job seekers.

ㅁUnder the previous measure to encourage the voluntary departure of legal foreign workers, which had been implemented between March and August this year, employers were entitled to be supplied with replacement workforce only when they made legal foreign workers voluntarily depart from Korea.

- However, the new measure is expected to reduce the number of illegal foreign workers and contribute to minimizing workforce vacancy in industrial sites by allowing employers who make illegal foreign workers voluntarily depart to be supplied with legal foreign workforce.



Ministry of Labor (2005.09.29)

Labor update

Being so busy with school these days, I haven't had much time to update the blog on current events, much less provide analysis. So in the absence of the latter, here are a few links to some current issues brewing, I promise to get back to some analysis of these events in the following weeks, perhaps in the form of a short article.

Autoworkers
Kia Workers start Strike -- August 29th
Kia Workers end Strike -- Sept 13th
Major disputes at all Automakers settled -- Sept 15th.

ILO meeting posponment
KCTU/FKTU statement -- Sept 7th
Labor/Management to hold talks -- Sept 20
KCTU and FKTU merging? -- Sept 8th

Other labor issues
Asiana pilots file injunction -- Sept 9th.
Truck driver suicide-protest -- Sept 9th.
Taejon Hotel closes to bust union -- petition (ongoing)

Dirty little deeds

It's been a while since I've posted anything, but this article from a Bangladeshi online paper recently caught my attention via Labourstart.org's Korea newswire. Basically it details the fact that there are a large number of migrant workers from Bangladesh in South Korea facing deportation, but what is novel about this article is that the Korean government has apparently threatened the Bangladesh government because of political activism by Bangladeshi workers in South Korea, notably Anwar Hussain, president of the MTU, and Mohammed Biddut, the now-deported sit-in chief of the old ETU-MB.

What is more disturbing is that the Bangladeshi government has promised to punish Anwar when he is deported and to collude in what looks to be an illegal deportation (as was the case in Bidduth's case). Bidduth, also, was tried under some arcane section of Bangladeshi law for associating with trade unions when he was deported, but, thankfully, the case was thrown out.

Here is an extended quote from the article, the link to which you can find above.

Bangladesh might even lose the lucrative manpower export market in South Korea because a section of Bangladeshi workers are leading workers' agitation on the issue of their rights.

The Korean authorities have already threatened to exclude Bangladesh from the list of countries sending workers, the sources pointed.

A migrant Bangladeshi worker, Anwar Hossain, is president of the Migrant Trade Union, an organisation mostly comprising illegal workers from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal and the Philippines.

The Korean authorities have not recognised the organisation and arrested Anwar in May for illegal stay. They wanted to deport him to Bangladesh but he refused to sign an application form for issuance of travel permit. The Korean ministry of justice also held a meeting with the Bangladesh embassy on May 25 and expressed their displeasure.

The authorities then requested the embassy to persuade Anwar, who stays at Cheongju Immigration Processing centre, to sign the application form. But the embassy also failed to do so, contacted the home ministry in Dhaka and then told the Korean authorities to deport him without any travel permit.

The home ministry will take action against him when he returns to Dhaka, officials said.

Earlier in 2003, another Bangladeshi national in Korea -- Biddut -- had done the same and he was deported.
South Korean investors are also concerned at formation of a trade union by foreign workers, led by a Bangladeshi national. They normally hire foreign workers because they face tremendous pressure from local workers, who belong to strong trade unions.

New zones of hope and discontent?

Interesting story in today's (Aug 25th) Joongang Ilbo about workplace accidents at the inter-Korean industrial complex in Kaesong, North Korea. The complex is a joint project between North and South Korea and as of July employed about 2400 North Koreans.

The report by the ministry of unification described a string of incidents beginning in late October when a North Korean construction worker fell to his death. The article reports that "further industrial accidents occurred this year. In January, four people were injured in separate accidents. Three among them lost fingers. In June, a worker suffered a burn, and the accidents have continued. The ministry said 10 accidents have occurred so far, including the deadly fall of last year."

The ministry goes on to cite a lack of safety awareness among North Korean workers using South Korean machinery. Also interesting is the fact that because North Korean workers are paying social welfare insurance to North Korea, worth about 15 percent of their wages; South Korea is not providing a separate compensation to these workers.

I'm curious how this issue will continue to evolve. On the one hand, the new complex up in Kaesong has been lauded by many to be an positive step of engagement between the South and the North, perhaps leading the North towards a reform trajectory similiar to China's. However there is the issue of the exploitation of a cheap and captive labour force without proper compensation -- does anyone even know if North Korea has an operating worker's compensation system? Basically, I'm curious, and perhaps sceptical as to how services will be provided to these workers.

It will be interesting how South Korean unions begin to respond to developments in this new zone, whether or not they will be able to influence the rights of workers there or not. How North Korean workers respond when problems arise will also be of note. I imagine tight tabs are probably kept on some of these workers, but as with any transnational space, there is the chance for greater information flow between workers from both countries (see our earlier post with a link concerning the possible marriage of two workers in the zone at Kaesong or this story about the potential for increased tourism in the area), although it will probably appear in Korean before it appears in English, so if any of you, our dear readers, see anything please let us know. For our part, we'll try to keep up on the info as well.

Corruption and the EPS

Here's a story that Matt brought to my attention looking at corruption in the new EPS system, a topic I mentioned in my last post. The article claims that bribery in sending countries has been one source of slowness in the system:

Ever since last August, when Korea adopted a new work permit system for foreign laborers, the process of recruiting workers has mostly been handled by the governments in the workers' home countries, including Indonesia. And corruption in some of those governments has become a serious problem for the program. To work in Korea, applicants in Indonesia typically wind up having to pay government officials the equivalent of 4 million won ($3,900) to 7 million won, which is about 40 to 70 times a typical worker's monthly income. Before the new work permit system, the workers had to pay about 2 million won.

The important point here is that (...) there has been a transition from a recruitment-based system run by Korean firms, to a recruitment-based system run jointly by recieving and sending countries. In my pessimistic opinion, it just seems that rent seeking and bribery, already a feature in most migrant sending locales, is simply becoming more visible in this case. Indonesia has an elaborate recruitment system already, comprising recruiters that work with local, regional, and national agencies. What has changed is that the older Korean recruiters (KITCO, ATCO) are no longer part of the chain as the Korean government now recruits directly. I guess direct government recruitment ends up politicizing corruption along the chain, as governments, legitimately, face more public scrutiny, and it dampens any image of equality or fairness in the recruitment process. Hopefully, then, the government could put pressure to ensure more fairness in the process, but looking at how pervasive this kind of behavior is, I doubt that significant changes will be made.

As for the jump in price in bribes for migration. This is most likely because the EPS is a higher quality 'product' offerring more job security and rights than the old trainee system, which basically was a ticket to becoming an illegal worker as the majority of trainees fled their workplaces.

In case you are interested, below is a diagram of the process of hiring foreign workers from the EPS website. It shows foreign government's role in the process quite clearly. What is also rather interesting is the criteria for selecting sending-countries. In the past it has been countries with which Korea has economic links, and this continues, except things like rates of overstayers seem to influence quotas. Here is a document from the EPS site discussing this directly. On the creepier side of things, here is the link to the government's online form to report illegal immigrants.

All the news that's fit to blog

I feel like we're becoming more of news site than a social movement tracker these days, but what can you do? Here's a bunch of news and quasi-analysis on some of the migrant issues we've been covering the past few months.

Organizing Migrant Workers

It seems like the migrant worker television project is going ahead well with new broadcasts including multilingual migrant and world news. Here is a link to their latest news in English, where you can read that the number of undocumented workers is now back to near 50% of the total migrant population. There are also some stories concerning workplace accidents and other issues that help paint a picture of some of the social conditions that migrants often find themselves in. Good work MWTV!

Organizing Migration

In other migrant news, here is a story and here is an editorial titled Foreign Workers Needed about the EPS system that has been in place for over a year now, complaining that the system works too slow and undocumented numbers are rising again. Many hoped that the EPS would get everyone legally recognized and provide a fresh start on the migrant issue. However, as we reported earlier, the EPS was only selectively offered to undocumented migrants, and some of its rules have caused others to become 'illegal' by basically changing their workplace.

more...

I wonder also if the slowness of the EPS relates more to the encouragement of employers prefering to use non-permitted workers and thus helping to create conflict between policymakers, especially between the coursts and the ministries of justice and labor. The Korean Federation of Small and mid-size Businesses (KFSB) basically brokered most of the migrant flow to Korea to date through KITCO and now through ATCO (an "Alien Traing Corp"). KITCO may not be around anymore as the government is suppossed to take over the brokerage of flows to Korea, but its chairmen used to be retired justice ministry (who handle immigration) officials. I'm curious how close their connections remain since the EPS started. I'll have to do some more research on this one.

Finally, here's a story on some news programs and residency status for foreign females married to Koreans. Interesting, however, that the same rights aren't being given to foreign males.

Update -- Blogger deported, Anwar Hossain, migrant hospital, summer strike news

Following up on last weeks story and few other items:

(1) Its seems Christian was deported back to Germany a few days ago. Thus he is not on hunger strike anymore, but is barred from entering Korea for five years. You can leave a comment of support or check out his reflections on the event at his CINA blog -- kudos if you can guess what does CINA stands for by the way.

(2) Anwar Hossain, the president of the Migrant Trade Union, is still in Jail, though there hope that he may be freed soon as there has been a lot of support for his case in South Korea and abroad -- all the more reason to keep up the pressure. Here is briefing from the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong on the case, not mention our link to an online petition here.

(3) Here is an older article in the Choson Ilbo about a migrant worker hospital run by private donations. It seems the hospital is about 200,000 (Canadian dollars) in the red because the government won't support it.

"Since its foundation, 13,000 patients have come to Migrant Workers' Hospital, both legal residents without money and illegal residents with nowhere to turn. Every Sunday, specialists from university hospitals come to offer free treatment, while about 80 volunteer doctors provide treatment from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. daily."

(4) Summer strikes: Looks like the government is intervening in the Asiana pilots stike, sending them to emergency arbitration, which gives them a month to make a deal or the government forces a compromise. Meanwhile, a deal was reached between GM Daewoo and its union, more on that here. I haven't read it closely but looks like good terms from a quick glance.

Korea Blogger on Hunger Strike

A few weeks ago I noticed that Christian's CINA blog had stopped being updated, which is rather strange behaviour because he normally updates it compulsively.

For the last few years, Christian has been, if you will, something of a pedestrian activist-reporter photographing and reporting on events that normally miss the mainstream in Korea's media, and even much of its independent media.

I always looking forward to reading his street level posts on topics ranging from the efforts of street vendors poor urban dwellers to resist displacement, nurses strikes, struggles by the disabled for safe and accessible public spaces, not to mention the migrant worker's struggle, which his has covered in more detail than anyone.

Albeit, Christian's english in his reports is often affected, partially because of his own peculiar brand of grassroots political ideology, and the fact that he is not a native speaker of english. Christian hails from Germany, and seems equally disillusioned with both german socialism and capitalism, making him something of an eccentric and his opinions a bit wild at times, but under it all, he has a genuine concern for documenting and assisting organized struggles against the social causes of human suffering, so much that it may sometimes cause him to neglect his personal life.

Which perhaps is what led to his recent arrest and detention. It seems Christian long ago let his immigration status lapse, mostly because he had run out of money covering protests in South Korea and was most likely afaid that if he left he would not be allowed back in. Inevitably, he was detained by police.

The following is a statement in English and Korean, dated today, documenting conditions in the migrant detention center where Christian is being held, and announcing that he is going on a hunger strike in the hope of improving conditions in the detention center. I hope it works.


Official Statement - 일인 단식 투쟁

Today, Thursday, August 4, 2005, it is exactly 4 weeks ago, that the National Human Right Commission (국가인권위원회, NHRC) was inspecting Mokdong Immigration Detention Center(*).

HNRC, of course, found a lot of violations of human rights here. The main complaints, made by inmates here:

- The entire space here, inclusive the common room, where the inmates spend there "leisure" time and have their fool, and floor between the cells, is permanent overcrowded. Detains call this "like chicken in cages" and "dead fishes in cans"

- The food is "more for pigs" - so many detains here. Even though since about two weeks some small things are changed, till now many detains get only rice and water soup, with small fragmants of vegetables.

- Fresh vegetables or fruits - never the detains, even the people, who have to spend mouths here, get.

- The sleeping places also are totally overcrowded (18 peoples or 16 peoples? is common), noisy, hard and extreme dirty.

Even though yesterday the blankets were taken to clean/wash, because of the daily change of detaines - most of them are arrested on their workplaces, without to get a chance for to take a shower - it should be done at least all 2 weeks, instead of once a year, or all two months, or so.

- The long term detains saw since their arrests no heaven, could not breath fresh air. There is no exercise possible here, so the detainment here, for example, is very harmful for the muscles.

- Until now the detains get no information about their rights here (some detaines, when they come here, even don't know, where they are).

- Since July 19 the inmates of cell №3 demanded their right of at least alternative breakfast. Instead of rice and water soup milk, bread and eggs. But the authorities here, now the 9th day are refusing to met this demand.

- And so on, and so oh...

Because of this terrible situation I have decided to go from today, August 4 2005 in a UNLIMITED HUNGER STRIKE until the immigration authorities solving this problems successfully.

Christian Karl

Mokdong Immigration Detention Center
2005-8-04

* today it has been exactly 5 weeks that I have been detained here

공식성명 - 일인 단식 투쟁



오늘은 2005년 8월 4일입니다. 정확히 4주전 국가인권위원회는 목동 출입국 억류센터(*)를 조사했습니다.

국가인권위원회는 물론 여기서 많은 인권침해를 발견했습니다. 여기에 수감된 사람들의 주요 불만은 다음과 같습니다.

-여기의 전체 공간은 수감자들이 “여가”시간을 보내는 각 방들 사이에 있는 층별 휴게실이 계속 사람들로 꽉차 있다는 것입니다. 수감된 사람들은 이것을 “닭장 같다” 또는 “깡통에 죽은 물고기들”이라고 부릅니다.

-식품은 “돼지”를 위한 것-그리고 많은 억류자들도 그렇게 생각합니다. 심지어 2주전에 작은 변화가 있기는 했지만 지금까지 많은 억류자들은 단지 적은 야채 조각들에 밥과 멀건 국만을 받고 있습니다.

-신선한 야채와 과일은 한번도 몇 달 동안 갖혀 있는 동안 먹어보지를 못했습니다.

-잠자는 곳 또한 전체적으로 꽉차있고(18명에서 16명은 보통입니다), 시끄러우며, 불편하고 대단히 지저분합니다.

심지어 어제 담요를 빨기 위해 걷어갔습니다. 왜냐하면 매일 억류자들이 바뀌기 때문이고 대부분은 그들 공장에서 체포되기 때문에 샤워를 할 수 있는 기회가 없기 때문입니다. 1년에 한번, 2달에 한번 대신 2주 마다 한번씩 (뭘?) 할 수 있도록 보장되어야 합니다.

-장기간의 억류기간동안 신선한 공기를 마실 수 없습니다. 여기서는 운동도 할 수 없고 예를 들어 여기에 있는 억류는 근육에서 대단히 해롭습니다.

-지금까지 억류자들은 여기에서의 권리에 대해 아무런 정보도 얻지 못했습니다(일부 억류자들은 여기에 왔을때 그들이 어디에 있는지 조차 알지 못했습니다.)

-7월 19일 이후 3번 방 수감자들은 적어도 아침식사를 바꾸어 달라는 그들의 권리를 요구했습니다. 밥과 멀건 죽 대신에 빵과 달걀을 달라고 했으나 당국은 9일째 그들의 요구를 들어주기를 거부하고 있습니다.

-기타 등등


이런 끔찍한 상황 때문에 당국에서 이 문제를 성공적으로 해결할 때까지 오늘 2005년 8월 4일부터 무기한 단식투쟁을 진행하기로 마음먹었습니다.


2005년 8월 4일

크리스티앙 칼

목동 억류센터에서

* 오늘은 정확히 내가 여기에 억류된 지 5주째가 됩니다.