KMWU strike consolidates gains toward industrial unionism

To answer the question I posed on tuesday: a qualified yes.

From the Korea Times:

Unionized metal workers ended their weeklong strike yesterday after management agreed to increase minimum wages and consult with labor before making any decisions that could affect job security.

In their 10th round of meetings, the Korean Metal Workers' Union and representatives of industry management agreed to set this year's minimum monthly wage at 900,000 won ($985), an 8 percent increase from last year. The new wage applies to all employees, including temporary and migrant workers.

The KMWU had originally demanded 936,000 won, which is about half the average wage of the entire industry workforce.

The management also agreed that companies would notify labor unions about plans for mergers, divestitures or disposals at least 70 days before execution and seek the union's consent.

The companies also promised to provide fair terms to subcontracting firms.

Under the accord, the two sides will also set up a joint committee on securing employment within the metal industry.

More, here.

Can Korean workers break out of enterprise unionism?

A recent article in the Korean Times explores this topic. Though the editorial slant is a bit reactive, the article is worth a read to get a sense at the initiative towards industrial unionism in South Korea.

Update on E-Land struggle

The UNI Global Union, which represents commercial workers worldwide, has started up a site dedicated to and with with plenty of updates on the Eland struggle. Including video from local TV of the raid on Homever workers at worldcup stadium, and a longer series of videos from the union itself. It's pretty emotional stuff to watch, violent police action in a supermarket makes for especially jarring video. The Hankyoreh has also run detailed story on the sit-in, police reaction, and solidarity given to the struggle by progressives. You can find the link to that here.

Police raid E-Land Sit-in

Breaking news: the sit-in is over and has been raided by over 7000 police. The CINA blog has more pics and info here, and video from the previous days protests here and here.

New story on labour law at Interlocals

Below is my attempt to summarize what has been going on with the controversy around the new labour law to date. Interlocals has been attracting a bit more attention recently as its founder Oiwan Lam has been in the news for taking on the Hong Kong Television and Licensing Authority. The story broke in Boing Boing last week, thanks to a poorly spelled item suggestion by yours truly (now more in the world will know about my bad spelling!), and was followed up on in the following days more and more.

South Korea: Labour strife escalates as new labour law comes into effect
Jamie Doucette
Interlocals.net



On July 1st South Korea's new Law on Non-Regular Work came into effect. The principle of the law was to protect non-regular workers, but in practice the way in which it has been put together and implemented has led to protection only for a few and increased precariousness for many.

The law was a long time in the making, and the original plan was to involve all parties -- unions, business, and government -- in the drafting process of the bill. However, very early on the tripartite process broke down, with the progressive Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) pulling out of the process when it became clear that the law would only lead to the expansion of casual, contingent, contract and temporary forms of work.

The tripartite commission did not attempt attempt to assuage the worries of the KCTU but instead rushed through an agreement on the bill with the support of the more conservative Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU). The bill was passed amidst heated protest in the late fall of 2006 and came into effect on July 1st.

After the bill was passed, the government as well as some larger firms announced that they would be regularizing several thousands of employees that had been employed with non-regular contracts. However, in the lead up to the July 1st deadline, it was found that numerous private employers as well as the government itself had been laying off non-regular workers or forcing them to sign short term contracts (in some cases 'zero' work term contracts that would allow employees to be layed off on the spot if need be).

A recent article in Korea's left-liberal daily The Hankyoreh highlighted some of these abuses, reporting that recent union surveys (carried out by both the KCTU and FKTU) had found cases of lay-offs, re-assignment or other unfair hiring practices at firms across all sectors, from hospitals and postal delivery to banking and construction.

For example, the Hankyoreh reports that, "According to the FKTU, which conducted its own inspection by visiting 56 companies between July 4-22 [sic], the Korea Expressway Corporation is currently moving to outsource its 2,000 non-regular workers and Korea Post, Korea’s postal service, also plans to replace its 3,000 letter carriers, delivery people and postal workers with workers from temporary agencies. Both companies are state affiliates."

Other investigations by the Hankyoreh itself and other investigators have found similar practices at other firms.

[Image courtesy of Voice of the People]
It is no surprise that in the midst of these practices, labour strife has heated up as the new law has come into effect. The most prominent case in the media so far has been the case of retail workers at the Homever and New Core department stores owned by Korea's E-land group. There, mostly female cashiers have staged sit-ins that have drawn wide scale support protests and boycotts as well as attention from police who have sealed off E-Land's stores. Public support for the struggle and outcry over the E-Land's hiring practices intensified after civic groups were able to uncover that the company had forged documents to avoid regularizing employee's contracts. The government has since stepped in to mediate the strike but has yet done nothing to support the workers demands for regular status.

In addition to the strikes at E-Land and Homever, female workers from the KTX, Korea's high-speed rail system, began a hunger strike on July 2nd to protest their employer and the government's continued refusal to meet their demands for gender equality, safe working conditions, and job security. The KTX workers have been on strike since March 2006 and have also faced police action against them, even as the government's own National Human Rights Commission has stated that KORAIL must redress its 'gender discriminative employment structure.'

What is interesting about the latest round of strikes over non-regular work is that they have been largely undertaken by the female workforce that has been the target of both unfair practices and labour restructuring policies. This has led many in the grassroots Korean labour movement to hope that their activism can lead to a renaissance in female-led trade unionism -- women workers by and large led Korea's nascent democratic trade union movement in the late seventies with heroic strikes in textile and light manufacturing sectors. Korea is more well known for the image of militant blue collar unionists in heavy industries, but these unionists would probably not have made the gains they began to achieve in the late eighties and early nineties if were not for the groundwork and networks laid for them by the previous generation of female unionists and activists.

This time, however, whether or not the irregular workers movement and its strong female leadership expands and makes concrete social gains may depend on the solidarity extended to them from the large union confederations, who now carry significantly more power than they did decades ago. Support here needs to include not just lip service to the plight of irregular workers, but concrete changes to union structure that have been recommended by grassroots labour groups, such as stronger voting rights for irregular workers and a greater participatory role for them (as well as migrant workers) in policy formation.

Jamie Doucette, July 17, 2007
Images 2 and 3 are from KTX workers site linked above.

A note on the title photo

The image on the left is a minjung painting of Lee Han Yeol, who was killed by a tear gas canister during the 1987 democratic protests. Minjung stands for the masses, or the people, and the minjung movement is another name for the Korean democracy movement. Lee Han Yeol can be regarded as heroic martyrs of the democracy struggle. The picture on the right is a satirical "post-minjung" artwork that mimics the portrait on the left. It was used as a critique of neoliberal reforms undertaken during the DJ and Roh governments: governments which emerged from the democracy movement. The youth in the photos are wearing the Korean national soccer team jersey, and one has been hit in the head, ostensibly, after a night of partying. The picture seems to be saying something about how the heroic struggles of yesterday have been replaced by sports nationalism and consumer spectacle. The photo in the middle is a painting by artist Yoo Chang Chang that represents a sense of fragmentation. Here it loosely signifies the transformation of Korean society and politics from the minjung movement to the present.

More on the new labour law from the Hankyoreh

From today's Hankyoreh
Labor unions expose unfair hiring practices: Companies under investigation say inspection results were exaggerated

A couple of weeks into the introduction of a controversial law designed to improve working conditions for non-regular employees, labor activists argue that many local companies are rushing to remove previously contracted workers from their payrolls. Businesses maintain that the new law may add more financial burden on them. --> Link.

Meanwhile, the Hankyoreh also has the latest on the E-Land struggle here.

Also, it seems that the KTX workers, who are still on hunger strike, have created a blog, in English, of their own, which the two images you see here are from. Here's the link. At the moment, they have an emergency petition there that you can sign.

Crucifying irregular workers?

An illustrated column from the Hankyoreh entitled: A backhanded bargain.
Caption: The company E-Land fashions itself as a Christian enterprise. However, it has just laid off over 900 of its non-regular workers so as to avoid treating them better as the law requires.

Most of those being laid off are employed by Homever and New Core, E-Land affiliates.

E-Land, in observation of its work, feels called to prayer before crosses to which its workers have been nailed: “Save us, dear Lord, through mass layoffs.”

[Update, July 13: seems that it has recently come to light that E-land has been using phoney documents to avoid regularizing its workers, read more here.]

The struggle at E-Land is continuing amidst the usual police presence and threats from government and management. Meanwhile, the Hankyoreh has reported on the history of bad practices at E-Land affliates Homever and New Core.

Observers have said that one of main reasons for worsening labor relations at E-Land is that the management has not, in essence, acknowledged the union’s existence.

In 1997, the E-Land union walked off their jobs for 57 days because the union has not reached any collective bargaining agreements with the management for over 4 years since the union was first formed in 1993.

In 2000, the union staged strikes for 265 days, demanding that management improve working conditions for temporary workers. At that time, the Ministry of Labor asked a court to issue an arrest warrant against E-Land founder and chairman Park Songs on charges of conducting unfair labor practices. Despite several requests, Park did not respond to the warrant while staying overseas. The labor disputes have continued to deepen as Park travels overseas whenever there are important events in labor-management relations, union officials say, referring to him as the final decision maker of the management. Park is reportedly out of the country now.

Labor tension was aggravated when E-Land acquired New Core stores in 2003 and Carrefour stores in 2006. Choi Ho-seop, a union official, said, “There has always been friction as management has not honored its agreements with the union.” According to the Ministry of Labor’s May inspection reports on Newcore department stores, the management has violated 10 labor law provisions.

You can read the full story here.

the fight against mass irregularization

On July 9, a former attendant of Korea’s express train KTX, holds up two cards during the seventh day of a hunger strike being conducted by laid off attendants in front of Seoul Station.

The cards carry a warning to Lee Chul, CEO of Korail,which operates KTX, demanding that he bring the laid off attendants back to work. -- Hankyoreh


The new bill on irregular workers came into effect on July 1st and since then there has been a rash of firings, strikes, and conflicts at a number of workplaces. This is because employers are trying to avoid regularizing their employees status (with the exception of some civil servants, white collar, and firms up the value-added chain) especially in so-called 'low-skilled' sectors.

A new trend is to force workers to sign a contract with a temporary staffing agency while moving regular workers out of those same jobs into other divisions so as not to break the law of equal pay for equal work. Basically, inequality is becoming institutionalized by setting the rules under which differential norms and benefits can be used to shape work, rather than leaving it up to the discretion of employers whose discrimination against irregular workers generated the need for legislation, but a form of legislation that is quite weak and which is leading to a number of bad practices.

That most of these sectors seeing a rise in temporary work contracts have high concentrations of female workers speaks to the gendering of irregular work in South Korea. That said, these workers have been taking impressive collective action, with the strike at E-land and a 7 day old hunger strike by the KTX attendants that were fired for labour organizing over a year ago. One only hopes that their efforts, as well as those of the E-land strikers pay off, and that solidarity with irregular workers expands, especially from the male-dominated trade unions in the heavy industrial and other sectors.

This last point begs the question of how best to take up the issue of the fight against irregular work. So far grassroots labour groups have done the most work, and have made proposals to make irregular workers key members of trade union federations. However, their voting power, as far as I know, remains quite weak or non-existent, thus leaving union activists to attempt to represent their cause rather than having the irregular workers themselves participate in making union policy through power in decision making. Bringing the irregular issue beyond lip service and into genuine participatory democratic trade unionism and creating more democratic social institutions is certainly the task of the day -- one that movements in most countries are having just as much trouble with. Nonetheless, it seems to be a crucial task if social justice is to carry the day.

FTA re-signed

The Korea US FTA was re-signed (not, unfortunately, resigned, however) on June 30th. It still needs to be ratified, however, and the campaign against that has heated up even more lately with some high profile opposition to the deal coming from many in the former reform camp.

Lee Jeong Woo, former Chairman of the President's Policy Planning Commission from 2002-2005, in a recent editorial harshly criticized the Roh administration for moving right ward, when it should, he argues, be moving more towards a social welfare state.

The ‘‘Participatory Government’’ of Roh Moo-hyun has, over the last four years, worked in its own way to overcome a culture where ‘‘growth is everything’’ and ‘‘the market rules above all,’’ and I praise it for its efforts. The results have been a greater emphasis on harmony between growth, the re-distribution of wealth and the role of the public sector. Now, however, it is saying that it is suddenly going to trash that philosophy and go back to the familiar priorities of growth and the market. Put simply, it has turned to the right, and there ahead lies the cliff. Right now what is right for Korea is a greater turn towards the left. It is the Scandinavian social democratic model that has been judged the best of all the market economy experiments the human race has experienced so far. In public opinion surveys as well, it is the Scandinavian model that Koreans say they like the most. Though of course it would be difficult to move to that model right away, we should be gazing toward Scandinavia to get there. A free trade agreement with the U.S. means we are going to go in the wrong direction.

Elsewhere it has been revealed that most of the poisonous parts of the deal (the sections on investor-state disputes for example) have remained intact.

Meanwhile the government has continued cracking down on the opposition to the FTA with more and more arrests.

Daum closes union site, metal workers strike against FTA, Everland blues

[Update: July 8th] From the comment below it seems that the government and business are now arresting unionists for damages and political action before they have a chance to strike. Arrests with a similar determination seem to have been targeted at the Korean People's Alliance against the Korea US FTA last week, with their offices raided and two of their organizers arrested.

A quick roundup of some recent stories:

1) Seems that Daum, Korea's largest internet portal, has closed down the site of unionist trying to form a union at their company. This case should perhaps become a landmark freedom of association case if taken up by the NHRC, we'll just have to wait and see.

2) Metalworkers are continuing a fairly large strike against the FTA. As usual the government is planning police action against them. There have also been small backlash protests, reported more that the actual strikes themselves, against the unionist for striking over what does not appear to be a workplace issue -- ruling groups love to set what they see as the acceptable (at best, enterprise unionism) and unacceptable (any wider form of social solidarity) forms of unionism.

3) Both the Korean times and MWTV have been reporting on the plight of foreign workers who put on the dancing shows and other events at Samsung Everland. All this after the Migrant Trade Union began its campaign to draw attention on the sorts of abuses that have been happening there. Read more over at the CINA blog.

Attempted observations of everyday life in Pyongyang

Recently the Hankyoreh has been sending reporters to Pyongyang to cover pro-unification events and other things. This longer report, by Ryu Yi Geun, is a nice attempt to make everyday observations of how people get by in Pyongyang. Of course, the author experiences the familiar frustrations encountered by visitors there of having very few genuine interactions with locals and thus much of his article is based on pedestrian observations like the one below. Nonetheless, his discussions of factories, markets, and urban life are still worth reading.

Yet apart from each building being built on Liberation Street and on the premises of Pyongyang Medical School, it is difficult to find any buildings currently under construction. The Children's Heart Hospital Center under construction within the campus of Pyongyang Medical School is being built with the giant steel beams all too common in the South. Indeed, the beams were made in the South. Across the street, dozens of Northern laborers were constructing a building with their hands, devoid of any assistance from machines. After the run-up to the 1989 World Youth and Student's Festival, when apartment complexes were built along Liberation Road, all construction stopped along the road as the North descended into the Arduous March of the 1990s, which is how it refers to the period of devastating economic downturn and famine.

Link

On inequality and labour regimentation, in North and South

According to a story in the Hankyoreh this week, this year's Employment Outlook 2007, released by the OECD on June 19, records the income gap between the upper and lower 10 percent of wage-earners in South Korea as the third largest among 20 of the 30 OECD countries for which data is available.

Not surprising, much of this inequality has expanded over the 10 year period from which Korea rapidly began experimenting with Neo-liberal economic reforms: basically, from the time of Kim Yong Sam's Sehyehwa reform.

In the survey, South Korea's score stood at 4.51, followed by Hungary (5.63) and the United States (4.86)

In addition, South Korea's income gap has been widening significantly for a decade since 1995. During the period, the ratio of South Korea increased by 0.87 points from 3.64 in 1995. In term of the degree of widening income gap for the past decade, South Korea was also ranked third, followed by Hungary ( 1.67 points) and Poland (0.91 points). Of the 20 countries, only Ireland (3.57) and Spain (3.53) narrowed their income gaps over the past 10 years. (see gragh)

Norway (2.21), Sweden (2.33), and Finland (2.42) showed the least income gap among the nations examined.

The OECD report pointed out that South Korea's social safety net, along with those of Mexico and Turkey, is not robust. In particular, South Korea spent less than 5 percent of ordinary tax revenues on its social safety net to ensure that low-income earners are not left without protections and services. This figure is markedly smaller than the OECD average of 43 percent, and put South Korea last in the rankings. In addition, only South Korea and Mexico spent less than 10 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on social services.

The OECD also expressed concern over the low level of spending on social welfare in another report on the South Korean economy on June 20, despite a sharp increase in the percentage of those living in relative poverty in these countries. In the mid-1990s, South Korea's relative poverty rate - the rate of population whose disposable income is below 50 percent of the income of the median income bracket - was hovering around 9 percent, but this figure began to rise sharply starting in 2000 and surpassed the average OECD ratio of the lower reaches of the tenth percentile, the report said. The OECD advised South Korea to expand public spending for the underprivileged to help them earn the minimum cost of living.

The point here is that reform has not been followed up with redistribution, this is revealing of the fact that for workers and others in Korea, neo-liberalism has offerred few carrots and often a very big stick.

Alongside the article on the OECD's survey of inequality, there were also two other telling stories examining the disciplinary approach taken towards labour.

One of the stories is based on documents leaked from a Chaebol owned petrochemical firm that reveals the companies strategies for intervening in a union election, which the company is surprisingly up front about in asserting that there nothing wrong in its actions.

The documents, titled "P-project" and obtained by The Hankyoreh, elaborated on how the petrochemical company planned to block the election of a front-running union presidential candidate who had a track record of spearheading labor strikes in the past. In the documents, allegedly written in October 2005, three steps were suggested to prevent the emergence of militant unions by trying to block the candidate.

First, the candidate, referred to as a "tree branch" suspected of possibly calling a labor strike in the future, should be 'singled out.' Second, a "branch-cutting" action should be taken, in which negative rumors will be spread about the singled-out candidate. Finally, "gardeners" - company officials planted in the unions as spies - take action needed to eliminate the branch.

Finally, and perhaps the weirdest story of the week, is a leaked video from the "Samsung Mass Games," which have been staged for 24 years by employee's of Samsung electronics.

As of June 20, the two videos had drawn some 400,000 and 600,000 viewers, respectively.The videos drew attention because the mass games were performed in a highly regimented manner, which some viewers have called "militaristic." By holding up colored cards at just the right time, the Samsung Electronics employees created images of a fight between dragons and scenes from animation films.

An official at an affiliate of Samsung Group, who joined the group's membership training sessions in 2003, said, "Employees from each [Samsung] affiliate train for the mass games with the help of experts. Ordinary employees spent about 15 days to prepare for mass games, while a team 'task force,' which plays a key role in the performance, spends two or three months on training," the official said. "Though there is no incentive or bonus for a winner, competition is tough because the Samsung Group's chief executives are gathered to watch," the official added.

Ironically, the games seems like a scaled down version of those held in North Korea, a country where similar regimentation and discipline are used to show off worker discipline through mass spectacle. Strange that the form would also be used in the South as well, in what seems to be a very different application. Then again, maybe there is not so much of a difference between the concentration of power in the hands of domestic conglomerate in the South versus state managers in the North -- with the qualification that the power of the former, thank god, is not as extensive as the power of the latter, thanks, of course, the resilience Korean civil society to have checked some of the worst forms of labour discipline that emerged in the dictatorship period.

Hopefully, those same social movements will be able to do something about the growing inequality, before it gets much worse.

Third zone or third way?

I don't normally reprint or link much to the IMF (no, I'm not talking about the International Metalworker's Federation), but there is a short article over there that I read which I found myself agreeing with in a very mild and mediocre way. The article, Korea: In Search of a New Compact, by Un-Chan Chung, Professor at Seoul National University's School of Economics, shows that some Korean economists themselves are no longer towing the line on free markets. I agree with two of his points, (1) that it important not to make a fetish of liberalization and (2) that economies need some form of regulation and promotion of social needs to grow.

However, Chung is not making a call for a new deal here (even though he does allude to social safety nets), much less does he seem in favor of any democratic socialist alternatives, but it is interesting to note the loss of confidence in free market ideology in recent years by economists, right-wing pundits (here I'm thinking of Fukuyama and not Chung whom seems more of a moderate, perhaps even mild Keynesian), and even CEO's, who have turned to concepts such as trust and social capital in order to explain some of the characteristics that make economies grow -- but by often approaching their solutions in fairly undemocratic and harmful methods (ill advised charity schemes, sloppy wars of intervention, corporate welfare). I think it is very interesting that there has been this turn to supposedly 'external' or social factors to see how markets work. Now if only they would turn to the politics of power and production in society for some deeper insight.

UPDATE: Well it seems that Chung Un Chan, is none other than the former Seoul National University president Chung Un Chan, who seemed prominent in these discussions of a new centrist or a 'third zone' candidate for president as an alternative between URI and the GNP that have been taking place more recently. Hence, from the lightness of his critique in the above article I suppose he isn't much different from other candidates in Uri, except for the fact that his isn't from Uri which was his appeal to begin with. Thus the difference between the liberal Uri, the third zone and perhaps 'the third way' are not so different, increasingly the upcoming election seems to be one between neo-liberalism hard (neo-con and old-con GNP) or soft (liberal DP and old Uri). Then again, then again, as examples of the variety of 'actually existing neoliberalism' might show us, these differences may have serious consequences both economically and geo-politically (to follow some of the logic in yesterday's post).

The lost decade, Roh Myu Hyun and the Left, Samsung's dodgy ownership

Things seem politically very ripe these days, especially with the twentieth anniversary of the June Uprising which has led to a number of assessments about Korean politics and has brought more attention to the problem of economic inequality.

These factors, combined with the ongoing presidential candidate campaigns make for a lot of interesting news. Though conservative candidates stayed away from commemorations of the uprising, they certainly have tried to weigh in on the dismal economic record of the last ten years and have come to regard it as the the 'lost decade,' which they have come to blame on the incompetence of the ruling 'leftist' forces. Note that they are neither apt to blame the flawed application of either neo-liberal or state-led economic policies (the older model) for this, nor are they apt to suggest strong alternatives. Even the new right does not seem to offer a strong alternative to current economic policies, even though they make so much of dictator Park Chung Hee's legacy.

A recent article in the Hankyoreh quotes key conservatives commenting to this to this effect:

Rep. Kim Hyeong-oh, the [GNP's] floor leader, said, "For the ten years from 1997 to this year, a so-called left-wing camp has ruled, and we call this period a ‘lost decade.’ During this period, we lost our national identity, future vision, and growth momentum," he said.

Potential candidate Park Geun-hye, a former head of the GNP, has said, "Let’s recover the past ten years through a change of political power.

The former president Kim and current president Roh , and other members of the democratic reform camp -- whom I would not label as leftists by the way -- have bounced back that the last decade was not a lost but recovered decade.

Former president Kim, in a June 9 speech to commemorate the pro-democracy movement, also denounced the argument of the ‘lost decade.’ "[The past ten years] is not a ‘lost decade,’ but a ‘recovered decade’ that has let people regain the democracy lost over the preceding half-century," he said.

I'm not going to weigh in deep on these issues just yet (I've got a lot of dissertation work to do at the moment), so I'll just link to things here, but I will say that it is very interesting that neither side has attempted to address head on the flaws of neoliberal economic policy but instead blame it different ruling factions.

For example, Roh also raised the issue of the pro-dictatorship camp responsibility in the 1997 crisis as a counterattack against conservatives but fails to offer very clear reflections on the current problems.

"The economic crisis in 1997 was prompted as old systems under authoritarian rule, such as government-ordered finance and economy, weren’t rapidly reformed and repaired," the president said. "Throughout a perfect change of political power, a perfect democratic government swiftly and thoroughly overcame the crisis."

As for myself, I would agree with the first sentence that the old system of authoritarian rule (which had been considerably liberalized by 1994 by the way) was problematic, but that the way in which they were reformed also led strongly to the current economic problems Korea is facing.

Anyways, you can hear more of Roh's perspective on this debate in a recent long interview he did with Hankyoreh. The interview is interesting because Roh gets defensive about the critique that the actual left have made of his economic policies, which he then tries to make the left responsible for by not coming up with alternatives.

Actually, there seems to be a very strong error of mistaking or making fuzzy exactly what is left and right in Korea these days. For example, some recent editorials by both new rightists and old leftists (most surprisingly, Paik Nak Jung) end up calling for a new centrism. You will find that what happens in these articles, and Roh's comments, is very confusing but comes down to this: the 'right' defines the left on its opinions toward North Korea and activist past but blames them for the current economic woes without analyzing these woes in terms of neo-liberal politics itself -- thus calling for something that is more centrist than the left as a cure (but to move to the center from neoliberalism should mean more to the left in our conventional understanding); the 'left', in this case, and here I mean PNJ, basically seems to accept some of the realities caused by neoliberal economic policies but calls for a centrism based on an attitude for continued engagement with the north. Two very different arguments thus end up calling for something the same thing. So, pardon my pun, what exactly is left in this situation? What are the differences between (new) right and old left here?

Yikes, makes you kind of crazy, the bigger irony is that the right wing column above, enlists Cho Hee Yeon's (who certainly knows why and how he is left) criticism of Roh Myu Hyun's economic policies (which indeed are to the right) to advocate for this centrist alternative (though Cho Hee Yeon himself, and indeed correctly in our conventional understanding, argues for a left project).

It's enough to make your head spin. Basically, what I'm trying to say here is that liberals (and maybe some old, or nationalist, leftists) and new conservatives are fighting over the issues on which there is relatively little disagreement with them in terms of ideology (in practice there are key distinctions I would say, the right are more like the US neo-cons and I don't think they embrace neoliberalism because they believe in it in the way that the liberals do). The left position, however, though so often named here in reference to the liberal Roh government, is actually not presented, or even imagined, except as critique of Roh which can be used to fortify the right wing (so long as it seems Roh rather than neoliberalism is to blame).

Anyways, this could be a lot clearer, but things get messy when you try to put yourself into the head of some of the above editorials.

I think elsewhere it would be good to explore these vicissitudes: obviously there are both hawkish and pro-engagement neo-cons, just as there are leftists and liberals who embrace a TINA (there is no alternative) approach to neo-liberalism and those that devise alternative proposals. Finally, granted, there may be a few rightists out there who actually believe in neoliberalism or state intervention as a genuine philosophy of growth rather than as a way to appeal to business groups in cronyist fashion (I'm least sure of this, however).


...
FYI, on a kind of unrelated note, if you are interested in little more about how parts of the old system survive in the new -- in this case corruption within the family led firms -- you can read a quick column by Kim Jin Bang on Samsung's dodgy ownership structure. In my opinion, this stuff is important because it shows sizable influence of the family conglomerates over the Korean economy (and politics) in general. Unfortunately, this kind of research is often used as an excuse to deepen neo-liberal reform, while myself I think there is an opportunity here to think about how transparency issues such as these can be useful for encouraging different, more democratic forms of corporate structure beyond either family or shareholder controlled organizations. How about a tripartite managed fund as a penalty for dodgy practices or, I'm being cheeky here, in the case of Samsung, since they are so anti-union, I think the assignment of shares to worker and community centered groups would be poetic justice for such malpractice.

Pohang Unionists Released

From the Building and Woodworkers International:

Yoo Ki Soo, General Secretary of the KFCITU Released after 10 Months

Yoo Ki Soo, the General Secretary of the Korean Federation of Construction Industry Trade Unions (KFCITU) was released on 23 May 2007 after spending close to ten months in prison for participating in a demonstration in support of the strike conducted by the Pohang local union last August 2007. In addition to Yoo Ki Soo, three members of the Pohang local union - Jin Nam Soo, Ji Kap Ryul, and Chin Kyu Man - were released as well. The four who had originally been sentenced to prison terms of two years to two years and six months were released on probation after the union had appealed the original sentence.

Although the union is extremely pleased with the release of the four whose only crime appears to be fighting for the right of South Korean construction workers to exercise their right to strike and collective bargaining, the union is mindful of the fact that thirteen trade unionists still remain in prison related to strikes conducted by the Pohang local union in 2006 and the Ulsan local union in 2005. It should be noted that the President of the Pohang local union, Lee Ji Kyung was sentenced to a very long term of three years and six months and it is unlikely that he will be released until 2010.

The union wants to express is gratitude to BWI and its affiliates for their consistent support and requests that you remember the other thirteen still in jail.

[Note] You can read our coverage of last year's Pohang Strike here and here.

What I've been reading

I've been away a bit lately so haven't been doing much posting. I'll try to put up a few things near the end of this week, but for now, here is the link to a series of pieces in the Hankyoreh on the twenty year anniversary of the 1987 June Uprising, enjoy.

Cheonggye vendors to be displaced again?

I read this story about the displaced Cheonggye vendors who now inhabit the old Dongdaemun Stadium grounds in the Hankyoreh last week. Seems the government has decided to turf them out yet again to make way for a new park proposal.

For these vendors, the demolition moves represent yet another in a long line of broken promises from the Seoul government. This was not their original place of work: they were moved here from the Hwanghak-dong flea market after former Seoul city mayor Lee Myung-bak implemented a restoration project of the Cheonggye stream in 2003. At that time, the vendors believed the former mayor’s pledge to build a world-renowned flea market. However, the pledge changed shortly after incumbent mayor Oh Se-hoon took office in May last year, as one of Oh’s campaign promises was to build a park and a design center nearby Dongdaemun.

The above mentioned flea market idea had been met with a lot of support from both grassroots groups and intellectuals like Cho Myoung Rae, an urban scholar who helps run a research institute on urban issues and city development.

Anyways, I seemed to recall Christian, of CINA blog fame, wrote a bunch of dispatches from that struggle back in 2004 when the vendors were originally displaced as part of the Cheonggye stream restoration (read: building of world's largest fountain, or pumped in stream). The city hired some kind of mafia to do the actual work of displacement which generated a great deal of public support for the vendors, and the ramshackle idea of accommodating them in the unused stadium, especially after violent confrontations between vendors, police, and hired thugs escalated (video) into the end of November of that year.

Matt, over at gusts of popular feeling, has posted some pics and opinions showing the redevelopment of the area that the vendors used to inhabit, which has proceeded quite quickly since 2004. If I have time in the coming week, I'll try to post a bit on the political economy of redevelopment, which I've tried to discuss a bit on this blog earlier, as more money is sunk into the Seoul property markets and the city creates various projects to attract it. Some people cynically brand this a approach a new style of developmentalism, but as we can see, especially from matt's post and the others, it is one that benefits few.


The new Lotto palace going in near where most of the vendors used to work.

FTA Renegotiation?

Here's the link to a story in the Hankyoreh, seems there is a big possibility that the Kor-US FTA will have to be re-negotiated to better take into consideration a number of labour and environmental issues. Seems like a good chance to bring better attention to other parts of the deal.

Max Baucus, chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, said that recent FTAs with four nations including South Korea should contain the five core standards set forth by the International Labor Organization (ILO); namely, the right to organize, the right to bargain collectively, and bans on child labor, forced labor, and employment discrimination.

Financial and Industrial Capital, the Chaebol, and the GNP

Here's a very interesting story about one area of agreement between the right wing presidential candidates as well as some particular types of economic nationalists: this is the issue of Chaebol ownership of financial institutions such as banks and other lending bodies. Traditionally, a separation of finance and industry is considered necessary to avoid 'moral hazard' issues that could lead to economic crises. Obviously, for the writers of this blog, the economic areas that we usually discuss issues such as moral hazard are mostly in terms of workplace and societal relations, but for mainstream economists these issues are mostly confined to who owns what. It should be no surprise then that the right wing (and occasionally some former left wing nationalists as well) have come out in support of the chaebol's right to own banks.

Now, some of the chaebol's complaints about reverse discrimination against Korean firms are legitimate in terms of the way in which parts of the banking system were preferrentially sold off to foreign speculative funds to whom Korea's restrictions on voting rights and ownership of financial and non-financial firms did not apply, but it should be remembered that the crucial exception that was made here was between foreign and domestic capital and not between foreign capital vs. the chaebol. A key distinction to keep in mind. The chaebol and the right here are mainly turning a criticism of what was a genuinely bad policy move into something that suits their interests in a way that would give them even more control over resources than they have now.

Jeon Seong-in, a professor of Hongik University, makes an astute comment in the article:
"They are plainly talking about transferring bank ownership to the conglomerates.'' "(The so-called presidential hopefuls) worry about the future of domestic financial industry and cite Lone Star Funds, but this problem was not caused because Lone Star represents foreign capital, but because a bank fell into the hands of a non-financial company. They may have correctly recognized a problem, but it is as if they have come up with the wrong solution. ''

I think this is the right step towards a larger debate on what to do about financial sectors as a whole, at the moment the banking sector is overwhelmingly foreign owned, but even where the government owns banks it runs them in the same way, investing in mostly speculative ventures like mortgage and consumer credit -- though they have now begun privatizing Woori bank which they own the majority stake in at the moment. Here one needs a critique of financial capital and what it does, not simply foreign vs. domestic capital. What could the government do to better allocate funds that create jobs, that don't go to environmentally wasteful investments or corrupt firms, and in way in which the public has more than a modicum of democratic input. Some people think that projects like the Ha Soon fund are the answer here, based upon investment in companies with strong shareholder rights, but I am also skeptical about this too. I would rather see money go to firms that respect their unions and workers or to other redistribution enhancing institutions rather than simply a firm with a good relation to its shareholders. Anyways, that's just my opinion.

Raw deal FTA

From a post over at the IKTU blog, I noticed that Tim Shorrock has a good piece in counterpunch on the FTA between America and Korea that situates it within a history of US intervention. Here's a sample:

The FTA cannot be seen apart from U.S.-South Korean security ties, the presence in South Korea of more than 30,000 US troops and a 50-year economic relationship that has been heavily weighted towards American interests. From this perspective, the FTA is the fourth attempt by the United States to force its economic will on South Korea over the past half-century. By rejecting it, we can reject the flawed policies of corporate globalization while embracing a new relationship with the Korean people at the same time.

Shorrock also keeps an interesting blog, link.

Trip to the Kaesong Industrial Complex

A while ago I mentioned that I was able to visit the Kaesong Industrial Complex in North Korea. I haven't had much time since then to sit down and write up my reflections, but I have to give a short presentation on it in a few days so I thought I would put up a rough draft of my presentation as well as some pictures. Any comments, of course, would be highly appreciated as well.

Labour in an experimental space: work and politics in the Kaesong Industrial Complex

This is the event: Urban Studies Symposium: Social Justice, Neoliberalism, Cities: Methodologies and Open Questions. Date: Saturday, May 5, 2007 Location: Room C475, UBC Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Vancouver, Canada

Before starting this presentation, I’d just like to remind people that the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the topic of this presentation, is not the major focus of my own research, which deals more with neo-liberal restructuring in South Korea and the reactions from social movements of various sorts. That said, the KIC represents to me an interesting problem, conditioned as it is by social movement history and capitalist crisis in the South, as well as changing geopolitical and neoliberal trends and topographies in the Northeast Asian region. Thus, it seems important for me to have some understanding of where the project fits in to my own research and with some wider discussions about enclave capitalism and changing labour regimes on the peninsula.

Right off the bat this brings up a few questions that I’m not exactly prepared to answer in this presentation but where I think discussion could be generated. The first is the question of the urban as a preferred space for neoliberal rescaling in the West versus the importance of quasi or non-urban regulatory units, such as free trade and export processing zones, to post-socialist and/or post-developmentalist forms of growth in East Asia. The only thing that I will say about this debate here is that ‘zonal projects' and other forms of neo-liberal enclaves have to be seen relatively to the restructuring and support given to them at different scales which make these strategies highly contingent. This is important because I believe there is a tendency to focus on these projects as constituting something of their own set of autonomous transnational spaces, with capital free to move between them, when, actually, in my opinion there are important ways in which these projects feed back into different national dynamics that are crucial to consider. The second question I would like to raise is more methodological, and that is the difficulty in clarifying some issues surround workplace regimes in places such as those that I am about to describe where access to workers and the spaces of their daily lives is difficult for any researcher to gain access to, to say the least.

These two questions in mind, I think it is best to first approach the KIC from the perspective of how it fits into the trajectory of neoliberal reforms and popular struggles in South Korea. Here, the KIC must be seen alongside a number of restructurings and transnational projects that the South Korean state has been undertaking as of late: these include liberalizations targeting national laws and institutions, especially those based around labour, trade, and finance, as well more ‘spatially selective’ projects from the selling off of state enterprises, to the setting up of Free Economic Zones, and the acceleration of international recruitment and management of migrant labour. That said, though in the wake of these reforms, the South Korean state has been looking for a new ‘spatial fix’ for the country’s small and mid sized enterprises, which have been suffering from some of the wider effects of economic globalization, the project should not simply be reduced to the imperatives of any one single group.

More importantly, the Kaesong Industrial Complex comes out of the Korean government’s unification policies and is many ways a sincere attempt to create mutual linkages and exchanges between the two Koreas that are relatively autonomous from other global security initiatives and geopolitical adventures. Albeit, support for the project is conditioned by a particular kind of nationalism that is important to point out. Pro-unification policies have long been a rallying cry of South Korean social movements, including both those within the nationalist left (or NL) movements as well as other tendencies and NGOs who may have other priorities but in general favor exit from cold war social and political configurations. This is in a sense why social movements in Korea are very reticent about criticizing North Korean Human Rights issues, including the potential conflicts around labour issues in the KIC, even while successfully organizing against the degree of exception offered in special economic zone projects in the South. Even members of the left moderate faction of the labour movements as well as members of other non-NL labour movement tendencies are very cautious here. Only member of what is called the ultra-left faction – a position more akin to classical syndicalism – tend to criticize the zone as, at best, a capitalist-led peace initiative. One concern that each perspectives does share though is around the interest the zone is receiving from both South Korean conglomerates and multi-national corporations. A number of South Korean grassroots groups do not want to see the zone become another runaway factory zone like those one sees in other regions like Southeast Asia. Thus support from Korean civil society is highly contingent to say the least.

The project is also part of the legacy of the Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun presidencies, both having a legacy in the democracy movement and both of whom have been highly critical of large domestic conglomerates. Thus, the Kaesong complex, though developed in partnership with Hyundai-Asan, is designed to benefit small and mid-sized Korean firms having trouble competing with low wage light manufacturing firms in China and Southeast Asia. The cost of labour in the zone is only $57 US a month (with other incentives that may increase this number up to 100), and land rent and infrastructure are very cheap. Albeit, the work process is still labour intensive as complicated industrial technology such as lasers and heavy chemicals are forbidden under the proliferation security initiative that South Korea has signed.

I was fortunate enough to visit the area in March of 2007 on a tour organized for foreign government and business groups. As of late the Korean government has been scheduling plenty of tours to the KIC for both domestic and international politicians and business groups and is partially opening the complex up to foreign investment to help generate support. This is part of a wider effort to sell the project as an alternative form of engagement with the north and, even in the US, these efforts have won the support of politicians on both the right and left as a form of political cooperation and rehearsal for future interactions. The tour basically spent 6 hours in the area, but was a valuable ethnographic experience in that it allowed me to gauge some of the interests in the zone from foreign politicians and capitalists as well as some of the conditions on the ground.

First off, what I can say is that there is tremendous capitalist interest in the project. And with it comes some of the classic gender stereotyping and capitalist glee that we’ve seen in runaway factory zones in South East Asia. Conversing with a few members of the EU chamber of commerce about the foreign interest in the project one of them said to me: “You see, the North Koreans, they possess very special finger skills, much better than the Chinese or Malaysians or Filipinos.” “Yes, and they only cost $US 57 a month,” chimed in his Colleague. This cliché, a kind of gendered nationalism, is also repeated in a different way by a left-liberal South Korean daily newspaper, the Hankyoreh, which runs flash ads in support of the project on both its English and Korean internet pages. The text running over the images of female factory workers in their ads (pictured below) reads: “At their diligent fingertips a hopeful future is being molded.” Here, women workers, by their labour, are seen ‘nurturing the economy’ for peace and re-unification. So, a particular scenario is set up here that gives these workers a epic task without inquiring into why they have been assigned it.

At the moment, the KIC project is only open to Korean small and mid-sized businesses but foreign firms are allowed to pursue joint-ventures with these companies, part of the reason that this trip was organized was to explain some the procedures around this. During a presentation by the KIC Joint Management Committee, foreign business members were very interested in learning what the regulatory hurdles were to opening up shop here. Many were dismayed about restriction on higher technology machine goods, and a number of lawyers from multinational law firms were also present to ask about infrastructure contracts and intellectual property regulations. When one journalist asked about how much workers are paid and whether it is verifiable that the workers receive this pay I heard one businessman exclaim: “that is the sort of question that only a journalist would ask!”

Actually the issue of labour control and of wages is very important and is this goes back to my second concern mentioned above. The joint management committee could not offer a satisfactory answer as to whether the workers were being paid the stated wages, nor could a scholar engaged in inter-Korean projects that I interviewed. The committee asserted that though the North Korean government kept the cash for foreign exchange, workers were paid in NK won and extra rations. The scholar told me that as far as he knew, productive workers were compensated well, as the North Korean government is very interested in the production process. In fact, it is possible that at the moment working at the KIC may be indeed be a form of privilege, 2/3 of the workers are from Pyongyang and the others are from Kaesong, so we are not talking about the bottom of the North Korean social structure here.

The workers that I saw were between 20-45, I would guess, and this seems backed up by the official KIC stats. That said, they were thoroughly regimented and obviously told not to talk to anyone. This is in contrast to the North Korean managers who helped organize the tour. I could actually converse with them, in both English and Korean (well, at the low intermediate level that I can speak), so when our tour actually did get around to visiting some factories I was kind of in a surprised lull, used to conversing with our North Korean hosts who where very chatty, and expecting more of the same I said high to one or two of the workers – only to quickly rediscover that indeed this was regimented and disciplined social space that we had entered as they workers remained still or continued working. One of my informants on the KIC says that workers from the North and South do interact and a few South Korean workers who I talked to on the site said that the workers do take their breaks together or eat lunch together periodically. There have also been small labour conflicts in the complex, but these take place between the body that regulates North Korean workers and representatives from the South; however, there is not much room here for external monitoring of what happens in labour conflicts or indeed in industrial accidents. Little is known of actual individual cases rather than just general complaints. The North Korean military is also technically in charge of the area and they are there in some presence, though not in uniform. There is a hospital in the complex and it has been used by workers from both sides, but as to the long care needed for victims of serious accidents or even under what regulatory framework this and other conflicts would be dealt with is all guess work due to the ad hoc nature of the project. Obviously some solid, gender sensitive ethnographic work with these workers would be quite useful here but at the moment it is nearly impossible to organize.

This is not to say that however, that gross violations of workers dignity have occurred or will frequently emerge in the complex, but the potential is there. Actually, for the moment the factories and infrastructure are nicer than any light manufacturing area I’ve visited in the South, and miles ahead of the attic and basement sweat shops owned and run by subcontractors around Dongdaemun market in Seoul. There are also plans to expand the complex up to and including Kaesong city, encompassing eventually up to 350,000 workers. Though my guess is that this will not happen without some substantial thaw in North Korea's internal social system. Thus, for the moment the complex remains a highly experimental space where, at the moment, we have very few ways of knowing how these workers lives are regulated, especially in everyday North Korean society, except for a few snapshots and an analysis of the larger contingencies that shape the project that I’ve tried to describe above. Thus, even the ability of companies to profit from what seems a highly regimented and gendered workforce operating at a convergence of South Korean capitalism and North Korean one-party state socialism is contingent on the support it receives as a unification project as well as the ‘zone of confusion’ that lies around workers rights there. However, if none of the ill effects of either social structure are not bracketed with some sense of individual agency and collective rights, I do not think the future of this project will be very bright for the workers involved.
(Picture of Hyundai founder Chung Ju Young with Kim Jong Il and perhaps one of Chung's son's, this photo was hanging up at Hyundai Asan's headquarters in the KIC)

Actually, a final point, about the need for a better imagination for projects such as these, can be directed towards those that say North Korean workers can gain a chance at a better bio-politics – meaning in this case better standards of consumption goods and personal care -- through engaging in spatially selective ways with market formations – a position repeated by some prominent scholars. Though I can sympathize and understand why some scholars might make these claims, I think it is important to look into what might be the regulation on the ground and try to imagine what a better imagination for such projects might be, one that better considers under what a fuller sense of freedom might mean for these workers both in their own terms and in the perspective of peace and re-unification. For it is possible to criticize or re-imagine such projects without falling into the kind of discourse over rights that resonates with hawkish American foreign policy. But at the moment this is impeded by both a gendered nationalism and a thick zone of confusion and exception around these workers' daily lives and their rights in the workplace.

(c)left Jamie Doucette 2007, thx to S. Kress for the Photos

SER on the Hanhwa fight fiasco

There is a cheeky article in the Hankyoreh which I think is illustrative on how social movements have changed Korean society, even if only towards more liberal democratic than democratic socialist or other directions.

It seems that Hanhwa group chairman Kim Seong Yeon sent a few company bodyguards to rough up some bartenders that had beat up his son, thus getting himself into a bit of legal trouble. The interesting thing here is that when he tried to use the company's lawyers to clear it up, the NGO Solidarity for Economic Reform (SER)-- which emerged out of People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, and which pursues shareholder activism in order to curb the power of the domestic chaebol (often inadvertantly supporting financial takeovers but that is another story) -- got on the case and the Hanhwa group had to quickly recant and say that the chairman would use his own money to defend his case.

As new labour law takes effect, dodgy contracts proliferate

[Update: May 3rd] There is a good follow up story to the one below in the Hankyoreh about how rife the abuse of labour standards is in the government itself, extending to just about every ministry, from justice to even the Ministry of Labour.

Cheon Ok-ja, 61, has done the cleaning at Kyunggi Girls High School for 22 years. On February 28, the school suddenly forced her sign a two-month contract. The school said that it would outsource its cleaning needs. When Cheon refused to sign the contract, the school refused to allow her to enter the school. She says she begged school authorities for her job back but to no avail.

Here's a good story in today's Hankyoreh about the sort of practices that are beginning to take effect before South Korea's law on irregular work takes place. The law, which was not exactly designed to protect irregular workers, ends up encouraging a range of bad practices. Workers who have worked at a company for more than two years are supposed to be given regular work status, but, with the exception of a few workers that the government regularized, instead many are being forced short term contracts. Formally, the bill is supposed to end discrimination between regular and irregular workers, whom at the moment can do the same job under the same roof but for different pay and benefits. What the bill seems to be creating, however, is a situation where those jobs can just be outsourced or contracted all together, thus further expanding inequality. Cheon Ok-ja's case is just one example of such.

KCTU's report to US congress on Kor-US FTA

[Update: Interlocals has a related report on Copyright provisions in the FTA from Korean NGOs, link]

I'm not sure if I linked to this report yet but it might be a helpful resource to some. Seems that back in March the KCTU made a report to the US Congress on the potential negative impact of the Korea-US FTA. I'm not sure what the revised assessment would be, but from the results of the negotiations that we published earlier, and in the wake of the suicide of Heo Se-wook in protest of the agreement, the potential for harm is still pretty strong. The report is pretty comprehensive and details not simply the macro-economic impact of such a deal but also the effects upon three individuals already affected by the expansion of neo-liberal policies on the peninsula. Keep in mind that as a condition for the Korea-US FTA to even begin negotiations, the Korean government made big concessions on drugs, rice, and the domestic film industry.

National Human Rights Commission on Yeosu Fire

Over at the NHRC page they have some results from their first ex-officio investigation into the Yeosu fire.

On April 9, the NHRCK released its findings from the investigation, stating that the fire deaths of a number of migrant workers at a government immigration office were a grave violation of human rights. Considering the importance of the case, the Commission decided to launch an ex officio investigation and subsequently reported its findings as below. In light of its findings, the NHRCK expressed regret to the minister of justice for his failure to implement its earlier recommendation to amend the Immigration Control Act (legal nature of custody, government employees’ obligation to give notice against illegal immigrants , etc.) and made the following recommendations.

Though there is certainly a bunch of legalese to read through, the NHRC report is pretty substantive (and hopefully there is more coming) criticizing not simply the state of the facilities and the reactions of the guards on duty at the time, but also many of the institutional procedures that produced the fire such as the lack of a process for dealing with unpaid wages, deportation of fire victims, failure of immigration officials to notify migrants of detention orders ahead of time (rather than after they are detained -- which is what happens to 99% of detainees -- encouraging immigration officials to nab migrants first and ask questions later), etc. Of course, larger denunciations are still in order, but this is a nice first step. Hopefully it will spur larger reflections on the situation faced by migrants in the country, but a lot of work is still needed to look into the denial of rights to migrants in everyday spaces rather than simply exceptional moments. Nonetheless, reports like this are helpful.

Next Cinema Seoulidarity: Conscientious Objectors in Korea

virginia tragedy, Canada Korea FTA, saemangum, etc

I've been rather nomadic the last little while and have not been able to keep up with posting. But here are a few things of note.

First, in the wake of the Virginia shooting, the Hankyoreh has some more interesting articles on Cho Seung Hui, , and the problems of understanding this incident and what it means for Koreans and Americans alike, especially the 1.5 generation.

Second, Korea - Canada FTA negotiations will start ramping up soon. This is all part of the Korean governments strategy of signing as many FTA's as possible all at once. A homegrown form of shock therapy if you will.

Third, the environment idiocy that is the Saemangum project has succeeded in throwing nature out of balance. No surprise there.

Fourth, Ho Sea-uk, who immolated himself in protest of the Korea- US FTA was buried on the 19th.

Fifth, good piece here on the continuing fallout from the Yeosu fire.

Finally, the KTU issued this dispatch to keep OECD countries monitoring Korean labour relations.

migrants, labour relations, FTA

I was up early this morning (jet lag) and finally had a chance to update myself on some current issues, courtesy of the online English version of the Hankyoreh -- my favorite English resource on Korea these days.

Yeosu tragedy

First is a sad but biting story on the return of survivors of the Yeosu Fire to their home countries.

There was no one at the airport to see off the 17 wounded in the fire, leaving with their families two months after the conflagration. At that time, here were a large number of reporters covering the accident in Yeosu, but the situation was completely different on the surviving workers' final day in Korea. They still had wounds from the fire, and 10 million won (US$10,700) in compensation provided by the Korean government.

The migrants and their families held a 1.5 hour sit-in at the airport in order to get medical certificates to allow their re-entry. I don't think they were successful. The Korean government hurried to settle the incident, less than two months after it occurred. The workers, meanwhile, are still traumatized and injured: "I am suffering from nightmares and my hands shake uncontrollably. I have chronic, serious headaches and dizziness," said Park Cheol-yong, an ethnic Korean from China.

Of course, quickly packing the migrants back to their home countries with 10k will keep them out of the limelight in SK and make it more difficult to launch a systematic investigation or inquiry into the incident. One cynical bureaucrat simply told reporters that sending these migrants back was in the 'national interest', removing them at dawn from Yeosu the same day that a preparatory team for the World Expo 2012.

Labour Relations

Local groups are also complaining about the possibility of the OECD suspending labour monitoring in South Korea. It has been monitoring the labour situation there for 10 years now and the government wants it to stop, citing compliance with some of the OECD and ILO standards. However, groups complain that the situation is worsening and site an increase in imprisoned unionists as proof. Labour rights are also an issue with the FTA, and US democrats want to see the release of imprisoned unionists and a firmer commitment to labour rights included in the FTA. The writer also mentions that "if the government changes its position over the issues after renegotiations with the U.S., people will think the South Korean government easily yields under pressure from the US." Now I'm not sure if this is his opinion or if he is being merely descriptive, but I don't think labour issues are the ones that show that the SK government easily yields to pressure from the US. Funny that this concern wasn't always raised by the media on the concessions that Korea made in almost every single area of the agreement. Hmmmmm....

Anti-FTA groups lose funding

Finally, a story on the Ministry of Government and Home Affairs pressuring local governments to deny funding to NGOs that participated in Anti-FTA rallies. MOHAGA certainly loves to intervene in politics, as was witnessed by their crackdown against the Korean government employees union last fall -- one source of said concern by US dems cited above-- but, anyways, the ministry used participation at illegal rallies as their criteria for denying groups funding.

In response, civic activists said that given that nearly all rallies against the ROK-U.S. FTA have been arbitrarily declared illegal by the police, the government are apparently targeting the civic groups opposing the FTA.

Im Yeong-mi, an official at People's Coalition for Media Reform, said the new measure is targeting groups opposing the FTA with the U.S. "How can the Participatory Government restrict subsidies for the groups for expressing views different from those of the government?'' he said.

Here's the link.

in transit, slowish posting

I'm in the middle of a move (again) at the moment, so things may be a bit slow here until the 12th as I don't have reliable internet access and am busy with the move. I'll try to post more on some of the current debates over what to do with the FTA now that negotiations are over. Also, I've yet to post on the topic yet, but I was able to visit the Kaesong Industrial zone last month and have some long overdue reflections to post on that experience. Perhaps Matt will contribute some more posts till I get back...

More soon...

FTA deal reached, future of Korean capitalism

Well, the FTA negotiations are over, going to the last hour (US time) Monday night. Like we had predicted here, earlier, the exclusion of the rice market was the deal maker. However, reforms to the rice market were made before negotiations were even started and there are a number of different mechanisms under which this is already happening (APEC's Bogoi Target is one). Protests continued late into the night (Korean time) on Sunday, after the worst yellow dust storm this year. During the afternoon a taxi driver immolated himself in front of the Hyatt Hotel where the negotiations were taking place. The Hankyoreh has a little on this, but they date the incident as March 1st rather than April 1st -- either as a mistake or perhaps this happened twice.

The Korea times has a number of articles up on the FTA, this one outlines some of the 'give and take' in the negotiations, link. It's still not clear to me however, what happened to Investor-State Dispute mechanisms and GATS provisions over indirect expropriation that one normally sees in things like this. I'll keep reading to see what I can find. I'm sure this will come out over time. This Korea times article is also quite odd, celebrating, I take it, the opening of Korea to a more anglo-saxon model. Unfortunately, have a trade agreement (trade agreements are never free) with the US does not equate with having an entirely new economic model. Singapore, for example, has one with the US and they are still quite mercantalist (a look at the at the assets held by Temasek, a state-owned financial corporation from Singapore, should be enough to dispel that myth).

Anyways, there perhaps a case to be made that elements of stock market capitalism are making headways in South Korea, but one should be cautious here. The Chaebol system is still dominated by its core families and attempts to restructure it have not been effective. Chaebol system of not, Korean society is now starting to see some of the dynamics experienced from neoliberalism in other countries. This weeks news was noteworthy as it announced that Samsung will be moving the production of one of its more high tech chips to china, and STX shipbuilding is also building a 1 billion dollar plant there. I'm not sure if these are grounds for an argument about de-industrialization, but it is noteworthy.

I'm also curious about what the FTA will mean for Korean labour practices. The US Democrats scolded the Korean government just before the deal was reached. Whether or not this means that Korea will come up to ILO and OECD standards in its dealings with civil servant unions and union pluralism remains to be seen.