Happy MLK Day..

And to celebrate this day, I provide you a small clip from Meet The Press over a year ago featuring Michael Dyson. The clip features an interview of MLK discussing the segregation in churches and Dyson highlights how many Black Church leaders like Jeremiah Wright follow the same traditions and analysis MLK brought to his sermons. Considering how many people frequently liberalize MLK and "soften" his image to a nice moderate integrationist, it is important we understand these aspects of his life so we can truly understand MLK's impact and influence in America.

Lack of updates..

I apologize for the lack of updates since about mid-December. Recently I've had problems finding stuff to write and what direction to take this blog. When I originally started this blog, I was going on with the plan of going to Korea and doing alot of posting about the stuff I see there. Unfortunately, my trip there has been delayed indefinitely (I will not be there until March at the earliest) which has kinda thrown that plan out of the loop. I posted on numerous subjects earlier to help get me use to writing, but now I am struggling to figure out what to do.

As much as I like to focus on labor and social movements in Korea, the blog is kinda stagnant during down turns especially when I am not there. I have thought about expanding it a bit to talk about Korean history or just Asian issues in general. I can also just make this a fairly broad blog that discusses numerous issues, from politics to video games which would make this blog more personal and allow for more updates, but really cost its focus.

I am going to think about it for a bit while, but I am wondering what you all think I should do. You are more wonderful audience afterall.

Getting life-saving transplants hard for mixed-race patients..

ABC news has a little article on organ donating and the problems mixed people face when needing these life-saving operations. You can check it out over here. I can only imagine this can be even more problematic for adaptees who might not be even completely aware of their background (Like me to some degree)

Hyundai union avoids strike for the first time...

For 15 straight years, the Hyundai Group Trade Union Council has gone on strike every year in protest of wage cuts, working conditions and numerous other issues. That streak ended this week as the Union agreed to wage freezes without going on strike. This has been actually fairly large news as I've seen numerous news groups reporting on the news event which should give you an idea on how militant the Hyundai Group Trade Union Council is historically.

This itself isn't that shocking if one has been paying attention to labor news. Earlier this year the Hyundai union voted in a more "moderate" union President who openly ran on the grounds he will be less political and hostile than previous leaders. Overall, there seems to be a major gutting of the militancy within Korea's auto-unions, traditionally a very militant workforce. Along with the stuff involving Hyundai, the gutting of the Ssangyong Union's militant union members also is going to have lasting impact on labor relations in the auto industry. How far this goes is still up in the air especially among the small domestic auto companies in Korea where militancy and class conflict is still common.

KORAIL union leader arrested...

In recent news that would only shock those who have not been paying attention to the news recently, the KORAIL union leader has been arrested for carrying out an illegal strike.

Expect news of the pending lawsuits to hit over the next few months and further arrests. Atleast there isn't any black cars randomly coming to peoples houses like in the good ol days.... yet.

Second English teacher union founded in Incheon

In an attempt to stop the numerous problems English teachers face in Korea, several teachers at a hagwon in Incheon have formed a union to deal with this issues. The idea of making a giant union for foreign English teachers has never been that popular in the ESL circle. Outside of the obvious high turnover problems, its pretty easy to see the government cracking down on such union due to the ambiguity of Korean law on what "political activity" actually means for foreign workers. ATEK in some ways is suppose to act like an alternative, but its history has been uneven in certain areas and seems to be more than a place where English teachers can meet up. For the most part, English teachers in Korea are pretty much left to their own devices even when it comes to clear violations of their contract. Even public jobs aren't guaranteed as the last minute canceling of numerous ESL teachers last August showed us. It is a cutthroat industry that can tarnish how someone views Korea permanently.

Multi-union law delayed, alliance over..

Last Friday, a last minute deal between the FKTU and Labor Ministry was reached that delayed implementation of the new labor laws until 2010. You can read about the deal here. Very few people are happy with what happened, from both business side and the KCTU. The KCTU has announced it will hold demonstrations against the new tripartite agreement. The Hankyoreh has a short interview with the KCTU chairman right here. Korea Times also has a decent article citing the breakup here. The KCTU was not aware of any negotiations and seems received the news the same way I did on Friday, by hearing it from the news.

Overall, this is a disaster and the worst realistic scenario imaginable. Not only is the labor movement completely blocked, it looks like this is going to be one of those issues that will tie up the movement for a while. This issue will be going on for around 15 years when this labor revision takes affect (assuming it passes the National Assembly). Out of all the issues within the Korean labor movement, this is not something we need to be spending 15 years on, especially when the government is still refusing to do its job on the irregular worker issue or when numerous major strikes are failing due to lack of support and state violence.

In other news, Korail is going to take major action against union members during the weeklong strike that took place about two weeks ago. The Labor Ministry also continued its war against public employee unions by refusing the application of the new integrated civil servant union, demanding more information on membership rules, how elections are run and demanded the chairman to send in a stool sample to show that his digestive system is not red. Some scotch sounds good right now

KORAIL strike called off...

After severely damaging the railway system and being constantly harassed by the state, the KORAIL union have decided to conditionally end the longest strike in the union's history. Time will tell why they decided to end the strike and if this is a good move; KORAIL was in the weaker position and many officials doubted KORAIL could last a long term strike.

In other news, the ILO has condemned the Korean government for its substandard labor laws involving irregular workers. They also continued the long tradition of condemning penal code 314 (which allows business to sue workers for obstruction of business), which has been on the ILO's list for one of the longest running complaints against any country (its been going on for ten years). For the full report by the body (as well as information on other countries) look here.

UPDATE:

Reuters has actually posted a nice and relatively long article on this news event. Unfortunately the news seems to be far more griming than what Korean news sources are reporting:

The union said it was suspending the strike temporarily to regroup, but management said it was effectively a surrender.

"We are calling on comrade members to briefly return to the workplace so we can prepare for a new strike," the union said in a statement. "We have not been able to achieve our demands."

Truckers join the railroad workers...

The current strike Korea Railway Worker's has gone on for over 5 days now, with no signs of it slowing down. While freight services have generally found ways to work around the strike, its been made clear that the union clearly has the advantage right now. On Monday (or Sunday over in the States), the KORAIL Workers got a major boost when the Korea Cargo Transport Workers' Union (KCTWU) announced they will refuse to ship freights during the strike. This news shouldn't be a major surprise to those familiar with the history of these two unions; the two unions have a long history of giving support to eachother during strikes.

In related news about 187 KORAIL union leaders will be summoned for interrogation or face arrest for creating an illegal strike. The union might also face a compensation law suit from KORAIL for the damages it has done so far (they've already lost 4.7 billion won within 5 days). This probably part of the on-going escalation being carried out by the state, as President Lee has announced that the government will not tolerate the strike.

Other links on the strike:

"Chaos looms as truckers join rail workers in strike" from the Korea Herald (also posted at Yonhap)
"Concerns grow as strike drags on" from the Korea Herald
"Strike paralyzes South Korea's rail services" from UPI Asia
"President orders stern action against striking public workers" from Yonhap

General strike looks inevitable...

Hope all my American readers had a nice holiday, meanwhile a couple major newsworthy events happened over the last few days. The biggest being collapse of last minute talks between the two major labor umbrella unions and the labor ministry.

However, Labor Minister Yim Tae-hee walked out of the conference room in Yeouido, Wednesday, saying, “There will be no more talks.” Lim is the point man for President Lee in labor affairs, vowing in public that Korea’s militant union movement is the most backward among advanced nations and poses a major threat to continued economic growth.

The KCTU said Thursday that they were not ready to back down.

“The government and businessmen give nothing but pain and toil to people. It’s time to hear the music,” it said in a press release. KCTU leader Lim Sung-kyu said that the organization was ready to go on strike.

The FKTU has already begin throwing its weigh around by occupying the GNP's headquarters Friday during a sit-in. To add more fuel to the fire, the Korean Railway Workers’ Union strike has also started bringing freight shipping in Korea to a stop. Expect more news after the weekend.

Government's bargaining plan for multi-union shops...

Last Friday, the labor ministry announced it's plan on how multi-union shops will handle collective bargaining. I should emphasize once again, that if I am reading correctly, that this is mandatory for all shops.

The Labor Ministry on Friday unveiled a plan in a meeting with labor unions and management at local enterprises to force labor unions within a single enterprise to have a negotiation channel with the management after the country begins allowing multiple labor unions next year.

...

The unification of the negotiation channel will come about in three steps. First, different labor unions within a company must agree upon a single negotiation channel seven to 20 days before they launch a negotiation. Second, if they fail to do so within the deadline, the union that has the largest membership will automatically be given the right to bargain. Third, should there be no union with a majority of members, the unions must form a collective negotiation delegation that will comprise members from different unions. In some cases, they could adopt a proportional representation system.

This is one of the most confusing and convoluted labor laws I have ever seen. First of all, how the heck do they expect trade unions to successfully negotiate on behalf for those in other skilled unions? Different areas of work have different issues and conditions to deal with that need to be brought up in these negotiations. Its not that big of a problem for industrial unions (in theory anyways) since hopefully the negotiators will be from different areas of the workforce to make sure their voice is on the table. I don't think even the best intentioned negotiator from a carpenter union can really represent the voice of someone from a truckers union.

Yes, I know technically these unions could come up with an arrangement to make sure this issue is worked out. Unfortunately this is a fairly big if as many unions have problems working together and its not unheard of for management to favor one over another in these dealings. I can see this easily happening if there is a union in a workplace whose membership greatly outweighs others.

The labor ministry has promoted a plan to prevent multiple labor unions from wielding excessive power in negotiations and to protect minority labor unions.

I don't know if this was the plan to protect them or the writer just got lazy here. Either way, this is going to be disastrous for small unions for the reasons I just stated.

Also, unionized workers will have to get the support of its entire union membership for any proposed industrial action, according to the ministry.

I have no clue what this means, but I am guessing they are going to try to push the legal threshold for collective actions to have an extremely high threshold to pass in union voting. I'll post more as soon as I find articles that explain this in detail more.

Ok, I lied...

And I am commenting on this two days later but forgive me. I did not get home until 5 am Tuesday.

I have been mentally chewing on the recent escalation issue for a while now, and have been talking to several people about this. Things have been escalating for a while now and has quickly gained international attention by both NGOs and even western media. As time goes by it is becoming less likely that this is just going to be another weak strike that took place in July but will be a revival of the labor uprising that took place during the 1997 financial crisis.

One of the little random tidbits I discovered during my studies is that there seems to be a giant upsurge of worker activity about every 10 years give or take since independence. The uprisings of 79, 87 and 96-97 being the most famous along with the frequently overlooked upsurges during the post-independence era and the April Revolution in 1960. I guess one can say Korea is due for another upsurge which should cause some hope for labor organizers in Korea.

The question that remains on the table is whether or not an upsurge would give labor in Korea its first major victory. All but the 96-97 movements ended with violent repression by the state. The strikes that started in 1997 ended with the Korean equivalent of Reuther's Treaty of Detroit (The unions would accept IMF's economic reforms in exchange for political recognition of the KCTU).

The Korean government has generally moved away from violent repression towards more legalistic and neoliberal policies to keep things under order. Any sort of informal peace treaties seem unlikely considering that President Lee does not have the connections and respect that Kim Dae-jung did with the labor movement. Because of this, I find myself a bit more optimistic than some of my colleagues that there will be some victory for organized labor in Korea this time around. South Korean society is not as capitalist as many people think it is and there still remains bitterness towards the IMF reforms. What the KCTU and FKTU need to do is (a.) paint the struggle in pure democratic and anti-neoliberal language instead of just economic and legal terms and (b.) let grassroots activism take shape and a be forefront of the struggle. If they don't, eh, we have to wait another ten years I guess.

TUAC comments on the current situation...

As things begin heating up over in Korea, with news about the Union for the environment ministry succeeding from the KCTU and the FKTU beginning to vote on a general strike. Too add further fire, the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD adopted a resolution that condemns the Korean government for their recent actions. Along with NPR's article covering the recent rallies (with beautiful photos too), the conflict has slowly quickly becoming an international event.

More on this tomorrow (currently out of town for a conference).

Large rallies held over last weekend...

This weekend proved to be a crazy time for Korean labor organizers as the KCTU and FKTU held a two day rally over the weekend. The Hankyoreh stated that over 50,000 people attended the rallies and the JoongAng Daily puts at it around 100,000 (with the FKTU providing 60,000).

In related news, the labor ministry has stated it will fine and blacklist any firms that go against the new labor laws when implemented in 2010. I guess government regulation on business is fine when it comes to attacking workers. It amazes me how hypocritical some of these policies are.

Memorial for In Soo Chun and ritual suicide

My three years of studying and working at the University of Washington has given me countless memories that I will probably never forget. One of these was during an event on October 30th of 2008 while I was working at my barista position on campus. Around the early afternoon while working at cashier, some guy walked up to us and stated that some guy had lit himself on fire in red square. Later on I would know the name of that In Soo Chun as many people would brush this action aside as a crazy mentally ill man. A year has since passed and numerous students and workers have decided to challenge that viewpoint and remember In Soo Chun.

Evaluating the meaning of In Soo Chun's actions is not exactly an easy thing to do. As the UW Daily pointed out, ritual suicide is a fairly common practice in Korean labor and was also a big part of the democracy movements during the 70s and 80s. The act of self immolation publicly also has a political history about it, rooting with Chun Tae-Il's self immolation back in 1970. Chun Tae-il quickly became a martyr for both the labor and democracy movements and many activists chose similar routes during their lifetimes.

The question remains is exactly HOW this act became so rampant throughout the movement. Unlike Japan, there isn't any sort of tradition ritual suicide in Korean history. To make things even more complicated many people who committed political suicide were also devoted Christians (Chun Tae-il was as devout as you can get) which condemns suicide as murder and a one-way ticket to hell. By Christian logic, Chun Tae-il paid the ultimate price with his soul for his sacrifice. Prof. Nam at the University of Washington told her class that there seems to be no known source for Chun's actions. None of his writings warn about this and he did not seem well aware of the Buddhists in Vietnam who performed self immolation to protest the Diem government.

Is the action just a symbolic "FU" as one commenter posted? Is it just an example of how the human mind and soul can only be pushed too far? Or is there something we are all missing? Its stuff like these that make mankind a creature of great mystery no matter how hard we try to "rationalize" things.

However, probably my biggest beef with the media and numerous commentators on the issue is the handeling of In Soo Chun's mental "instability." Now, there is definitely a good possibility that In Soo Chun infact did had mental and emotional issues; many people do and many of those people do not commit similar actions. However, I find this being used as kinda of an "excuse" or a way to paint In Soo Chun as a deranged lunatic disgusting and offensive. I know several custodians at UW who have medical conditions that effect their emotional and mental well being and have medical history to support this. UW for the most part has done nothing to follow through on doctor's recommendations creating major distress for these people.

UW is not the only organization that has this problem; this is a wide spread problem on many levels for anyone who has a medical disability. My mother (who is bipolar) always keeps her medical history silent as she knows that few places will keep a worker around that has recorded "mental problems." The disabled are easily among the most discriminated people in society world wide, and this is just another classic example of this. I have no clue about In Soo Chun's medical history, but if he did had some issues it should not be used as a put down nor as an excuse for his actions.

With that in mind, I shall end this with a post the best way I know how when dealing with death; a prayer straight from the Book of Common Prayer:

In the midst of life we are in death;
of whom may we seek for succor,
but of thee, O Lord,
who for our sins art justly displeased?

Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty,
O holy and most merciful Savior,
deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death.

Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts;
shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer;
but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty,
O holy and merciful Savior,
thou most worthy Judge eternal.
Suffer us not, at our last hour,
through any pains of death, to fall from thee.

News updates..

First, I must apologize for the lack of posts. I have been dealing with personal issues lately that kept me out of the loop for the short bit. Fortunately, there has been some notable events in the last week or so that are worth looking into:

-First the labor ministry has imposed a ban on certain ceremonies that civil servants can do during their official events. Usage of folk labor songs and chants are common at these events which apparently antagonizes the government and people.

-The Korea Railway Workers' Union has voted for a strike.

-Minu, a migrant worker activist from Nepal, has officially been deported from Korea. Minu was deported for his involvement in political activities which non-citizens are restricted from doing under Korean law (though they are fairly vague on what a political activity is). I haven't paid to much attention to migrant worker issues on this blog so far but I am going to try to keep a better eye on it from now on.

-The NHRCK is requesting an investigation on the possibility of police brutality during the Ssangyong occupation.

Now, moving away from labor related news...

-We are all aware of DPRK defectors.. but have you heard of defectors from ROK to the DPRK?

-In more positive news not only has the ROK government came out of the recession, but had the highest quarterly GDP growth since 2002.

-The ROK government will restart the sending aid to DPRK after a series of backdoor talks between President Lee and DPRK officials. Does this mean President Lee is a in-closet Communist?

-There was a few elections this week for some seats in the parliament and to the surprise of a few, the GNP did not do well.

-Probably the biggest news however is that the Constitutional Court has made a ruling on the media bill reforms. While they state that the GNP acted inappropriately and violated the voting rules, they will not overturn the passing of the bills. This ruling is fairly similar to what happened during the Roh impeachment issue where the court ruled that Roh was out of line, but did not throw him out office. As I mentioned in a previous post, this should have been expected.

Labor ministry refuses to recgonize KGEU

In an ongoing series of escalation, the Labor Ministry has announced it is refusing to acknowledge the newly formed KGEU. Furthermore, they are pushing threw a new amendment for the civil servant laws;

If the amendment is enacted, government employees and the government employee union would be prohibited from engaging in issuing public statements, endorsing petitions, participating in protests or assemblies, and advocating for the ideas of specific political parties. MOPAS explained, “Ever since government employees’ union issued public statements opposing government policy in daily newspapers and employees have been wearing vests with political slogans on them during working hours, employees have been in violation of the measure that requires the political neutrality of government employees.” MOPAS added that is adopt the new amendment in response to the union’s decision to join the umbrella of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU).

"Advocating for the ideas of specific political parties"? What the hell is wrong with the Labor Ministry? This is no longer a simple case of fighting over political neutrality, its becoming one of the most over the top legalistic attempts to crush unionization I have ever seen.

Even the relatively moderate Korea Times is stating that this is destructive so its not just the crazy left wing Hankyoreh. All I can say is... wow.

Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike!

As many people probably know by now Unions in Korea are not very happy about the Labor Ministry's plans to force through the new labor laws involving paid union members and multiple unions in one shop. What has been surprising though is that the biggest bullhorn in recent days has been from the FKTU, a more conservative pro-government federation, and not the KCTU. It looks like now that the dog poop has hit the fan, and the FKTU is now threatening a general strike.

"We regard the issue of multiple unions and salary ban as a matter of life and death for 16 million workers and will devote all our energy to fighting against it (revisions)," the FKTU said in a statement issued in the name of 652 representatives.

The FKTU agrees to having more than one union at a single work place but opposes government demands that only one of them be recognized as the negotiating partner with the management. It also argues that the government's "no work, no pay" principle undermines the union's important role as the mediator between workers and the management.

The labor association, which claims over 700,000 members nationwide, said they were abandoning a tripartite panel's agreement reached in February on "sharing the burden" to help overcome the global economic crisis. The KFTU had pledged at the time to refrain from strikes and to freeze or cut back wages.

According to the JoongAng Daily, the FKTU is planning to team up with the KCTU to coordinate a general strike.

“If our demands regarding multiple unions in a single workplace and pay for full-time unionists are not fully satisfied, we have no option but to start a general strike,” Jang Seok-chun, head of the FKTU, told reporters in a press conference held at the Korea Electric Power Corporation in Samseong-dong, southern Seoul. “If we team up with the KCTU, we will stage a joint strike .?.?. Executive members of two labor unions will meet to discuss forming an alliance on Oct. 21.”

...

Lee Su-bong, KCTU spokesman, said there’s no major obstacle to forming an alliance and staging a strike with the FKTU because the “two sides share the same views on the disputed matters.”

Has President Lee's labor policies finally pushed the unions over the edge? Has the FKTU turned over a new leaf? Will this actually be a real strike and not just a weak 3 day event like the KCTU's last general strike? Will I ever get my workers visa allowing me to watch these events and take pretty photos for you all?

My answers: Yes. No. Possibly. And hopefully.

Hooray for legalist assaults on workers!!

After taking a break a couple weeks ago, the Korean government has decided to reopen its attack on workers and unions in Korea. The current target seems to be the civil servant unions. Monday Ministry of Public Administration and Security announced that they will fire atleast 14 workers and send another 105 to disciplinary committee for their actions in July. I think its not a stretch to say that this action was in pure retaliation for the unions decision to join the KCTU.

In further news, several administrators have announced they plan to toughen restrictions on civil servants ability to challenge government policies.

The ministries agreed to make a list of political activities considered anathema for civil servants. The current law says, “Public servants are banned from forming or becoming members of a specific political party, and from advocating or opposing a specific political party or political candidate.” Violators are subject to a one-year prison term or a fine of up to 3 million won ($2,577).

But the ministries want to add the following phrase: “Civil servants are prohibited from forming groups and planning, leading and hosting events that oppose or interrupt government policies.”

I can understand the need for preventing civil servants to be involved in party politics or endorsing candidates, but is this really necessary? If civil servants believe strongly that a government policy is wrong shouldn't they have the right to oppose it publicly? I can understand that some groups of civil servants (such as those in diplomacy) need to be in unison with government policies due to the nature of their job, do just random bureaucrats in non-security areas need to be that strict? Furthermore, this just damages the bureaucracy even more if many employees are not happy with what is going on and just quit. The US has suffered badly because many of its Middle East experts quit in protest of the Iraq war.

The government said it will then try to ban civil servants’ labor unions from joining either of the nation’s two umbrella unions - the aforementioned KCTU or the Federation of Korean Trade Unions.

So not only are they being authoritarian douchebags, they are being stupid as well. Apparently they haven't learned from Park Chung-hee who never went this far with their labor policies. Wanna know why? Because its much easier to just co-opt major union federations and make them part of the government. This is how the FKTU formed.

Oh, and an organizer for the Ssangyong occupation will face a jailterm for causing a violent strike. Not really shocking news there.

The labor ministry begins fight with... the FKTU!?

With much labor news being dominated by the KCTU and affiliated groups, one might be shocked that the conservative FKTU is butting heads with the government in recent days. The issue is over a fairly old bill that I covered a few posts ago.

While the FKTU wants all multiple unions to have negotiation power, the government has said only a single representative body should be in charge of negotiations. The FKTU also wants the wages of full-time union officials to be decided independently between a labor union and a company, while the government said a labor union must be responsible for the wages of its own officials.

If the government and the labor community fail to compromise, the current laws governing the two issues will automatically take effect. In that case, all labor unions will have negotiation power, while companies will be banned from paying union officials.

Jang made clear that he will pull out all FKTU officials from the Economic and Social Development Commission, formerly known as the Korea Tripartite Commission.

This is not the first time the FKTU has pulled out of government committees; they did it in 2005 in opposition to President Roh's neoliberal policies. So far, the conservative opinion writers have been silent on this issue. I'll post more if I see anything else come up.