Korean Railway Labor Struggle Culminates into a General Strike: A Photo Essay

Sunday, December 29, 2013

Korean Railway Labor Struggle Culminates into a General Strike: A Photo Essay

President Park Geun-hye, has gone all out to place herself on South Korea’s political map as a stern neoliberal conservative leader of the highest order – not only following in the footsteps of her father (former military dictator Park Chung-hee), it seems, but also in those of her immediate neoliberal predecessor and Saenuri-Party colleague, former president Lee Myung Bak (2008-2012). Lee, who had called himself “the CEO of Korea, Inc”, inaugurated the stripping of the state of its most valuable assets; and President Park is now preparing the grounds for another round of pilfering that will harm the previously strong public sectors of South Korea. Massive health sector privatizations are currently under way, with approximately 20000 doctors protesting against the planned de-regularization and privatization of their domain two weeks ago in Seoul. The public transportation sector, too, is under heavy assault these days: amidst the continuous restructuration of the state-run Korea Railroad Corporation (KORAIL), the recently announced introduction of a new subsidiary has been viewed by many as a first step towards the eventual privatization of KORAIL (Lee Myung-bak had announced this much during his presidency already).

To counter this move, the Korean Railway Workers´ Union (KRWU) – an organization that consists of approximately 20000 railway workers affiliated to Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) – started a strike on 9th of December. This labor struggle, which has been going strong for more than two weeks now, has already become the longest-ever strike in the 65-year-history of South Korea’s railway union, with the number of workers involved in it rising quickly. Roughly 40% of all unionized KORAIL workers haven taken part in the actions so far, which brought substantial parts of Korea’s transportation system to a standstill. In an attempt to end this vital labor struggle, the strike has been countered with unparalleled measures by the state-run corporation and the government standing behind it. With the struggle swiftly declared illegal, nearly 7000 workers – that is, practically all of the union members who have been taking part in the strike – have been dismissed from their jobs at KORAIL. Furthermore, arrest warrants were issued against the leadership of KRWU, who were suspected of having gone into hiding at the headquarters of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). Some 4.000 riot police were deployed in front of KCTU’s offices in the Seodaemun district of Seoul on 22nd December, where a standoff between labor activists, their supporters and the police began that would last for ten hours. After the glass front door of the building had been smashed into pieces, police teams slowly and violently pushed their way through 17 floors to the roof of the building, pepper-spraying and arresting those standing in their way. Some 130 people were taken in by the police, even though no search warrant for KCTU’s headquarters had been issued in the first place, adding a layer of illegality to this police raid of the union center. Furthermore, during these police procedures that put numerous labor activists at risk, the actual leaders of the strike at KORAIL could not be located in the building.

South Korea’s largest national trade union center, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), announced a General Strike, which commenced today on December 28, 2013. This announcement by KCTU, a left leaning labor confederation that unites roughly 700000 South Korean workers under its umbrella, came at the end of long day full of dramatic escalations of 22nd December.

Today, the General Strike drew hundreds of thousands of workers, students, citizens on the streets.As we write this post, sporadic confrontation between police and protesters continue. Below are some of the photographs from Seoul clicked during the day: