In renewed tensions in Korea over the ‘austerity measures’ imposed by the IMF in exchange for a record $58 billion bailout package, thousands of riot police marched onto a Seoul university campus Sunday, touching off violent clashes with striking workers and sympathizing students who fought back with rocks and firebombs. Around 10,000 Seoul subway workers went on strike to protest plans to cut their work force by 20 percent. Suk Chi-soon, head of the 11,000-member Seoul subway union said, "there will be no back down until our demand for no layoffs is accepted.''
The Associated Press states:
"At state-run Seoul National University on Sunday, 2,000 riot police, backed by armored vehicles, marched 200 yards onto the sprawling campus to try to disperse 2,500 workers who have been holed up there for a week.
About 100 workers and students fought back, wielding steel pipes and hurling rocks and firebombs. They fled after setting fire to wooden chairs and garbage bins piled up as barricades.
A police helicopter cast its searchlights over the campus and broadcast warnings that workers would face arrest and punishment if they didn't disperse voluntarily.
Police said their scare tactics were working. After two similar raids on Sunday, the number of workers at the school dropped from 5,000 to 1,000, they said.
Several workers were injured but none of them seriously, police said."
‘Scare tactics’ indeed! Helicopters, water cannons, tear gas, body armor, shields, truncheons, etc. are ‘scare tactics’? Yet the workers fought back with whatever they could find – as well as in an even more effective way – by organizing solidarity strikes.
The Korea Confederation of Trade Unions, an umbrella group that claims 500,000 members in key industries, warned that police intervention in the subway dispute will result in more strikes and protests.
In spite of an aborted effort to organize a walkout among telecom workers, more than 30,000 auto and shipbuilding workers will go ahead with strike plans this week.
The spark which set off these latest confrontations between workers and police was the government’s order to introduce corporate ‘reforms’, which are of course going to lead to massive layoffs. The highly militant Korean working class and students have a proud tradition of struggle, and are again making a valiant stand in defense of their standard of living, which is constantly under attack in order to increase Korea’s ‘competitiveness’ – or in other words, to increase profits for the bourgeoisie.
The strike has been called ‘illegal’ because it did not observe a "mandatory 15-day cooling off period". The government has threatened the immediate dismissal of all workers who do not return to work by Monday. This and other ‘legal’ tactics are commonly used by the bourgeoisie in order to sow confusion and division in the ranks of the working class. They know that the energy built up in a strike only lasts a certain period of time, and they use these "cooling off periods" and threats in order to get their mediators involved to diffuse the situation in favor of the corporations.
As of 4:00 am Monday, which was the deadline for returning to work, half the workers were still on strike. Seoul Mayor Ko Kun has said that they will "start action against them".
Marx called the bourgeois government a committee for planing the common interests of the ruling class. In keeping with this function, Prime Minister Kim Jong-pil called an emergency meeting of Cabinet ministers Monday to discuss what to do next.
One can only imagine what these government officials will decide to do next, but whatever it is will surely not be in the interests of the working class and students. The workers and youth need to stand united in face of the attacks on their standard of living. These ‘austerity measures’ are but another way of squeezing ever more profit from the already strained nerves and muscles of the working class, and of further widening the gap between the haves and have-nots. Laying off workers is a quick and easy way to increase the ‘competitiveness’ of a corporation, as a quick look at stock market proves. When a company fires part of its workforce, the value of its shares almost inevitably shoots up - to the delight of the stockholders - and to the anguish of the unemployed workers who must now scramble to find another way to provide for their families and futures.
The workers and students of Korea have a formidable enemy before them, but they have the support of the international working class and youth behind them. The time to make a stand is now!
Peter Johnson
April 26, 1999
Sources:
Associated Press April 22, 23, 24 and 25, 1999