A Price to Pay
The thousands of dismissed workers in practically every profession are testament to the vicious anti-union policies of South Korea's bosses but they are also witness to the tenacity of Korean workers in their fight to establish their basic rights. A leader of a strike can expect that by the end of the struggle he will be outside the factory gates forever (unless he becomes a full-timer for the union). It is also pretty certain that he will have to do at least a short period in prison as punishment for his efforts.

Ryu Pang-san is Chair of the Seoul branch of the Korea Telecom union (KTTU) and a leader of the KPSU (Korean Public Service Unions) that brings together unions affiliated to both the national federations and some that are in neither. It links up 150,000 workers on the subway, in broadcasting, at the airport, the Mint etc. with the telecom workers. In 1996, the KPSU conducted a victorious struggle against the government-imposed 3% wage ceiling and won reinstatement of a number of dismissed workers. On 10th January 1997, well into the general strike, Ryu Pang-sang was released from three months' detention.

"The main reason for arresting me was because I am a representative of militant unions - to weaken the KTTU and also the KPSU. The government's suppression has focused on the KTTU because telecommunications are very important for the maintenance of Korean industry. Our union is well known for being a radical union. It has 50,000 members and is the largest single union to date.

"In 1994 I was elected union president by the direct voting of grassroots members. Last 4th October the KPSU formed an organization to fight the labor laws and I was appointed by the executive of the KTTU to chair the campaign. I was arrested on 19th October, two weeks after being elected to this body. This was my second time in prison.

"I immediately got organizing in the detention center. I was able to communicate with other 'prisoners of conscience'. Every day we had 'meetings' or 'rallies' - twice a day shouting to each other. I was threatened with having family visits withdrawn if I did not take off a protest ribbon I had made with a biro and paper. I went on hunger strike twice and was kept in solitary confinement. The cell was so small I couldn't lie down straight." (He indicated the breadth and width with bent arms.)

" There was no actual torture but this was the hardest time for me. It was very cold - minus 15 and no heat allowed. All ten of my toes were frozen. They were swollen and black. After my release they improved but are not yet (two weeks later) perfect. I have to put ointment on every day.

"It was so cold in prison that I was not able to read. I had no gloves...books but no gloves! I wore socks as gloves. The food in prison is terrible, for example, 'tuna soup' but no tuna. I lost two kilos this time.

"One of our Telecom leaders is in prison at the moment. On 12th December the new leadership was elected and on the 13th he was arrested... I was in prison over Christmas. We were given chocolate - a third of a bar this size". He indicates two bent thumbs by one and a half bent thumbs". Generosity at Christmas time!"

In 'normal' times, according to the KCTU, the number of arrests of trade unionists 'peaks' between April and July - the season of wage bargaining and industrial action. Their appeal for help, sent out on the internet last spring headed "Send Back Our Colleagues!", explains that recently, because of international criticism of its repressive labor laws, the government has tended to use other laws. The National Security law was mostly reserved to deal with "those who possess and read publications that criticize Korean society or support the view-point of authority for socialism".

At the time of the 1996 National Assembly elections - also from April to July - there was a noticeable increase in arrests for "participation in anti-state organizations". That same summer, a sanctioned demonstration was blockaded by police because one of the protesters was "wearing a mask resembling the president". Students are constantly harassed by the police and arrested on the slightest infringement of the law - "publishing a phrase from the 'Communist Manifesto' of Marx and Engels in a student year planner or wearing a T-shirt bearing the name of a North Korean university.

The human rights organization, Min Ka Hyop, is heavily involved in campaigning for an end to political arrests as well as torture. One of its reports gives details of the vicious application of the Military Service Law. Young men who are not willing to do three years in the army or the (military) riot police are bound into uninterrupted 'service' for a company for five years. If, even after four years and eleven months, they are involved in union activity and dismissed, they must immediately enroll in the army or go to jail.

Life for a Poem
Perhaps the most renowned political prisoner is Park No-hae, the poet whose work is loved and recited throughout the movement. He wrote a poem that was deemed to have praised Kim Il-sung - the self-titled 'Great Leader' in North Korea. After its publication, Park and his wife, Kim Chin-ju were forced to go underground. A detailed appeal for his release explains that while in hiding they met members of the workers' organization, Sa No Maeng and took part in protests and labor organizing.

"Kim Chin-ju was arrested on the 5th March 1991 while waiting to meet her mother in a department store. Park was arrested five days later while riding in a lorry with other Sa No Maeng members. He was charged with leading an 'anti-state' organization - a crime punishable by death - and with 'disseminating socialist propaganda', 'establishing a political party representing the working class' and 'setting up revolutionary cells on major industrial sites'...

"While in prison he was tortured and deprived of sleep for several days at a time. His books were banned and he attempted suicide. Although the prosecution was pushing for the 'maximum penalty', it was decided that it would not look good on Korea's human rights record if someone as famous as Park No-hae was executed. Instead, he was sentenced to life in prison - the stiffest sentence given to someone not charged with espionage since Roh Tae-woo took office."

Democrat-Dictator
Park No-hae's is the best-known case - nationally and internationally - but many hundreds less known are locked up or constantly in fear of arrest. When the KCTU gives details of trade unionists on police wanted lists they indicate the "date of hunting". And all this under the 'democrat' Kim Young-sam who was himself sought by the police on many occasions. That was when he and Kim Dae-jung (now leader of the main opposition party) were involved in the struggle against dictators who trample on basic human rights.

Kim Dae-jung faced the death sentence in 1980 for his part in the Kwangju uprising and was only saved by US 'intervention'. This - the man who could win the presidential elections on 18th December 1997 as a direct result of the general strike - now seems to be more at home in the company of Kim Jong-pil, leader of the United Liberal Democrats (ULD), than with workers or former comrades of the democracy movement. Kim Jong-pil is none other than the founder of the Korean CIA, at the beginning of Park Chung-hee's reign of terror. (He built it up from a force of 3,000 'employees' in 1961 to no fewer than 370,000 in 1964).

Police Brutality
In the South Korea of today, there is hair-raising evidence that people totally unconnected with the labor movement can find themselves becoming the victims of sometimes lethal police brutality. On 15th February this year newspapers reported on the deaths of two "poor people" at the hands of local police. Min Byong-il, a street-seller from the village of Kugali, had been 'questioned' about his trading license. When his barrow was confiscated and he demanded it back from the police he was beaten so badly that his skull was broken and two operations could not save him. Lee Jong-ho, a citizen of Bupyong, simply complained about the police making a noise in his neighborhood at night and keeping him awake. He, too, was beaten senseless and left brain-dead. Both had made the mistake of answering back, in effect challenging the 'infallibility' of the local police.

The same day that these reports appeared, the "Kim Hyung-chan Support Group" was to be seen at the KCTU's Saturday demo at Seoul Station. On their stall were gruesome pictures of a body and limbs covered in the most horrific burns and blisters. Pursuing their vigorous campaign, these young people were demanding that police and NSPA officers be brought to justice for the nightmare experience of a young student. Never himself involved in any kind of illegal organization, he had come within a hair's breadth of losing his life after being mercilessly beaten to reveal things he knew nothing about. Once the police realized they had the wrong man, far from releasing and compensating him, they set about trying to ensure their 'mistake' would never come to light.

Bound and gagged, he was transferred to the dreaded cells of the National Security Planning Agency. The sight of the bath and the taps used in the infamous cases of students being tortured to death made him realize what fate his persecutors had in mind for him. The only way he could now see of getting out alive was to set himself alight from the kerosene stove and scream to be taken to hospital. He did survive to tell the tale, severely scarred and scathed by the ordeal. But his torturers and their protectors remain unpunished.

Abuse of Power to End?
How long will this situation last? The unnerving thing about a police state is the arbitrary abuse of power and the brutal way in which revenge is sought for even the slightest humiliation. If this applies to the forces of the state, it applies also to the bosses. The government and the president too would try and get their own back on the working class, if they can recover from the devastating blows they have been dealt in the recent period.

How long will the 'Mothers of the Tortured' have to make their regular Thursday pilgrimage to Pagoda Park, to face the taunts and jeers of the riot police who resemble so much their own sons who have died or disappeared in police custody? How long before Lee So-sun, the mother of Chun Tae-il - indeed, the "Mother of the movement", as she is known - can walk at the head of a demonstration without fear of state vengeance for her audacity? (Now aged 70, she has had six spells in jail - ten years in total since 1970. Her neck is bent permanently in the shape of an 'S' as the result of torture).

Hopefully, this great strike and the emergence onto the scene of history of an organized, united, combative South Korean working class that has demonstrated its decisive weight in society will have changed the balance of forces irrevocably in the direction of lasting reforms. Basic democratic rights could now be partially restored as a result of the movement and the pressure of 'world opinion' but at issue has also been the fundamental way in which society is organized.