South Korea: The Tiger Strikes
The Fall-out
Within a month they were engulfed by the Hanbo bribes for loans scandal which, after ten high-ranking arrests, was inexorably closing in on the president’s second son - Kim Hyun-chul. Kim Young-sam’s ratings were tumbling as fast as shares on the Seoul stock exchange and confidence in the country ‘s currency - the won. By mid-February, on the day the KCTU held its national conference, the government announced a sensational defection from the ‘enemy’ state of North Korea, hoping to use it as a diversion and, typically, as a propaganda weapon against the movement. South Korean governments must be unique in continuing to use the old ‘Cold War’ arguments about ‘communist conspiracies’ in their war with the working class to justify maintaining a legal ban on any talk of ‘socialism’, ‘workers’ parties’ or even ‘class’. It can only be a matter of time before the new situation that has opened up - within the country and beyond its borders - renders such legislation inoperable.
Already it was clear that neither humble apologies from the head of state nor scare-mongering from his ‘kept’ press could have the effect such things used to. Towards the end of February, the trade union leaders were still under pressure not to settle for any partial changes the parliamentarians might care to make to what they called the "Bastard Laws". They maintained the threat of resuming hostilities with a renewal of full, indefinite strike action.
By the middle of March, President Kim had not only seen fit to ‘dispense with’ another of his prime ministers (the fifth since his administration began) but a whole swathe of his cabinet was replaced. Nothing he did now, however, would be sufficient to restore his credibility. By May, the press was speculating as to whether he would be able even to serve out his remaining months of office. Manoeuvrings at the top of society, corruption, intimidation are all viewed by ever wider layers of society with a growing contempt. A new atmosphere has been created by the powerful movement of December - January.
Hitting the Headlines
The world’s media had flocked to South Korea to cover the dramatic scenes. They had reported with a mixture of excitement and trepidation the atmosphere in the factories occupied by strikers and on the workers’ rallies - row upon row of defiant men and women in coloured headbands, rhythmically punching the air with their fists or singing the much-loved revolutionary anthems with smiles of pride and anticipation on their faces.
Photo opportunities abounded. Captured on film was the programmed brutality of the riot police going into action against peaceful and orderly demonstrations, the tall masts of trade union banners dipping this way and that as the "pepper pot" canisters emitted white clouds of gas into the staggering, scattering crowds. The cameras could not help but convey the calm dignity of the shaven-headed trade union leaders holding their daily press conferences in the courtyard of the tall redbrick cathedral. Even the fixed smile of South Korea’s president became familiar to millions in far distant lands.
But reporters come and go and the contending forces have to weigh up what has happened. Around the world, sensational headlines referring to the plight of the South Korean "Tiger" would be greeted with different emotions, depending on the class stand-point of the reader. Representatives of the employing class and all those who have tried to maintain that South Korea is a model of capitalist development began to shudder. Were their theories now in ruins? Why had the economy been slowing down and suffering record trade deficits? And now the strikes. France, with its powerful movements against austerity measures, had come to South East Asia.
Workers, on the other hand, would feel their hearts leap at the news from Seoul. Here was a ruling class that had overstepped the mark getting it where it hurts. They willed the legendary Korean working class on to victory, frustrated by moves to the right of their own labour leaders that held them back from a generalised political assault on their exploiters. A blow for one is a blow for all. Who knows what the implications might be for the bosses and their defenders throughout the world? They would surely all feel weakened and workers everywhere emboldened.
Too much to bear
The fresh example of the French lorry-drivers getting quick results by concerted action was indeed a reference point for the Korean strike. There were many workers who believed that the measures now being inflicted on Korean workers would not be tolerated in Europe and the USA. They did not know of the heavy defeats already inflicted by Reaganite, Thatcherite, "neo-liberal" governments world-wide. Others, including the KCTU leaders, were well aware that workers in many countries had lost their battles against such things as "flexible" (flat-rate) hours, deregulation, temporary contracts. But they were also very much aware that in a country ranked 122nd in the world for welfare provision, bringing South Korea "into line" on such issues, would drive the majority of their members to the edge of endurance.
There is no unemployment benefit to speak of in South Korea. All education and health care must be paid for. The basic wage is way below subsistence and workers are totally dependent on premium bonuses and overtime payment. (The minimum wage, which only a minority of the workforce can claim anyway, is less than £1 an hour.) Giving the bosses a free hand to sack workers, replace strikers and ignore the new unions would swell the army of the unemployed and crush the hopes of those organising the fight for a better deal.
Not for nothing does the hymn of the KCTU - "Workers of Iron" - swear revenge for the "blood and sweat" that has been wrung from them. This strike hardly appeared out of a clear blue sky of harmonious class relations. There had been many an earlier strike struggle - against the gruelling hours and arduous conditions, for decent pay and for national insurance cover. (In 1996 industrial disputes had already cost the employers over $3billion). Almost without exception, strike battles have been met with heavy police action - beatings, arrests, the imprisonment and sacking of the leaders. Now there was no alternative but to make a stand; the workers’ unions and their very capacity to fight back were on the line - not only because of the changes to the labour laws.
Other changes pushed through the Assembly that December morning, restored to the hated NSPA (National Security Planning Agency, previously the Korean CIA) the wide-ranging powers of surveillance and interrogation it had exercised with such cruelty under the military dictators. South Korea must have the most repressive and paranoic regime of any so-called advanced country. Hundreds of trade unionists, socialists and student activists still languish in South Korean jails. Torture in police cells continues. Leaders of the movement, at factory, campus or national level seem resigned to the fact that a spell in prison is ‘par for the course’. But the international labour movement, if it is anything, must shout from the roof-tops about it.
A solidarity campaign must be taken to the activists in the unions and workers’ political organisations world-wide. The tops of the international trade unions are remote in income and life-style from the workers they are supposed to represent and seem to have suddenly discovered the horrific abuse of democratic rights in Korea. Enough of their delegations flying in like dignitaries with the cameramen, staying in expensive hotels, making their speeches and flying out again! The Korean workers need genuine solidarity from their own kind, not the grandiose pledges of international ‘leaders’ whose track-records show them to be more interested in making peace with the employers than in supporting strikes. It just so happens that their political counterparts in the Social Democratic, Labour or "Socialist" parties of the world have been prominent amongst the worshippers of the South Korean "miracle".
Special Factors
The phenomenal economic expansion - which took South Korea from the level of a Ghana in 1960 to 11th place in the world league of industrialised nations - has nothing to do with the free play of market forces. It has everything to do with a combination of special factors which cannot simply be engineered or copied by other would-be "tigers" - the huge injection of resources by world imperialism to stave off the elimination of capitalism in the region, the extraordinary involvement of the state in creating a class of monopoly owners and its unfettered use of terror tactics to try and hold back the demands of a super-exploited working class.
The enormous ‘advantages’ enjoyed by Korean capitalism are now turning into their opposite. What were its strengths have now become its weaknesses. Its foundations are riddled with contradictions that could prove its downfall. Far from defying the laws of capitalist development worked out by Karl Marx and others, Korean capitalism has already demonstrated their validity. It has shown itself incapable of avoiding the crises endemic in the system.
If workers in the factories of Korea, after a decade and more of struggle, now receive higher wages than those working for the same firms in Poland or in Wales - and this is far from proven hour for hour - this is not the reason for the problems they face today. They have generated enormous wealth for the owners of the giant ‘Chaebol’ conglomerates that dominate the economy. But these new capitalists have not been carrying out the ‘traditional’ role of investing to keep their machinery up to date. They have not been constantly ‘revolutionising the means of production’, as Marx put it.
Appearing late on the scene as a class and, again for special reasons, being given a ‘helping hand’ by the Japanese older brother, South Korean capitalism got used to using production techniques developed elsewhere. It made great progress for a whole period without spending much on research and development. In spite its reputation for being extremely ‘modern’ and ‘high tech’, Korean capitalism lags behind with its technology. Productivity or output per worker remains much lower than that of most of its rivals and is just half that of Japan. Vast sums have been spent on equipment but it is out-dated often before it goes into operation. As much as 30% lies idle as the economy runs out of steam.
Through the new legislation, the Chaebol and their political mouthpieces are simply demanding once again that workers pay with more of their blood and sweat for Korean products to become competitive again in the world market-place. They throw at them the arguments about ‘globalisation’ and the threat to their hard-earned living standards from cheaper labour elsewhere. They try to intimidate them into accepting lower wages and labour standards and hide their own hypocrisy and naked greed. The South Korean Chaebol are themselves already up to their necks in the global economy, using all kinds of methods to undercut their competitors’ market share as well as the old trick of playing one country’s workers off against another.
The double figure growth rates of the late 1980s (12% in 1986, 15% in 1987) were not achieved without enormous human cost. The ten-hour day, the six day week is still the norm for male and female workers alike. Longer shifts and ‘Third World’ working and living conditions are the lot of millions. Korean capitalism has come into the world dripping with blood. It is the worst country in the world for industrial accidents and diseases. Activists put things graphically: "At least six lorry-loads of fingers are severed each year". Every day seven workers are killed in work. Still unidentified thousands are dying from incurable afflictions contracted at work or from the barely checked poisoning of the air, the earth, the seas and the rivers.