Strikes, protests besiege South Korean regime

South Korea has been seeing nightly mass demonstrations for over a month, a candlelight march of 1 million people on June 10 and a strike wave of key industrial unions. All are connected to a trade agreement between Washington and the current government of President Lee Myung-bak that would allow U.S. beef into the country.

South Koreans protesting U.S. beef imports try to march to president’s home.

This huge movement is the biggest challenge to date to U.S.-imposed trade agreements around the world. The escalating mass actions deserve to be watched closely and supported fully.

So far no government in Washington’s orbit has been able to resist the trade conditions imposed on them by the combined pressure of U.S. corporations, government negotiators, and the military reinforced by international banking institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization.

In many countries of the developing world U.S.-imposed trade agreements have undermined and all but destroyed locally grown food production. They have driven tens of millions of small farmers off the land and created famines in the midst of surplus. They have also spread genetically modified, uninspected and tainted food into global food distribution networks.

The huge demonstrations and strikes in South Korea show that such agreements, imposed through complicit governments, can be challenged by a mass grassroots movement.

Over 1 million people in the capital, Seoul, flooded the streets in candle-lit demonstrations on June 10. It was the largest demonstration in South Korea’s history. Eighty other cities also held protests that day—the anniversary of the 1987 June Popular Resistance movement that had overturned the U.S.-backed military dictatorship in South Korea.

A coalition of 1,500 civic, union and student groups known as the People’s Council for Countermeasures Against Mad Cow Disease had begun nightly vigils on April 27 that drew many thousands.

In face of the rising mass anger, President Lee offered to have his entire cabinet resign. With his popularity ratings sinking below 17 percent, Lee has repudiated many of his own right-wing market plans and has promised concessions, loans and subsidies. But the demonstrations have emboldened the opposition. Now the calls “Out with President Lee” are everywhere.

Lee has been in office just over three months. His Grand National Party is associated with the years of military dictatorship. He came into the presidency promising rapid growth, sweeping market reforms, privatization of nationally owned firms and banks, painful revisions in pensions and social programs, and tax cuts for the rich along with greater openness to foreign investments and friendlier relations with the U.S. A new hostility in relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north reflects Lee’s whole orientation and U.S. pressure.

But Lee’s business-friendly policies ran into globally rising food and fuel prices and an economic downturn with rising unemployment.

The immediate focus of mass anger in South Korea is a trade concession allowing U.S. beef imports. President Lee was required to lift a ban on U.S. beef that had been in place in order to secure the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. This was seen as an attack on the sovereignty of South Korea.

Before 2003 the country was the third-largest importer of U.S. beef. Then the discovery of an imported cow infected with mad cow disease led to the ban.

South Korea is hardly alone in banning U.S. beef. Sixty-five countries, including every one in the European Union, ban U.S. beef.

According to Christian Ahn, “USDA tests only one out of 1,000 cows.... Japan surveys every cow, Europe one in four, and Canada one out of 250.” (Foreign Policy in Focus, June 13) The U.S. Congress has not even passed a ban on eating “downed animals”–animals too sick or injured to walk that are dragged to the slaughterhouse.

“Last year, some 200 million pounds of beef were recalled from the U.S. food supply,” says Dr. Michael Gregor of the Humane Society of the U.S. “This is a staggering amount.”

U.S. capitalist economists see the tens of thousands of demonstrators in South Korea as a sign that “After six decades of ever-expanding international commerce, the high tide of free trade is ebbing.” (Bloomberg News, June 13)

The nights of demonstrations have especially aroused the creative energy of the youth, who use their skills to create their own media and to organize spontaneous actions and confrontations. Laser projectors write slogans in the night sky, there are impromptu concerts, and encampments, with tents and gear spread out, block traffic at major intersections.

Some 37,000 riot police have been mobilized, 20,000 of them in Seoul against the demonstrations. The government has ordered huge metal shipping containers to be stacked in solid walls of barricades to prevent demonstrators from reaching the presidential “Blue House” or other government ministries.

Thousands of police have arrested, beaten and used high-pressure water hoses on the demonstrators. Youth with video cameras have recorded the attacks and posted them nightly on youtube and other sites.

With hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets night after night and the government clearly on the defensive, the political climate has been transformed. The workers’ movement has come forward with its own demands.

Faced with rising fuel prices, 13,000 truck drivers were the first to go on a three-day strike demanding a fuel subsidy and a guaranteed minimum wage. Only a fraction of South Korea’s truck drivers are unionized. They were joined by thousands of non-union contract truckers facing even more difficult conditions. Their actions impacted immediately on production at big electronics factories, auto and steel works.

South Korea has an export-driven economy. The vast commercial port of Busan ground almost to a halt. At the port of Incheon only 157 drivers are unionized, but 2,000 non-union drivers also refused to deliver cargo.

The Federation of Peasants Associations has raised its own demands, along with the Teachers union, the Federation of Government Employees, and the Court Employees union. The Korean Federation of Public Services is planning future walkouts.

Businesses owners fear the worst. “Rising calls for a general strike were significantly strengthened on Monday as thousands of building sites across South Korea were silenced by striking cement mixer drivers.” (Asia Business, June 16)

Workers in Seoul are pushing for mass walkouts across the economy. Asia Business quoted Korean Confederation of Trade Unions President Lee Seok-haeng explaining the union strategy: “We will walk out like the baseball batting order goes; the first batter is the Korea Cargo Transport Workers’ Union, the second batter is the construction and machinery workers, followed by the metal workers and the railway workers.”

Then on June 17 the KCTU announced that a majority of its members had voted for a nationwide general strike on July 2 to demand that the government cancel its plans to privatize public corporations and renegotiate the beef import deal with the U.S.

The Labor Ministry called the strike voted on by the 630,000-member confederation an “illegal and political strike.” South Korea “Justice” Minister Kim Kyung-han said the strikes by truckers and the union federation were illegal and vowed to crack down on them.

The KCTU rejected the warning, saying the government had no legal basis to brand the strike illegal and its threat would only deepen South Korean President Lee’s political isolation.

The government attempted to clamp down on all coverage of the demonstrations and the growing strike wave. The Federation of Press Trade Unions responded by issuing a call for the resignation of both Lee’s cabinet and the chair of the Broadcasting Organization.

The issue of U.S. beef imports has the potential to merge with a whole series of other deeply felt grievances, including the ever-present resentment over more than 50 years of U.S. occupation and the stationing of approximately 40,000 U.S. troops in South Korea.

Clearly a new stage of the struggle in South Korea is opening up. It will be rich in experience for Korean youth and in lessons for a global movement confronting U.S. trade demands.