In 1997, the CWI (Committee for a Workers' International) produced a detailed pamphlet reporting from the mass struggles of the South Korean working-class in the winter of 1996/97. With struggle again taking place in South Korea, it seems timely to share the contents of this pamphlet again.
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
celling 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 organisation to fight
the labour 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
organising in the detention centre. 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withdrawn if I did not take off a protest ribbon I had made with a biro and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 labour
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 criticise Korean society or support the viewpoint 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 organisations". 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 organisation, 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 enrol 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' organisation, Sa No Maeng and
took part in protests and labour organising:
“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' organisation – 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 – [MPD: He did, gaining 40% of the vote] 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 labour 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 licence. 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 neighbourhood 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 organisation, 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 realised 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 realise 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 organised, 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 organised.
CHALLENGING THE SYSTEM
How far did the general strike go in challenging the
powers-that-be – this "first political general strike" that so many
were proud to have participated in?
General strikes
The demonstrations of December 1996 and January '97 did not
reach the scale of the 'Great Struggle' in 1987. The strike itself involved
less than 10% of Korea's workforce and did not bring the country to a
standstill. Nevertheless, it was the most general strike of recent years in
that it involved various unions from different sectors of the economy and, since
it was against the lawmakers and the power brokers behind them, it was clearly
a political general strike - the first in half a century.
Marxists have explained how there can be general strikes in
which the working class challenges the rulers for power and which, given a
bold, far-sighted leadership, can lead on to revolution. There are others which
can start and finish without posing the question of power. When it takes place
in the context of a working class going forward and developing its level of
organisation, even if not all the demands of a strike movement are met, it
marks a positive step forward. Speaking of a general strike in Belgium, Lenin
wrote: "The achievement of the strike is not so much the fragment of a
victory over the government as the success of the organisation, discipline,
fighting spirit and enthusiasm for the struggle displayed by the mass of the
Belgian working class".
There can be strikes which end in defeat, like that in 1926
in Britain, when the movement is considerably thrown back. Each strike must be
examined in all its particularities. As Lenin also explained, "In any strike
which arises out of the very nature of capitalist society, the workers, by
stating their demands jointly and refusing to submit to the 'money-bags', cease
to be slaves, become human beings and put forward the demand to become masters
... not to work and live as the landlords and capitalists want them to ... They
begin to undermine their supremacy".
The political nature of the South Korean strike movement was
universally recognised, but many questions remain. What exactly was achieved by
this huge exertion of energy against the rule of the Chaebol? When the Korean
workers shouted "Down with Kim Young-sam!" "Dissolve the New
Korea Party!" and "End the Chaebol economy!" did they have an
idea of what to put in their place?
Lenin pointed out: "Strikes teach the workers to think
of the struggle of the whole working class against the whole class of factory
owners and against the arbitrary police government ... Every strike brings
thoughts of socialism very forcibly to the worker's mind". But if in South
Korea those thoughts were not articulated - not expressed in so many words - is
it because those words are banned by law or is it because the worm of doubt has
eaten away at the leaders' confidence in the theory and practice of socialism?
Nature of KCTU
In the absence of any legal mass party of the workers, it is
a trade union federation - the KCTU -that has taken on some of the tasks and
attributes of a party. The leaders of the KCTU have been steeled in struggle
and imprisonment. They are trusted by the members and humble in their approach.
The leaders take no more than the average wage of a worker. Many have been
victimised and some take far less than they earned on the tools. It is not a bureaucratised
leadership. During the strike the Central Committee would meet regularly to
decide on the plans for the next phase of struggle. At the national conference
in February there was admittedly little discussion (the tradition is to argue before
and after but agree at the conference itself). But there was no junketing and
banquets, only rousing speeches and stirring songs to fire the spirits for the
next round of battle.
The constitution of the KCTU, its aims, platform and programme
(all available on the internet) show that an organisation "forged" as
it says "through struggle and sacrifice", goes a long way in challenging
the system. It fights for a whole series of basic democratic rights like free
speech, the freedom to organise, freedom of assembly and the press plus a
40-hour week, full employment, equal pay, decent wages, a full welfare system
and much more.
History, however, has shown that even if capitalism is
forced by the workers' movement to grant such demands, it cannot guarantee all
of them and the ‘lust’ for profit will constantly drive it to undermine each
one of them.
Some of the KCTU material hints that an alternative to the
'Chaebol economy' could be one of a 'regulated' market economy. It talks of
"protecting the small and medium-sized businesses" and seems to
envisage the conglomerates being broken up and the smaller private owners being
somehow persuaded to honour a code of moral conduct in favour of their
employees. The KCTU's own statistics and experience show that at present it is precisely
the medium and small companies who are the most vicious in denying workers
their fundamental rights.
The alternative would be to argue for taking at least the 30
biggest conglomerates and the banks into democratic public ownership, and doing
away with the pernicious system of sub-contracting. Then their employees and
other workers could be involved in deciding, through regularly elected
representatives, what happens within these 'empires' and in the economy as a
whole. If small employers say they cannot pay decent wages and honour labour
codes without help, this should be examined by workers' representatives. If
they are found to be working forthe big firms, those firms should be made to
pay up. If not, and they are performing a useful service, they should be able
to claim some kind of assistance and encouraged to look for efficient,
cooperative ways of carrying on their business.
Different views
At the head of the KCTU are leaders with quite varying
views. There are those for a socialist transformation as the only solution to
workers' problems and those who are, by their own admission, 'reformists'. The
latter stop far short of launching a struggle to take the giant Chaebol out of private
hands and seem content to aim towards 'the German model'. By this they mean
strong trade unions accepting and operating in a capitalist environment, participating
in management. Unfortunately, this also means taking responsibility for
unpopular profit-motivated decisions about redundancies, wages etc.
The KCTU is keen to learn from workers' experiences in other
countries. It is highly conscious of the importance of international solidarity
and anxious to make direct links with workers throughout the world. But on
issues like the 'Social Clause' in international trade agreements, there are also
different points of view. There is a big danger entailed in trusting the direct
and indirect representatives of the bosses to improve the lot of workers in any
country. Issues like child labour, bonded labour and poverty wages must be
fought head-on by the labour movement - nationally and internationally. Apparently
magnanimous stipulations in trade agreements can be used as forms of
protectionism for firms based in the richer nations.
The complete opening up of South Korea to what would amount
to 'economic invasion' by US or any other imperialism would cause considerable
further hardship for working people and must be opposed. But the KCTU must
insist that decisions about controls and subsidies are not made in the
interests of protecting inefficient Korean capitalists who can push up prices
at workers' expense. Solutions put forward in the labour movement must be based
on the need to fight for control in the economy to be taken into the hands of
the working people – the majority in society.
On international links, there is an urgent need to forge
direct contacts between organised workers in different countries - working in
the same industries or for the same multinational companies. Exchange of
information and experience internationally together with solidarity action are
essential for the success of the workers' movement. But the KCTU and other
Korean labour movement bodies and projects should harbour no illusions about
the aims of organisations like the ICFTU, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation or
others who profess a touching concern for their plight. There is a saying,
"If you sup with the devil, use a long spoon!" Accept the offers of
help in terms of finance and resources by all means but be sure there are no
strings attached. Workers must guard against rich benefactors posing as friends
of the movement trying to dictate the direction in which the emerging trade
union movement of South Korea should go. Trade Union leaders and European
Social Democrats are notorious for their devious ways of acting, in reality, as
defenders of the exploiting classes. It was such gentlemen as these who wined
and dined the leaders of many a political general strike - against the Franco
dictatorship in the Spain of the 1970s, against the South African apartheid
regime. They beguiled them with sweet talk about the advantages of the 'social'
market and the wisdom of co-operating with the bosses - those very bosses who were
the power behind the regimes they had been fighting for decades.
Members of the Committee for a Workers' International also
discussed with some of these brave fighters at the height of their struggles, including
leaders of the South African mineworkers and COSATU. But rather than fight
things to a finish, these once-courageous leaders took the line of least
resistance. They not only swallowed the arguments about capitalism, but turned
their backs on the struggle for socialism. They betrayed the aspirations of
their members. Some of them crossed the class divide completely, giving up the
movement to become owners of businesses themselves and line their own pockets
as employers of other people's labour.
This must serve as a warning that even the best-intentioned
leaders, like those of the KCTU, if they fail to adopt a programme and method
of struggle that challenges capitalism, they will inevitably move to the right.
Inherent in reformism is betrayal.
How much further?
But the KCTU, some of its leaders will object, is only a
union federation and not a party. It cannot lead a bid to change society.
Others will disagree. Theoretically, as Trotsky explained, in the inter-war period,
there is no laid-down prescription for what kind of body could be the
instrument for workers taking power. In Russia it was the workers' and peasants'
soviets, in Germany it could be factory committees, in Britain at one point the
trade unions and, in the last century, even parliament. The main precondition
for success is that workers are on the move, the ruling class is in crisis, the
middle class firmly on the side of the proletariat and a far-sighted leadership,
known and trusted because of its past record, is rooted in the working class.
As things stood in South Korea even at the end of January
1997, was it possible for the movement to have been taken further? The 'heavy
battalions' cannot be kept constantly on a war footing without the perspective
of a fairly swift victory. As workers' leaders in Hyundai Precision Instruments
explained a month later:
"We couldn't have carried on indefinitely. We had already
lost a month's wages. Other sections like telecom workers were not being called
into the strike. We had to shoulder the main burden ... And then 'Hanbogate'
broke and the Hwang defection and the killing in strange circumstances in Seoul
of a prominent defector from the North. All that detracted from our
struggle".
And these distractions were no accident. It is a tried and
tested method of South Korean regimes. When in difficulty, engineer a defection
and start up a scare campaign. 'Hanbogate' itself was probably also "engineered".
The company had already been in trouble for more than a year and could surely
have been kept going at least for another few months. There is widespread
speculation about how this hare was released - some say by members of Kim
Young-sam's own Minju faction to save him from the wrath of the striking
working class. Others say by members of the right-wing faction within his party
who wanted to see him thoroughly discredited and unable to put the man of his
choice in to run for president in the December elections. (This could be particularly
important if he wants to avoid the fate of the last two heads of state -
imprisonment.)
Either way you could say (and some did) that a skilful
leadership of the movement could have used both issues to its advantage and
gone onto the offensive. The scare stories about the economy being in danger
and about a "communist conspiracy" should not have been able to shake
the confidence of the working class in action. There were those amongst the
seasoned South Korean activists who felt the strike should not have been scaled
down when it was. The government had been weakened possibly irrecoverably and
then it was let off the hook.
Socialist Challenge
If a party had been in position - a genuine socialist party
with deep roots in the working class and a leadership prepared to push things
to a conclusion - how would it have fared? In attacking the Chaebol as the
culprits for ruining the economy, the leaders of the KCTU and the campaigning
groups around them are pushing at an open door in South Korean society. The
official ideology is that no classes exist but the gap between rich and poor is
ever widening. It is no exaggeration to say that everyone knows that the
Chaebol, the state and the government are in league together to squeeze the
maximum they can get out of a hard-working and long-suffering proletariat. An
American newspaper quoted Hu In-suk, "a 44 year-old housewife, looking on
at a rally in Seoul", as saying; "The labour law only reflects
what big business wants ... I support the strikers all the way."
Had the president's ratings not rocketed when he jailed his
predecessors for their part in the bloody Kwangju massacre and put on trial
some of the richest, most corrupt and powerful heads of the Chaebol? People had
grown angry over the failure to investigate and punish notoriously anti-union companies.
There was the Korea Automobile Insurance Corporation. It was discovered that Assembly
members on the Labour Commission looking into the firm's activities had been
given bribes hidden in fruit baskets. And now, in the Hanbo case, the chairman
of the fourteenth largest conglomerate had been caught sending gifts of $460,000
to the chairmen of two of Korea's largest banks stuffed into instant noodle
boxes.
Enough was surely enough! Wasn't this the time to get rid of
the lot of them? Wasn't this just final proof that the system was rotten to the
core and didn’t deserve to survive? A party could have demanded that, instead
of the superficial investigations by parliamentarians and lawyers into the
scandal, there should be a tribunal of workers' representatives. There were a
quarter of a million jobs at risk at Hanbo and its sub-contractors. The $7
billion of public money that went to bail out the banks would come from
workers' pockets, one way or another. Attempts to use the crisis to bully
workers into dropping their action - the need to save the stricken economy from
collapse and so on - could have been pre-empted by propaganda that immediately
put the blame squarely on the Chaebol for everything that was happening.
A party could have articulated the feelings of millions, and
put them like this: "We are tired of labouring to line the pockets of
these infamous fraudsters. It is these same Chaebol that are demanding that we
pay for their survival. We say 'no', we can run society without these
parasites. They have created these giant conglomerates and run them like
mini-kingdoms. We will fight for them to become public property run on
principles of workers' control and workers' management. We will set up those
people's committees again and show that we can create a workers' government. We
will organise a plan to be implemented not through terror and coercion by generals
and their bankers but drawn up and operated on thoroughly democratic and
co-operative principles by elected representatives of all the working people".
Working class decisive
There are those who say such ideas are 'old-fashioned' -
what the socialist theoreticians had to say is no longer valid and the
industrial working class counts for nothing anymore. Let them look at this
strike and what this strike has proved! Every participant and observer
comments, as if with one voice, that, as distinct from the movement of '87, the
industrial working class was the driving force.
Those who work in the giant factories of the top Chaebol may
be a minority in the workforce, but the power they can wield has been proven
for all who have eyes to see. It is the actions of these layers of workers that
have emboldened the many individuals and groups well versed in Marxism, forced
until now to operate in conditions of clandestinity and speak only half the truth.
Protesters and campaigners have gone further than ever before in lampooning the
government, in condemning the Chaebol economy and in demanding the president's
resignation. So what stayed the hands of the strike leaders?
Scaling the strike down towards the end of January to give
the government and the Assembly a chance to rescind the laws may in itself not
have been a bad tactic especially given that only certain sections were involved
in all-out action. They were already beginning to resent having to bear the
brunt of the bosses' revenge and the loss of wages while other sections were
still at work. But even though the strike had moved into another gear with the Wednesday
and Saturday action, sections of the government and the police were feeling
humiliated by the lifting of the arrest warrants and the possibility of a
climb-down. Indecision gripped the government.
A 'classical' revolutionary situation had not developed but
all the elements were there in embryo. It was, to use a racing analogy, the
'first time out' for the KCTU in terms of a political general strike. The
country had not been paralysed. Big factories were occupied but transport was
rarely stopped. (If the leaders had wanted all-out action, they probably would
have found, as was the case in the French general strike of 1995, that 'the
public' would have been overwhelmingly on the side of the workers in spite of
inconvenience to their lives). The movement had been strong enough to draw the middle
layers of society to its side but not to split the forces of the state. Things
did not reach that stage.
While the workers held the moral high-ground in society,
there was not a situation of dual power with representative bodies thrown up by
workers that vie with existing state organs for control in society. Though
badly debilitated, the government was not totally suspended in mid-air. The
ruling class had been severely shaken but still held the reins of power. But at
least the outlines of a pre-revolutionary situation were taking shape and a powerful
desire was developing in the hearts of working people for finishing with the
government and throwing the Chaebol giants off their backs.
Different leadership
It is difficult to say whether a different leadership of the
movement could have fulfilled these aspirations. Before launching a challenge
for power it would have had to probe and test the ground through its own
agitation, carefully selecting the slogans of the hour and conducting a
dialogue with every section of the working class. The middle class, once it sensed
a fight to the finish would overwhelmingly have sided with the workers. The
forces of the state, even the hated riot police, could have been neutralised or
even persuaded to go into revolt as sections of the Korean army have done more
than once before in history.
On the other hand, it might have turned out that even a
leadership using such methods and standing openly for socialist change, on
weighing up the strengths and weaknesses of the movement, could have judged it
necessary to limit the strike to the single aim of annulling the new laws and
regard it as a dress rehearsal for future battles. But it is clear that even to
guarantee the abolition of these anti-trade union and anti-working class
measures, much more was and will be needed.
If there had been a moment when a different leadership,
in place before things got to this stage, could possibly have made a bolder
challenge, the opportunity was fast slipping away. Once the scale of the
bribes-for-loans scandal was being revealed and leading members of the ruling
party were being arrested, the headlines had been captured and the desired
diversionary effect had been achieved. The leaders of the KCTU made threats
about renewing the strike if the Labour law was not annulled but it is doubtful
whether they were still in a position to re-mobilise the movement. Industrial
action is not like a tap that can be turned off and on at will.
And, as if to make assurance doubly sure, there was the
Hwang Jang-yop defection from the North. The announcement was undoubtedly
premature – given that he was not yet out of China, let alone in the safety of
South Korea - and rushed into, not only to distract attention from the KCTU
Congress. It just so happened that the students were due to return to the universities
after their long winter break and the much-quoted letter, supposedly written by
Hwang, appealed to the students not to be beguiled into joining the protest
against the government.
The vast publicity around his statement was no doubt aimed
at trying to intimidate the working class with scare stories about 40,000
agents of the North being at work in South Korean society. This figure is
exactly the same as that given in a report drawn up for the Public Prosecutor's
Office last October. (It had talked of "10,000 core leftists and 30,000
more lukewarm 'pinkos" who had either sent letters to the North or
accessed North Korea's home-page on the internet).
Outcome
But this first attempt at a generalised strike showed that
workers and leaders alike lacked experience. The KCTU admitted as much. Having
threatened to renew the strike action on a number of occasions before the
labour laws were finally agreed, the KCTU leadership decided to concentrate on
firming up its position in the factories during the period of wage negotiations
and to launch a general offensive from 1st May. The law as amended by no means satisfied
their demands. While it made some concessions on the right of the KCTU to
negotiate and to call strikes it insisted on the 'no work, no pay' principle
being applied to strikers and trade union officials alike and gave employers
the right to take-on substitute labour during a dispute from among "other
non-striking workers in the same business".
In the event, the KCTU's May offensive was also dropped, and
energy was invested in preparing to stand a candidate in the presidential
elections. Whether it will be a totally independent trade union candidate or a
joint candidate with the present opposition parties is not, at the time of
going to print, decided. The outcome of this inevitably heated discussion will
say a great deal about the leadership of the movement. [MPD: KCTU President
Kwon Yong-kil stood as the ‘People's Victory for 21st Century’ presidential
candidate. This then became the ‘Democratic Labour Party’ in 2000. See: https://socialismtoday.org/archive/47/skorea.html
]
THE WAY AHEAD
Given the state of the economy and with the bosses trying
to hold wage rises at the same level as last year, struggles are inevitable.
The trade unions are intact but the organised workers did not finish the job.
They will want to strengthen their forces at factory level and consolidate
industrial unions and federations. Genuine workers' organisations
internationally will follow each struggle with keen interest and with the aim
of giving the maximum solidarity. They will back the teachers and the civil servants
in their fight for legality. They will loudly condemn all the anti-trade union
activities of the bosses and the state and energetically campaign for the
release of all political prisoners.
Undoubtedly, Korean workers will build on their confidence
in the manner of 1987 - more strikes, more victories, more union organisation.
But today their struggles will take place against the background of a fall in
growth rates as compared with the dazzling expansion of the late 1980s. Union membership
figures show that in the slow-down of 1992 and the concomitant closures and redundancies,
the unions suffered a considerable set-back. But today, with the winter general
strike under their belt, they would be less prepared to accept arguments about
the need to pull together in the interests of the economy. The next general
strike will be different; the question will be posed for the most active layers
of fighting against the system.
But they need an alternative to fight for. That of
the KCTU - protection of medium and small businesses and a campaign against
monopolies is not sufficient. In small and medium workplaces the accident rate
is the highest and the wages the lowest. The KCTU will enter into struggle
after struggle but they will stop short of an all-out offensive if they accept
the capitalist way of doing things and don't adopt a socialist alternative.
That is what the international bourgeois want, including their Social Democratic
friends around the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the ICFTU etc.
These people will assist in setting up strong trade unions
to operate within the system - negotiate, participate etc. They will put money
into human rights organisations, foreign workers' organisations and even a
party. Their aim is to ride the tiger of the combative Korean workers'
movement that is in the process of throwing off organisations like the FKTU and
the so-called democratic parties with whom they have done business in the past.
They want to tame the movement to stop it setting a bad example to others.
Political Alternative
The January strikes not only posed the question of a political
alternative, they actually prepared the ground for its formation. The leaders
may hesitate in setting up a party, citing the experiences of 1988, of 1992,
even of 1996, when candidates of the left or of the trade union movement had
been put forward and received very small electoral support. But all parties
start with a small turn-out.
First time round, the British Labour Party in 1906 received
no more than 5% of the vote. But in the context of a big strike struggle and a
social movement, a workers' party can develop very rapidly. The Party of
Workers (PT ) in Brazil was born out of the massive metalworkers' strikes of 1978.
Properly founded in 1980, it received a modest percent of the vote in elections
the first time it fielded any candidates - a total of 650,000. Three years
later in '89, its candidate for president, Lula, was not far short of victory
with 31 million votes in the second round run-off with the traditional right wing
candidate who got 35 million. The Greek Socialist Party - PASOK - first stood
in elections in 1974 and was in power by 1981 with a 48% share of the vote.
The KCTU is committed in its programme to building "a
party which fights for the interests of the working class" and along with
many other organisations is in discussion as to how it should be built. The
setting up of a workers' party would be a huge step forward. But it is not a
question of creating yet another party just to put people into parliament or
local government or even the president's position just for them to get in and
forget all about the people who put them there. How many participants of the 1987
Democracy Struggle have ended up in the present ruling party to continue to
hold the working class in chains? The only way to ensure that the "people's
representatives" stay faithful to the people would be through the
democratic election within the party of all candidates and their commitment to
take no privileges - no wage higher than the average skilled worker and
expenses vetted by the movement, plus mechanisms for removing them if they fail
to carry out the party's policies.
Class, party and programme
But if, as one of the KCTU's documents explains, the working
class is the majority in society and has played the leading role in the recent
movements against the government, then it requires a party which is prepared to
be unashamedly based on the working class. A party is needed which will champion
every demand of the trade unions and the movement - all the basic democratic
rights, trade union and human rights - and go further. South Korea's own
experiences demonstrate that, for all the professions of the democratic
politicians, without a challenge to the rule of capital, these rights remain
dispensable.
Only when the rule of capital is ended, only when the assets
of the Chaebol and the banks become the property of the majority, can the
majority decide how best to use them. With planning based not on bribery, power
politics and the enrichment of a few but on control by democratically elected
workers' representatives, both at the factory and the state level, it would be
possible to put an end to the abuse and humiliation of centuries. Insisting on
the eight- hour day and fully participating in decision-making, working people
in Korea would decide how best to organise relations with each other and with
the outside world. This is not a dream but a necessity.
Collapse of Stalinism
As everywhere in the world, the doubters and detractors will
say "but look at your planned economies, they have collapsed!" In
South Korea there were not a few activists who looked in the past to the Soviet
Union as a model to which they aspired. They were told it was 'socialism' both
by those who attacked it and those who unconditionally defended it. Now
apparently capitalism had shown itself superior and this was disorientating.
They did not have access to all the facts and arguments that give a clear
explanation of the objective reasons for the rise as well as the collapse of
the Stalinist system and leave the ideas of socialism basically intact.
The bureaucratically-controlled 'workers' states' came about
because of the degeneration of the Russian revolution - the isolation, the
backwardness, the inexperience of the working class and the usurpation of power
by a privileged caste. A planned economy without the oxygen of workers' democracy,
explained Trotsky, will eventually suffocate under the weight of the central bureaucracy
that cannot adapt to new techniques or allow individual initiative to be
expressed. To save their privileges and their dominance in society, which the
planned economies could no longer guarantee, and to fend off a revolt from
below, the communist parties of Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and, in
reality, of China - the parties of the bureaucracies - took the road of the
market. The vast majority of the bureaucrats preferred to turn themselves into
capitalists than to be thrown off like an old coat by a movement of workers in
the direction of socialism.
The state in the North
Millions of ordinary people in the South yearn for their
country to be reunited but genuinely fear the so-called communism of the North.
Based on a philosophy which in itself is a total distortion of Marxism
("Juché" or "self-reliance"), it has taken the cult of the
personality to extremes. The leader of the nation for 40 years, Kim Il-sung,
was credited with the infallibility and special powers of a demi-god while the
mass of the people saw their country fall into the depths of poverty and total
isolation.
There are those activists in the South who, willing things
to be otherwise, argue that descriptions of life in North Korea are merely
propaganda churned out by the paranoically anti-Communist government and its
imperialist backers. They adopt the attitude of "the enemy of my enemy is
my friend" and envy what they see as a simple, moral and Chaebol-free land.
But that is not sufficient.
It is true that the economy of the North grew faster than
that of the South in the period after the war, demonstrating the advantage of
state-ownership and planning. But the attempt to build a planned economy on the
basis of autarchic rule and isolated in one small country proved to be a
failure even before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now the country is
literally a disaster area with eight to nine million of a 25 million population
already on the danger list and dying through starvation. The 'Far Eastern
Economic Review talks of women cooking wild grass and tree bark for food.
People are keeping the bodies of their dead for a few days before burial in
order not to risk them being dug up and used as food by the desperately hungry
people around them!
North Korea has an army one million strong and the defector
Hwang Jang-yop says his mission in leaving the country (where he was general
secretary of the ruling Workers' Party) was to prevent a frightened and
desperate North Korea from going to war with the South. But soldiers must not
only be fed (and there are stories that rice aid from abroad is going only to
them) they must have a will to fight.
Who can help? Even China, going over to capitalism, now has
fewer links with the North than it has with the Chaebol-dominated economy.
South Korea is one of Beijing's biggest trading partners and the fourth largest
investor in China. Two-way trade has rocketed from nothing to nearly $20
billion. That between China and North Korea is dwindling – last year $566
million. The Chinese president meets South Korea's president Kim Young-sam
every year but has never met North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il.
As more and more harrowing stories about life in the North
reach Seoul, used as always by the regime as "proof" of the evils of
"communism", there is a widespread urge amongst ordinary people to
give physical assistance. But, having fostered the idea itself in mid-April,
the Kim Young-sam government tried to stop street collections. The organisers –
the church and various 'left' groups – were overwhelmed with the response and
were blamed for fomenting criticism of the government's policy towards the
North. Kim Young-sam cannot be too confident on this score as he has changed
his unification minister five times.
Reunification
All South Korean regimes, from the dictators to the pseudo-democrats,
have claimed to be in favour of reunification but unquestionably entirely on
terms dictated by imperialism as a whole and South Korean capitalism itself.
Many hold that the quibbling over aid to the North is in order to bully Kim
Jong-il's regime into submission. Kim Young-sam claims to be reluctant to give
succour to an enemy which has so recently (last year) "sent marine commandos
to invade". The North's leaders must come to the negotiating table first
and make a peace agreement. (Technically for them the Korean war has not yet
ended).
If the North Korean regime, facing famine at home and cold
shoulders all around it, virtually collapses into South Korea it will cost the
economy of the Chaebol far more than the reunification of Germany cost
capitalist West Germany. The United States would be forced to put in large sums
of money to shore up a united capitalist Korea. The population of the North is
half that of the South, compared with East Germany's being one-quarter that of
West Germany. It has a per capita income of at most one-tenth that of South
Korea. Most of the population is now receiving less than 200 grammes of food a
day, far less than the United Nations prescribes for refugees in Africa. 90% of
the country's livestock has gone - traded or slaughtered. While South Korea is the
eleventh largest economy in the world, North Korea "would not make it into
the top 500 centrally managed economic units in the world" (Economist - 'The
World in 1997').
No socialist could be against Korean reunification if it is
carried out in the interests of the people. Many hundreds of thousands of
families are still cruelly separated by the line that cuts the body of their country
in two. World imperialism with the collusion of the Soviet bureaucracy, imposed
this artificial arrangement solely in the interest of maintaining their own
sphere of influence in the region - literally dividing a nation and ruling as much
of it as possible.
No socialist, however critical of the bureaucracy and the
elite in the North, would welcome a delayed victory of imperialism in the form
of a 'surrender' of state ownership and planning. While the people of the North
are desperately in need of food and working people in the South are prepared to
make sacrifices to help, aid programmes organised by the United Nations or
other organisations of capitalism are bound to have strings attached.
Socialists vigorously oppose the privatisation of industry and land.
They would argue for full democratic rights and give full
backing for workers to establish control in their workplaces and manage the
economy and society through genuinely elected representatives. While thus
pressing for the overthrow of the ruling elite, they would have to argue for
North Korea, at least initially, to maintain its own identity, probably in a
federation of the two states with the freedom of all Koreans to travel. The
right of self-determination must be upheld and a united movement of the Korean
working class built with the aim of organising the voluntary re-unification of
Korea on a socialist basis. The decision must be that of the people of North
and South, arrived at in a totally democratic manner.
The "Bogey"
Some 'nationalist' activists in the South paint foreign imperialism
as the main enemy, implying that Koreans of all classes can struggle together
to eliminate it. Later can come the struggle for socialism. Indeed, the Korean
nation has endured enormous suffering under decades of direct and indirect
colonial rule. The movement will never forgive or forget. It has to demand that
US troops be completely withdrawn, that all the assets of American and Japanese
imperialism be taken into public ownership and that the country be re-unified. But
the now fully-fledged Korean capitalist class is integrally bound up with
foreign capital. It will use the very same methods of economic exploitation and
state repression, with or without that 'special relationship' with Washington
and Tokyo. The struggle against imperialism means a struggle against Korean
capitalism.
The present Southern regime wants unification on its own
terms, that is with the imposition of capitalist market relations. Socialists
must oppose this. They must fight for democratic rights in the North and the South
and for unification without the rule of the Chaebol. The fight for
re-unification must be linked precisely to the fight for socialism - the
elimination of rule by a handful of capitalist families in the South and by a
small bureaucratic 'dynasty' in the North.
It sometimes seems as if the bourgeois South prefers to keep
things as they are. A separate capitalist North Korea is unlikely to develop,
but if it did, in itself it would not represent a powerful rival to the South.
It is most likely to be 'absorbed'. But not only would this cause big problems
for the South Korean economy. If the planned economy was dismantled, the rather
useful "bogey" over the border would be gone. What conspiracy
theories could be used then against the workers' and students' movements to try
and deter them from the ideas of socialism and communism?
Although this excuse for intimidation has allowed regimes in
the South literally to get away with murder, in some cases, the fact that the
South Korean regime so ruthlessly punishes "pro-North activities",
tends to attract some of the most rebellious youth towards those very
activities. There is also a well-grounded and deep-seated hostility to imperialism
amongst wide layers of the population. But some activists feel that the lives
of many valiant young fighters have been wrecked unnecessarily as a result of
incorrect tactics that have laid the movement open to state provocation.
National Liberation (NL), the organisation behind last
summer's confrontation at Yonsei University, has been against linking up the
struggle of the students and the fight for the expulsion of imperialism from
the peninsula with the workers' movement for an end to the Chaebol economy in
the South. The NL leadership, in its blind drive for unification on Pyongyang's
terms and following its false Juché doctrine, abandons the class struggle and,
in effect, also excuses the monstrous rule of the ruling clique in the North.
It argues for a struggle of all Koreans, in the North and South and abroad -
i.e. Koreans of all classes - against foreign domination. This is the Stalinist
theory of two stages - first the national liberation struggle against
imperialism, then the class struggle against the bosses and for socialism. It
was this treacherous policy that delivered the leaders of the Chinese working
class into the murderous hands of the Chiang Kai Shek nationalists in 1927 and
was responsible for the slaughter of up to two million members of the Indonesian
Communist Party in 1965.
The other tendency in student politics was PD or 'People's
Democracy' which, while arguing for "broad coalitions" of forces,
recognises the main enemy as the Chaebol and the main force for change as the
proletariat. These, the two best known trends in student politics, have long
fed the debates in every corner of the movement - particularly in the underground
and semi-legal organisations that abound in the conditions of political
persecution.
Cross-class alliances
When the question of a new party is under discussion, there
are those, including in the KCTU, who also argue for a cross-class coalition
involving members of Kim Dae-jung's NCNP (National Congress for New Politics)
party. While Kim Dae-jung may have slightly more "radical"
credentials than Kim Young-sam, he has failed to live up to the most modest
expectations of his party's supporters even in the course of this great strike.
He said at the parliamentary symposium on 17th January that democracy must be
fully developed in order to crush communism. As soon as "Hanbogate"
broke he was forced to admit receiving $292,000 to use his influence in favour
of this now fallen pillar of Chaebol capitalism.
When, as happens quite frequently, he is accused in the
yellow press of association with the regime in the North he does not use the
opportunity to condemn his accusers. He says nothing of the right to free speech,
free association, let alone the right to advocate an alternative system. He is
well known for singing the praises not of North Korea but of capitalist
Germany.
The Korean people can no longer put their trust in any of
the "Kims". Kim Jong-pil, leader of the smaller ULD, is no
"friend of the people" either. Few will forget his role in the police
butchery under the Chun Doo-whan regime as founder of the Korean CIA.
Independent Working Class Party
A new independent party must be forged to champion the
interests of the class that has created "Korea Inc." and borne it on
its back. Of course, in the absence of such a party the church has also become
a channel for the expression of discontent in the population. It has provided a
protective cover against state repression for many of the labour movement's
activists. Its bravest representatives are themselves no strangers to police
brutality and prison walls.
Professors, lawyers, doctors have all played an important
role in giving valuable moral and practical support. But, if, by the unanimous
opinion of all the participants, in the recent movement it is the organised
workers who now call the shots with their strikes and demonstrations, surely it
is they who should call the shots in any party that is the very product and
natural expression of that movement. Its leaders should not be squeamish about
the facts of life.
Two great classes are ranged against each other. Intermediary
classes and friends of the movement will align themselves with the strongest
force. If they see the workers moving to transform society along lines which
give them the truest freedom of action and best opportunity to develop their
own talents, they will back them. Small farmers and shopkeepers would find life
under the rule of democratically elected workers' representatives far
preferable to today's struggle for existence, when debts are always going up
and incomes going down.
A government that had taken over the giant Chaebol and the
banks would be in a position to extend cheap credit to these layers. Its
"envoys" would agitate amongst them for the most co-operative, safe and
efficient use of equipment, of land and of buildings for the production,
storing and distribution of food and other essential consumer goods. Decisions
would be made according to what ordinary people needed in order to live a comfortable
existence and not for the profit of a few in order for them to live in luxury.
Capitalism's Alternative
Surely these ideas have not lost their validity. Look at the
horrible prospects if capitalism, large-scale or small-scale, is left to run
things its own way! World capitalism will exert relentless pressure to open up the
Korean economy to the icy winds of globalisation, to loosen state control over
trade, banking, investment and over wages policy. These measures will be
accepted by the South Korean industrialists and financiers. If they can drive
ahead with deregulation and "liberalisation" at the expense of the
living and working conditions of the mass of the population.
The much-demanded reform of the banking system has been
predicted to be about to put a third of all bank workers out of a job through
mergers and acquisitions ('Economic Report'). Some economists predict a leap in
the general level of unemployment from 2-6% within a very short space of time.
The Korean bourgeoisie have already participated in the globalisation process
themselves. An explosion of overseas direct investment is taking place. Hyundai
is responsible for the building in Oregon of the largest memory chip factory in
the world. Daewoo is spending $6 billion to establish production outside Korea
over the three years until the end of the century. Six South Korean firms are
now among the 200 largest in the world.
According to the Samsung Economic Research Institute, at
least 200,000 jobs producing for the home market, have been lost to areas of
cheaper labour in South East Asia. A shoe factory employing 20,000 workers in
Pusan, the largest in the world in the 1980s, is now closed and the work
transferred. Multinationals like Nike and Reebok have moved on to places like
the Philippines, Vietnam, China and Indonesia.
Even here they have found resistance to their super-exploitation
strategies. Towards the end of April this year, half the 10,000 workers
employed by a Nike sub-contractor in Tangerang, Indonesia were involved in mass
protests at the factory – burning cars, smashing windows, doors and furniture
at the firm's refusal to pay even the agreed $2.50 a day minimum wage.
'Reform' of the South Korean financial system - increasing
the cost of borrowing in an attempt to reduce the over-indebtedness of Korean
firms - it is feared would itself lead to recession. At present, direct foreign
investment in Korea is still low. The entry of foreign capital would mean
further problems for the Korean bourgeois. Lifting subsidies and protection
would lead to many more collapses. Continuing them would leave Korean
capitalism inefficient. Without the state protection of the past - in the form
of tax wavers, over-generous credit arrangements and other more dubious methods
- many more jobs would go.
If capitalist commentators now say that the state is an encumbrance
pointing to 11,000 different bureaucratic regulations, they at least recognise
its dominant role. They admit the absence of their beloved "free play of
market forces". The state involvement was all right when it was fuelling growth
but now, with the dramatic collapse of exports, it is the over-involvement
of the state that is to blame. The South Korean economy is described as so top-heavy
that it resembles "Schwarzenegger's body on the legs of Woody Allen"!
Globalise the Struggle!
As long as capitalism survives it will try to solve its problems
at the workers' expense. Globalisation – the "centrepiece of the
presidency", as the KCTU puts it - means "sharing the
suffering". Workers will not be fobbed off by any anti-luxury campaign
aimed at protecting Korea's domestic market. They know (and figures from the
National Statistics Office in Seoul bear them out) that the rich are getting
richer and the poor poorer. The more contact they have with workers elsewhere,
the more they see this as a world-wide phenomenon. A greater awareness of what
is happening in the world feeds conclusions about the need for the
"globalisation" of the struggle.
As the general strike, with all its phases subsided, attention
was turned to the annual wage battles and, particularly amongst the activists
and trade union leaders, to the question of taking political initiatives. The
'great strike' was followed by the 'great debate' over putting forward a
candidate for the presidential elections on 18th December and over the creation
of a party. Illusions still persist that the best chance of workers interests
being pursued would be through joining forces with the existing opposition
parties. But the KCTU's own press statements during the strike movement
condemned the parliamentary opposition for dragging its feet and for
"looking over their shoulders for the wishes of the big business".
An independent class position would be much more consistent
with all the KCTU propaganda that puts the blame for workers' problems squarely
at the feet of the Chaebol. If, for example, the known and respected leader of
the strike, Kwon Yong-kil was put forward as a presidential candidate, he could
get a big response. [MPD: Kwon Yong-kil did stand as the ‘People's Victory
for 21st Century’ presidential candidate]. A bold campaign could be taken
into every working-class area and industrial estate, championing the demands of
the movement and explaining the 'dictatorship' of big business.
Clear demands
A party could be rapidly put together around the demands for
an end to repression and corruption, for a living wage and shorter hours, for
jobs and homes for all. It could link them with the need to take the 30 biggest
Chaebol out of the hands of their super-rich founding families. It could
convince workers not to trust any of the parties who defend them and to
organise themselves for the democratic control and running of society.
Any party arising from the winter strike movement and
created by its participants will represent a giant step forward. Whether it is
based on clearly socialist principles depends on how far its founders can be persuaded
to go. But it would seem that, in the context of a struggle that has embraced
many diverse groupings within its sweep, convinced socialists would have a
place in such a party. Provided they prove their worth in any and every struggle
of the working class, they will find great scope for arguing the position of
genuine Marxism.
There are some similarities to the situation in Russia as
the 20th century began; but there are huge differences. On the verge of a new millennium,
the Korean working class starts from a far higher industrial and cultural
plane. Its weight in society and experience at organisation is far greater. The
literacy rate is higher now than that of the USA. What could be done if all of
Korea's modern technology was harnessed to need and not to profit?
The Korean working class has a proud history. In the 'Great
Political General Strike' they have once again proved their mettle. The workers
of Korea have brought to the attention of the world how far there is to go
before their country becomes the paradise that many made it out to be. Only
through transforming society along socialist lines as argued in this pamphlet
can the long years of sacrifice be rewarded.
Not a moment should be lost in struggling to create a leadership that is capable and worthy of that task. Only the programme of socialism embodies the aspirations of the movement and safeguards its traditions. In the spirit of its message to the KCTU in January, the CWI pledges its fullest support to all engaged in this endeavour and applauds the courage and tenacity of Korea's class fighters. They remain an inspiration to all those who struggle against injustice and oppression and towards the final goal of a socialist world. Solidarity!
End of the pamphlet
The first part of the pamphlet, covering pages 1 to 27, can be found here and the second part, covering pages 28 to 45, here.
