arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

South Korean Workers Struggle Against Layoffs
Daewoo Motor workers clashed with police in South Korea this week, as 1,500 protesters outside the Daewoo plant in Bupyong - about 30km west of Seoul, tried to force their way inside to join a sit-in of three hundred workers. Approximately 2,000 riot police blocked the entrance of plant but several outside protesters did manage to slip in. The sit-in began after the bankrupt business notified 1,751 workers that they were fired because of a restructuring plan intended to make the ailing auto maker an attractive purchase for General Motors. The clash is yet another in a series of violent episodes between police and Daewoo workers that has occurred since Daewoo collapsed during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. In Seoul on Monday 34 Daewoo Group executives and accountants, including Chang Byong-joo, former president of Daewoo Corp., were indicted for being involved in a multibillion slush fund. According to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KTCU), a militant umbrella group of trade unions that together boast about 600,000 members, "Daewoo Motor's mass layoffs, which was the largest-ever, was the result of the Kim Dae-Jung government's neo-liberalistic economic restructuring that demands sacrifice only from workers."

The continuing Daewoo struggle represents the fundamental shift in Korea's economy since it crashed in 1997-98. To soothe the crisis, the International Monetary Fund offered to loan South Korea approximately USD $21 billion. In exchange, the government of former dissident Kim Dae-Jung agreed to the IMF's economic restructuring program. The IMF has since heralded its South Korean loans as a stunning success. Currently the South Korean economy is growing at approximately 9%, but analysts worry that South Korea is still not streamlining its economy enough, even though unemployment has soared to at least 4%, a number well above pre-crisis levels, when South Koreans used to be able to rely on lifetime employment. KCTU officials predict the nation will face several hundred thousand layoffs if the government continues to follow IMF prescriptions; the union pledges to fight those layoffs, and the international globalization ("segyehwa") they represent, through strikes, protests and by whatever means necessary. In the words of union leader Kim Il-sup, "We've nothing more to lose, what can we do but protest?"
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