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170,000 South Korean Workers Joined General Strike to Protest Pact with U.S. |
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International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) communications specialist Marcy Rein sends us the third in a series of posts on an AFL-CIO-ILWU delegation to South Korea. U.S. unionists this week joined their counterparts in Seoul to discuss strategies for addressing an impending Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS-FTA)—another Bush-backed trade deal that doesn’t protect workers’ rights. On Monday, 200 U.S. and Korean trade unionists were met with 3,200 riot police as they held a press conference, but a general strike on Wednesday ended with no major police confrontation.
Drenching downpours did nothing to quench the ardor of the 40,000 union members, farmers and other opponents of the KORUS-FTA who filled the streets of Seoul Wednesday.
ILWU Organizer Agustin Ramirez described the day this way:
Every drop that fell on these workers seemed to give them energy. People were out there in the soaking rain in light plastic ponchos chanting like crazy.
Some 170,000 workers answered the call for a general strike by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), one of Korea’s two main union federations. Anti-KORUS-FTA demonstrations took place in major cities all over the country, with the largest in Seoul.
Union members marched for a couple miles through downtown before joining forces with the Korean Alliance against the KorUS-FTA (KoA), a coalition of 282 farmers’ groups, unions and civic organizations.
At the meeting place, all members of KoA’s board joined in reading their demands. Marchers then got under a thin, black sheet that covered an entire city block and shred it in strips—a ritual that symbolized coming out of the darkness and into the light.
From Seoul, Amy Masciola of the AFL-CIO Organizing Department, said:
The unions and civil society groups think the government is being very secretive about the negotiations, pushing them through in an undemocratic fashion. Together, the union and KoA activists continued towards the presidential palace, which South Koreans call “the Blue House.
The AFL-CIO/ILWU delegation marched at the front of the rally with the Korean movement leaders, just behind a sound truck carrying not two, not three, but nine amplifiers. Three people took turns at the mic, keeping up a ceaseless stream of chants.
The South Korean government deployed some 25,000 riot police to Seoul for the day, nearly 80 percent of the nation’s force. But although cops and demonstrators clashed, and pungent tear gas filled the streets, the skirmishes seemed almost routine compared with the unprovoked police attack on Monday’s press conference. The police closed a few subway stations, and local newspapers reported the combination of rain, subway closures and crowd-clogged streets made for a gnarly commute.
Korean and U.S. trade negotiators plan to meet next in the United States in September. Representatives from the KCTU, the FKTU and the KoA plan to follow them wherever they gather.
Gene Esparza, a worker from Blue Diamond Growers in Sacramento, Calif., who participated in the AFL-CIO-ILWU delegation, summed up the spirit of Korean workers:
They [the Koreans] are so strong against the FTA. They’re out there rain, shine or snow. They believe in their cause.
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