South Korea’s intelligence company raided the places of work of the Korean Confederation of Commerce Unions, the nation’s largest group of unbiased unions, and an affiliate on January 18.
The high-profile raid, over alleged ties between 4 former and present union officers and North Korean brokers, has raised fears that the conservative authorities is reverting to dictatorship-era strategies of attacking labor by conflating organizing with threats to nationwide safety.
The strikes come concurrently the conservative authorities, led by president Yoon Suk-yeol, seeks to elevate restrictions on lengthy working hours and scale back pension payouts whereas rising employee contributions. Yoon was elected final March on an brazenly anti-labor platform.
First Spy Company Raid
Throughout the raid, 30 brokers of the Nationwide Intelligence Company (NIS) executed a search warrant on the KCTU’s headquarters in Seoul. They had been delayed by hours of scuffles with KCTU employees, who stalled them till the confederation’s lawyer arrived.
The KCTU is a community of unions that has grown to greater than 1 million members on this planet’s tenth largest economic system. KCTU members work in industries starting from auto and shipbuilding to rising sectors like well being care and software program engineering.
Since its founding in 1995 (seven years after the tip of the nation’s army dictatorship), it has been topic to routine repression by the federal government, conservative and liberal alike, with all ten KCTU presidents up to now being jailed at least once during their terms. However that is the primary time that the KCTU has ever been raided instantly by the NIS, the equal of the CIA and the FBI mixed.
Whereas the warrant was issued for a single KCTU official over allegations of hyperlinks with the North Korean spy company, 1,000 riot police and firefighters surrounded the constructing in what seemed to be a public relations stunt. That was twice the variety of police initially deployed to a Halloween block party in Seoul, the place 158 younger revelers had been crushed to dying because of the lack of crowd management.
In a twist, the NIS didn’t arrest the official, allegedly a nationwide safety menace. As an alternative, the brokers seized knowledge from his telephone and pc after which left.
The state of affairs was comparable on the workplace of the KCTU-affiliated Korean Well being and Medical Staff Union and two different places the place the NIS concurrently executed search warrants involving three different former and present KCTU officers. The NIS and the police made spectacular scenes after which left after downloading knowledge from the topics’ digital gadgets.
Nationwide Safety Regulation
“The company has been conducting personal probes [into the four individuals] for violations of the Nationwide Safety Regulation for a few years,” the NIS mentioned in an announcement. “It has already secured proof tying them to North Korea, which enabled [NIS] to get the warrants.”
The Nationwide Safety Regulation forbids unauthorized journey to North Korea and speak to with its individuals. After the raid, some conservative information shops cited nameless NIS sources saying that KCTU officers acquired orders and money from North Korea.
The Nationwide Safety Regulation was enacted in early 1948, a couple of months forward of the nation’s founding structure, when South Korea declared itself the Republic of Korea beneath U.S. tutelage, amid robust leftwing opposition at house and the rise of a rival communist republic within the northern half of the Korean peninsula. The laws has since been used to suppress home opposition and labor organizations beneath the pretext of army threats from the North.
The regulation remained intact even after the nation launched into democratization within the late Nineteen Eighties, when mass protests put an finish to the three many years of army rule. Even liberal presidents have routinely resorted to the regulation and its fundamental enforcer, the NIS, to stymie organized labor.
In 1998, the worldwide rights group Amnesty Worldwide protested then-President Kim Dae-jung, a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2000, for arresting 25 pupil and labor activists on costs of violating the Nationwide Safety Regulation for forming a “pro-North Korea group.”
“The obvious try to hyperlink commerce union unrest to alleged ‘pro-North Korean’ actions is alarming and signifies a return to authoritarian strategies of stamping out dissent,” mentioned Amnesty International on the time. “The arrests coincide with a common strike and threats from authorities ministers to crack down on strikers and demonstrators,” Amnesty famous.
Trucker Strike
The latest raid adopted on the heels of the defeat of a nationwide strike by unbiased truckers.
In November, when 25,000 truckers walked off the job, some noticed it as the start of a long-awaited “winter of discontent” in opposition to Yoon’s anti-labor insurance policies. Amongst different issues, the owner-drivers—members of a KCTU affiliate—had been demanding the enlargement of minimal pay charges to all truckers and to make them everlasting. The placing truckers mentioned that the minimal charges, decided by a joint fee of truckers, contractors, and the federal government, had helped scale back highway fatalities and accidents as a result of such charges disincentivized pace and overwork.
The strike resulted in defeat after 16 days. Greater unions didn’t be a part of the motion, and the Yoon authorities pressed the truckers laborious with a sequence of return-to-work orders. After six years of growth, the KCTU discovered itself on the defensive. In distinction, Yoon’s approval rating rose by 9 p.c because the crackdown on the truckers rallied his conservative base.
The anti-strike stance was bipartisan. On December 8, a day earlier than the truckers’ vote on ending the strike, the liberal Democratic Celebration of Korea, which controls a slim majority within the Nationwide Meeting, urged the strikers to just accept the federal government’s proposal for a restricted three-year enlargement of the minimal charge scheme. The federal government has but to make the extension.
The liberals had been additionally silent on the NIS raids. Throughout a 15-minute TV interview on the night after the raids, Lee Jae-myung, the opposition get together chief and Yoon’s opponent within the final presidential race, didn’t say a phrase concerning the NIS or the KCTU.
In the meantime, the NIS is making an attempt to increase its once-ubiquitous tentacles to each nook of the nation once more. In December, the company was empowered to “examine and collect data” on senior authorities officers for human sources functions. The surveillance of civilians by the NIS was outlawed in 2020, following a probe that confirmed rampant misuse.
The brand new pointers didn’t specify the scope of data gathering, in impact permitting the company to broaden warrantless and arbitrary surveillance. The NIS additionally has been lobbying for the repeal of a brand new regulation that can take away its home investigative powers by the tip of the 12 months. The laws was prompted by a 2013 scandal when it was revealed that the company manipulated proof and tortured the sister of an ethnic Chinese language defector from the North to frame him as a North Korean agent.
Anti-Labor Agenda
Sooner or later after the KCTU raid by the NIS, the police raided two nationwide places of work of building unions, recognized for his or her militancy although additionally marred by rumors of corruption.
In his televised new 12 months speech on January 3, Yoon painted all of organized labor as a self-dealing elite who’re privileged in contrast with unorganized employees. His authorities is prone to step up its assault on employees by trying to pit them in opposition to one another and by branding a few of their leaders as corrupt and privileged—or pro-North Korea quislings.
Alongside the way in which, Yoon will more and more have little possibility however to make use of pressure and an authoritarian equipment just like the NIS as he’ll discover it more and more troublesome to push by means of anti-labor legal guidelines. The bulk opposition Democratic Celebration will stall his anti-labor agenda within the legislature, however solely as a result of it doesn’t need Yoon to succeed, not as a result of the get together is a dependable ally of labor.
The raid on the KCTU showcases the challenges confronted by labor in quite a few nations the world over, as unions face the re-emergence of authoritarian and repressive measures amidst ongoing assaults on dwelling requirements, wages, and pensions. These world points require world solidarity.
This story was initially revealed by Labor Notes.
