SOUTH KOREA BEHIND OLYMPIC GLITZ
Tabb, William K.
South Korea Behind Olympic Glitz South Korea has the longest working hours and the highest accident rate in the industrial world. But these accomplishments have been attained at the expense of...
...It does not speak of two twelve-hour shifts reminiscent of the days of Carnegie and Frick in Nineteenth Century America...
...1 troops...
...To combat its image as "a junta with civilian clothes," it has reduced the once all-too-visible presence of plain-clothes agents and soldiers...
...The Posco complex looks like a campus, not a scrapheap...
...Having surpassed U.S...
...For the Kwangju of the future, we will suffer, we will fight, and we will march toward victory without rest...
...The aim is to legitimate Korean capitalism by creating more "capitalists" who will own little and control less...
...The continuing presence of42,000 U.S...
...troops also raises ambivalent feelings...
...In 1987, Posco's facilities operated at 107 per cent of capacity...
...Instead, they are seeking a new generation of leaders and redoubling their organizing efforts among students and workers...
...Though Roh may be less receptive to corruption, he shows no interest in broad-based democratic reforms that would empower ordinary Koreans, allow truly free trade unions, or address urban and rural poverty...
...He realizes he needs to win the loyalty of the technicians, scientists, and low- and mid-level personnel if he is to survive...
...It was very strange that Roh won in the Inchon area, where Kim Dae Jung has always been highly favored by the working district...
...The ruling Democratic Justice Party has proven more supple and effective than many predicted only a year ago...
...and European manufacturers, Posco's Kwang-yang Works are crowding Japanese producers...
...Had the elections been honest, Kim Young Sam or Kim Dae Jung [the two opposition leaders] would have won...
...The government has enacted labor-law reforms granting the right to establish union shops, determine union structure, and conduct internal union affairs free of government interference...
...The city of Kwangju Ju was the site of a massacre of unarmed demonstrators by government troops in 1980...
...Some dorms, looking like Southern California condominiums with lots of tennis courts and a swimming pool, have been strategically placed on the road to the plant which all tours take...
...This is the opening that activists hope to fill...
...Some militants are bribed, others beaten, all in an attempt to eliminate emergent leadership...
...One observer noted, "Election officials were clever...
...Koreans have been taught that importing consumer goods is unpatriotic...
...The outcome of that race will determine the future of Korea...
...Roh's electoral campaign was built around the promise of "stability," with its connotation of continued economic prosperity and cool-headed democratic government...
...It is managed by Koreans, many of whom studied abroad, not by foreign technicians as in some other industrializing nations...
...Roh's policy is a calculated one...
...Marxism, of course, is still taboo, but it, too, is being surreptitiously studied and discussed...
...He is trying to buy time for the economy to broaden the ranks of the middle class, the natural ally of the government...
...The Korean government has no other choice but to accept these requests," said Soogil Young of the Korea Development Institute in Washington last fall...
...But these accomplishments have been attained at the expense of Korean workers...
...Kwangju is no longer a geographical name, it is the hope embedded in the future of our people," says Moon Buyung Ran, a nationalist poet...
...There were six women, along witli college professors and journalists, as well as government officials and politicians...
...In other ways, it has defined and limited the government's power over the unions...
...It is the hope embedded in the future of our people.' solute control of workers through company unions, police repression, and the hard-driving supervision of management is the real heart of the Korean economic miracle...
...meddling in Korean affairs, they have raised the specter of insurrection...
...The threat of a radicalized middle class motivates the Roh government reforms...
...Employers use family pressure, telling parents of activists that they have become communists...
...That is the blood payment for its economic miracle...
...The blast furnaces run twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, and are among the most modern in the world...
...Many Koreans express gratitude that the United States saved them from North Korean communism, though the U.S...
...Many believe there would > have been another military coup if Kim Dae Jung had won...
...Doing things faster causes accidents...
...By the end of the summer, the increasingly political nature of the burgeoning strike movement was worrying the government, as was the growing participation of the middle class...
...They expect little from the two Kims, who discredited themselves by splitting the opposition vote in 1987...
...The combination of high technology and intense exploitation of low-paid workers characterizes Korea's large industrial producers, but sweatshops employing ten or twenty workers are also essential in making the miracle work so well...
...That is why these crash courses on the nuts and bolts of unionism are so important...
...For example, in the mid-1970s when Hyundai started building ships, 800 workers died or were seriously disabled building one ship, but the company did not see this as a blot on its good name: It got the orders because it could build ships faster than anyone else...
...media portrayed it during the 'Olympics...
...But it may have been more show than substance...
...The Korean government tries to use anti-American sentiment to its own advantage...
...Whether 200 died, as the government claims, or 2,000, as critics charge, Kwangju remains a potent symbol...
...Roh has tried to appease the middle class by distancing himself from his predecessor, Chun Doo Hwan...
...Activists recognize, as they do in the Philippines, that freedom and independent politics require the departure of U.S...
...The effort to distribute Posco shares as widely as possible at subsidized prices for low-income workers, farmers, and fishermen is part of a wider campaign to increase loyalty by what Trade-Industry Minister Ahn Byong Wha calls "the appropriate distribution of benefits from the enhancement of productivity in order to foster new and harmonious relations between labor and management...
...Now it is being privatized...
...Farmers are furious about U.S...
...This combintion of repression and co-optation typifies the Roh government's response to the labor insurgency...
...Posco has been government-owned and run, like many state enterprises, as an almost military operation by a former general...
...Posco, the Pohang Iron and Steel Company, is a good example of Korea's impressive development...
...The party's sixty-two candidates in the last eleo-tion included only three former military officers...
...Anti-Americanism is not a whimsical issue dreamed up by restless students, as the U.S...
...He added that if personal ambition had not been a factor, the two Kims would have united and easily beaten Roh...
...There were many reports of Chicago-style voting fraud...
...trade demands...
...The decision to hold a direct presidential election was related to protests sweeping the country...
...College students have been going into the factories to hold unionization classes for workers, which start at ten or eleven at night and go to two or three in the morning...
...role in preventing free elections in the South and in opposing reunification fuels resentment...
...A visitor is swiftly, if politely, hustled off the premises and denied information on wages and labor relations...
...The 1987 election of Roh Tae Woo was heralded in the U.S...
...A government survey shows that among Korea's ten million workers, 86 per cent earn wages insufficient to provide the government-set minimum subsistence level...
...media as a fundamental shift toward democracy...
...some army officers feel it is an insult to national pride to be under the command of U.S...
...Hundreds of thousands of workers engaged in strikes which started at the four major Korean companies-Daewoo, Hyundai, Samsung, and Lucky Goldstar—and spread to virtually every industry...
...A glossy brochure shows young children in a company school, each before a computer terminal...
...But after that, workers are often at a loss on how to proceed...
...demands that Korea allow the importation of American agricultural products...
...Statistics from the Korea Information and Resource Center show that the gap between rich and poor continues to widen while the concentration of wealth and business ownership grows...
...Until 1985, smoking or even possessing foreign cigarettes could lead to a $500 fine...
...Posco's education and training center has an array of state-of-the-art training facilities, a fine simultaneous translation system, and a Zen practice room...
...Kwangju is the rallying cry of student protesters and other elements of the opposition in Korea...
...the war left a peninsula divided, with millions of people separated from family members...
...Government officials and Korean economists have presented their country as the victim of intolerable U.S...
...The dismissal or arrest of leaders, however, can be devastating to union efforts...
...The ab'Kwangu is no longer a geographical name...
...But 35 per cent of the stock is reserved for Posco, so there should be no loss of control and the company will be able to resist pressures to pay dividends above what management believes it needs to make continued investments...
...The average monthly wage is $285, or $ 1.20 per hour, but many do far worse...
...green light for the crackdown, translates Kwangju into anti-Americanism...
...officers...
...South Korea's workers and students have made it clear that economic growth without justice is not acceptable...
...But the repression continues—especially against students who want South Korea to reunify with the North...
...When former president Chun resigned from all public posts in April amid charges of financial scandals involving family members, it was a historic event...
...In voicing their desire for national reunification with the communist North, demanding justice for victims of past repression, and focusing on perceived U.S...
...When the United States forced Korea to import American cigarettes in 1986, a national campaign against smoking foreign cigarettes was organized...
...People came out of the offices and the banks, as well as the universities and the factories...
...American support for both presidents, as well as a U.S...
...Still, there is fear of the North, fed by the longstanding line that North Korea is "totally evil...
...South Koreans hunger for independent knowledge of the North and most want national unification...
...Even the controlled South Korean press admitted that the workers and the poor voted for Kim Dae Jung and the middle class for Kim Young Sam, while the wealthy and military sided with Roh...
...Party spokesman Choi Sang In said the list "represents our party's firm will to realize civilian rule" and spoke of "the ruling party's will to open an era of ordinary people, new politics, and a new National Assembly...
...By 1992, Posco is likely to be the second-largest steel producer in the noncommunist world...
...No observers were allowed to watch the military vote, and there were unconfirmed reports of violence against soldiers who did not vote for Roh...
...In recent years, however, the regime has been having heart troubles...
...It has rid South Korea of the worst embarrassments of the old order—the crude tortures, the obvious cover-ups...
...During the summer of 1987, Korea experienced its biggest wave of work stoppages...
...It is actually fairly easy to form independent unions...
...Unlike his predecessors, Roh seems to recognize that a race is going on in Korea between the growth of an independent trade-union movement with mass support and the creation of a loyal middle class...
...As the protests during the Olympics demonstrated, there is surely anti-Americanism in Korea, but it is not as coherent as one would expect...
...The government responded with a combination of repression and concession, arresting or isolating the most militant political elements in the workers' movements, while at the same time granting recognition to independent unions, offering wage increases, and agreeing to a new constitution providing for a popular vote for president...
...But for many Koreans, the American soldiers represent both an economic boon and a measure of security...
...But the Korean government continues to bank on economic performance, along with some political concessions, to make the transition from a nakedly exploitative system to a more "normal" capitalist democracy...
...Posco's public-relations material suggests a virtual workers' paradise: "The housing complex built in complete harmony with the natural scenic beauty literally forms a paradise for the family members of the ironmen...
...But it does so only with great reluctance and much procrastination after many quarrels...
...Former president Chun Doo Hwan and his second in command, the present president Roh Tae Woo, are generally held responsible for the massacre at Kwangju Ju...
...I feel deeply sorry for President Roh and other officials for causing them trouble at a time when the new government is about to set sail," Chun repented...
...Koreans have other grievances against the United States...
...No enterprise or individual will be permitted to own more than 1 per cent of the stock—foreigners will not be allowed to own any— and workers will get to buy 20 per cent at subsidized prices...
...Exports are expanding to sixty countries around the globe...
...Textile workers earn $120 a month working ten to twelve hours a day, six days a week, in dangerous conditions...
...They ran proper balloting booths where most of the international observers were stationed in Seoul, but not necessarily in other parts of the nation...
...This leads many Koreans to believe that they are being victimized: They feel that because their government lacks bargaining power, it must make concessions that are harmful to the economy...
...The Pohang steel works has succeeded by combining the most up-to-date technologies with an intensity of work probably unmatched in the industry anywhere else in the world...
...It has strong historical and economic roots, and it is widespread and •rowing...
Vol. 52 • November 1988 • No. 11
