South Korean general strike challenges inequality – Liberation News

Photo: October 16: Rally in Los Angeles in solidarity with the South Korean general strike

On October 20, millions of workers across South Korea held a general strike amid an intensified struggle for workers’ and social rights. Demonstrations organized by workers were brutally attacked by the police to suppress workers’ struggle.

On September 2, Yang Kyung-soo, president of the Korean Trade Union Confederation (South Korea’s largest trade union confederation), was arrested for organizing a union demonstration during a pre-dawn raid by hundreds of police officers at KCTU headquarters. He is the 13th consecutive KCTU President to be jailed. His arrest came just hours after the government reached an agreement and avoided a nationwide nurses strike.

There is no question that Yang’s arrest was politically motivated and that he is still behind bars today. But this repression has failed to silence South Korea’s trade union movement. Instead, the KCTU called a general strike – a major threat to business operations – calling for freedom for Yang Kyung-soo and a wide range of social and economic reforms.

At the same time, the union struggle has intensified in the United States, with 100,000 workers in what is popularly known as the “Striketober”. How are these two struggles related?

US workers should show solidarity with the general strike in South Korea

US workers have much more in common with workers in South Korea than with the bosses and owners who control the governments of both countries. The daily struggle for survival against employers – whose motivation is always to make greater and greater profits by taking more and more from the workers – is the same struggle in South Korea as it is in the United States.

But here, too, there is a deeper struggle. The US government created and maintains the extremely repressive policies of the South Korean government.

Korea suffered badly under Japanese colonial rule from the early 20th century until 1945 when Japan was defeated in World War II. The Korean people had fought a determined struggle for the country’s liberation, and so the Korean Independence Preparation Committee organized people’s committees to prepare for the transition to independence.

But the United States, in a newly won position of world power, has betrayed Korea. Instead of allowing Korea to transition to independence, the US decided to have Korea as a colony of its own. Two young US military officers who knew nothing about Korea drew a border across Korea, dividing it into north and south. Until then, Korea had been a united country for millennia.

In the south, the United States told the Japanese occupation soldiers not to leave their posts until US soldiers could take their places. It banned the CPKI People’s Committees and then launched a campaign of terror against the Movement for Independence and Unification of Korea. The United States then took the Koreans who had collaborated with the Japanese occupation and made them police and government officials of the newly created right-wing South Korean puppet government, the Republic of Korea.

To this day, South Korea upholds many of the repressive colonial-era laws and policies, including the National Security Act (1948), which allows the government to jail anyone for making political statements. The National Security Act isn’t just in the law books, it’s used today and often.

Although South Korea is not an official colony, it is occupied by around 30,000 US soldiers. In the event of war, the South Korean troops are automatically placed under the control of US generals by law. US politicians and intelligence agencies are working closely with and pressuring the South Korean government to ensure pro-US policies, the continuation of the occupation and the ability of US corporations to super-profit South Korean labor and markets achieve.

For these reasons, workers in South Korea face not only the South Korean government, but also the US empire that stands behind it.

The general strike continues a long tradition of resistance to the exploitative conditions that the Korean working class in the south has faced. The KCTU itself defeated a repressive labor law with the general strike from 1996-1997 and played a key role in the candlelight revolution 2016-2017, which ousted right-wing extremist President Park Geun-hye.

There are still many battles ahead of us, and if US workers unite with South Korean workers, we can both grow stronger and ultimately win justice and human dignity for all.

The following statement was issued by the People’s Democracy Party, a party in South Korea that fights against imperialism and the exploitation of the working class

Workers and people in South Korea fought under the fascist oppression of colonial semi-capitalism. South Korea’s government and police are even undermining trade union rights by using COVID-19 as an excuse. The South Korean police stigmatized the national workers’ rally in July as “the illegal rally” and coordinated the special investigation office. On the day of the rally, the police completely blocked the workers’ meeting and forced an inspection of the KCTU (Korean Confederation of Trade Union) vehicles. Due to the repression by the fascist police, the KCTU was eventually forced to move the location for the rally. And last September the president of the KCTU was arrested, revealing the nature of the fascist government and police. However, the reason workers risk their lives to take to the streets amid the spread of COVID-19 is because they choose to die fighting instead of working in the subordinate and distorted social structure. In South Korea, around 2,000 people are killed in work-related accidents each year, and over the past four years the number of regular workers has decreased by 240,000 and the number of precarious workers has increased by 950,000.

What is the difference between the Moon Jae-in government showing mercy on the group of traitors while suppressing and holding back the patriotic union forces and the forces of the labor movement, using various fascist evil methods, and the evil power of “Lee Myung- Bak and Park ”? Geun-Hye “? Where there is oppression, there is struggle. Our people will undoubtedly end the treacherous and anti-popular evil law through popular uprising and advance a new world of people’s democracy and re-appropriation through welfare.

South Korea is not alone in suppressing labor and human rights under the pretext of COVID-19. As the imperialist forces accelerate the suppression of workers in every country under the pretext of COVID-19, people around the world are fighting imperialist exploitation and repression, including the struggle of 100,000 workers in the US and the peasant protests in India. The united struggle of workers and people around the world will certainly destroy the imperialist forces and the exploiting class.