I don’t think the KCTU is going to win any public sympathy by keeping people up all night with their protests:
A Cabinet meeting led by President Yoon Suk Yeol is held at the presidential office in Seoul on May 23, 2023. (Pool photo) (Yonhap)
President Yoon Suk Yeol slammed a major labor group Tuesday for its overnight street rally last week, saying its actions infringed on people’s freedoms, disturbed the public order and will not be tolerated by the people.
Yoon made the remark during a Cabinet meeting, referring to a rally staged by the Korean Construction Workers’ Union in protest of the government’s labor policies from Tuesday to Wednesday.
An estimated 25,000 union members took part in the rally in downtown Seoul, causing massive traffic congestion and leading to some 80 noise complaints being filed with the police.
The union falls under the umbrella Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU).
“Our Constitution guarantees the freedom of assembly and demonstration, and as president, I, too, have respected this,” Yoon said.
“However, guaranteeing the freedom of assembly and demonstration does not mean infringements on another person’s freedoms and basic rights, or acts disturbing the public order, are justified.”
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
The KCTU did not mind when the Korean left was demanding the prosecution and jailing of former conservative Presidents Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak, but don’t like it when their political leader Lee Jae-myung is being prosecuted. Ironically they are condemning President Yoon for the prosecution when during the last administration he was the chief prosecutor that put President Park in jail which they championed. So what you can take from all this is that they only want conservatives prosecuted:
Members of a major South Korean umbrella union rallied in downtown Seoul on Saturday to condemn the Yoon Suk-yeol administration, jamming traffic in the neighborhood.
Some 13,000 union members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, one of the country’s two major umbrella labor organizations, held multiple rallies in Daehangno, Saejongno and Jongno, in protest against “prosecution-backed dictatorship.”
During the rallies, the protestors said the country’s civil livelihood, democracy and labor fell to the worst conditions under the Yoon administration in less than one year of his presidency.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, what is further hypocritical about the KCTU is that they are calling the Yoon administration a “dictatorship” while their union and the political left has been linked to North Korean spies. North Korea is a real dictatorship which the KCTU says nothing about.
The Korean left has struck back at the Yoon administration which is trying to reel in the violent and pro-North Korean KCTU:
Business associations expressed deep concern, Tuesday, over the opposition-led passage of the so-called “yellow envelope” bill, which limits employers’ claims for compensation against losses caused by labor strikes.
Korea Times
Critics say the bill will encourage irresponsible and reckless collective actions by the country’s labor unions.
Korea’s militant labor unions have been and will continue to be the primary and strongest deterrent to foreign investors who otherwise would not hesitate to commit to long-term investments in Korea, the lobby groups said.
The bill will be made into law, if it is tabled and passes with a majority vote during a plenary session.
You can read more at the link, but the opposition parties are likely setting the stage for the KCTU to conduct large strikes in the future to damage the Korean economy. This is likely to put pressure on the Yoon administration to stop the investigations into the KCTU.
It is pretty clear that the Yoon administration has declared war on the violent and pro-North Korean KCTU. Here is the latest front he has opened up on them:
Eradicating illegal practices at construction sites has been a central part of labor reform, one of the Yoon administration’s top three areas of reform along with education and pensions, the presidential office said.
Since late last year, the land ministry has run a designated team to respond to violence at construction sites while the police have operated a 200-day special crackdown period, it added.
The government’s hard-line stance comes as construction unions affiliated with the country’s two major umbrella labor organizations — the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions — have been accused of coercing employers to hire their union members for construction jobs.
“Militant labor unions with vested rights continue to overtly carry out illegal actions at construction sites, such as demanding money and goods, forcing hiring and obstructing construction,” Yoon said during the Cabinet meeting.
“As a result, workers are losing their jobs and construction is being poorly done. The damage is being passed on to the people, with delays in the opening of new elementary schools and move-ins to new apartments,” he said.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but if the KCTU loses its government subsidies and has to give up their extortion practices this is going to greatly hinder them financially. On top of that the KCTU is being investigated for their part in a North Korea spy ring by the government.
Why is the Korean government giving subsidies to violent pro-North Korean labor unions in the first place?:
President Yoon Suk Yeol warned Monday of “firm action” against labor unions that refuse to disclose their account books while receiving large amounts of government subsidies, his office said.
Yoon’s warning came during a weekly meeting with Prime Minister Han Duck-soo as they discussed ways to increase labor unions’ accounting transparency and regulatory reforms, according to presidential spokesperson Lee Do-woon.
“The president stressed once again that the starting point for labor union reform is transparency of labor union accounting,” Lee said during a press briefing.
“There is no choice but to take firm action against behavior that uses hundreds of billions of won from taxpayers’ precious money in government subsidies, but denies the rule of law and refuses to disclose the details of their use,” Yoon was quoted as saying.
The hundreds of billions of won was an apparent reference to People Power Party Rep. Kweon Seong-dong’s recent claim that the country’s two largest umbrella unions — the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions — received 152.1 billion won (US$117.4 million) in subsidies from the labor ministry and regional governments between 2018 and 2022.
Meanwhile, only 120 out of 327 labor unions and groups with 1,000 or more members complied with the government’s request for accounting records from Feb. 1-15, according to the labor ministry.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but the Yoon administration says they will cut off all funding if these unions do not open their books for inspection. They are probably all furiously cooking their books now to try and cover up irregularities before any inspection.
It looks like the KCTU trucker protest has been a failure for them:
The trucker strike is over 16 days after it started, a majority of union members voting to go back to work, and some just dispersing.
In votes held at 16 locations nationwide, 62 percent of the 3,574 that cast ballots agreed to end the strike.
The decisive climb down came a day after the government said it would order more truckers back to work, extending the legally binding orders to steel and petrochemical truckers. Cement truckers received back-to-work orders last week, and all but one complied or indicated the intent to do so. (…….)“We decided not to ask the opinion of our union members as asking the members to vote on whether to continue to strike is an attempt by leadership to avoid accountability and pass that responsibility to the members,” a Busan union official said. “The general strike didn’t end up with the results that we expected was because of the Yoon Suk-yeol government breaking its promise, oppression and anti-labor policies.”
Joong Ang Ilbo
Truckers went into strike on Nov. 24. Cargo Truckers Solidarity, the trucker union under the militant Korea Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), failed to rally public support amid concerns over the weakening economy and several reports of violence directed at non-union truck drivers.
The strikers were also swayed by the heavy penalties of the back-to-work order. They could face up to three years in jail and up to 30 million won in fines for not complying. Threats to end certain government subsidies were also made.
You can read more at the link, but I think the threats the KCTU was making against trucker drivers trying to go to work really soured the public on the protests.
I don’t think this is a good analogy to compare truckers trying to get higher wages with the mafia state in North Korea:
President Yoon Suk-yeol has likened the ongoing truckers strike to North Korea’s nuclear threats, saying the government should respond sternly with principles like it does to protect the people from Pyongyang’s repeated actions of menace.
“If we had pursued (consistent) North Korea policies based on the principle of nuclear intolerance, we wouldn’t be facing North Korea’s nuclear threat as we do now,” he was quoted as saying by multiple officials, according to Yonhap News Agency on Monday.
“The vicious cycle will repeat if we give in to (their) illegal activities and violence,” he said, stressing union leadership should be sternly punished for blocking members from returning to work.
Korea Herald
What I can agree with is that the KCTU based on their past activities is sympathetic to the North Korean regime:
His party, the People Power Party, went further, claiming the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, the umbrella group initiating the ongoing strike, “represents the interest of the North Korean regime.”
Park Jung-ha, a senior spokesperson of the People Power Party, accused the KCTU of taking orders from North Korea to initiate anti-US and anti-government struggles, denouncing that it should change its name to “Minrochong,” a North Korean way of referring to Minnochong, by which the KCTU is known in Korean.
Here is what the truckers are protesting about:
The truckers union has been on a general strike since Nov. 24, saying the government has failed to keep up its end of the bargain to continue the safe trucking freight rate system that both sides had agreed on in June to end an eight-day strike at the time. The safe trucking freight rate system is a measure that guarantees minimum cargo rates for truck drivers to prevent dangerous driving and overwork. It also imposes fines on shippers who pay less than the minimum rate. It was introduced as a three-year system in 2020 and expires at the end of this year.
I am supportive of higher pay for truck drivers, however what I don’t support is unions threatening and assaulting other truck drivers to prevent them from going to work.
