[No.83/In-Depth Look ] My 10 won worth
Fiona Taylor, an Australian, spent 8 months in Korea and writes about her thoughts and experiences with the Korean progressive movement.
Source :
In-Depth Look
My 10 won worth (after 8 months checking out the Korean progressive movement)
by Fiona Taylor
In June last year I came to Seoul with a pretty common plan - make better money
teaching English than I will probably ever make back home, experience a differen
t culture and check out the world renowned progressive movement.
For as long as I've been involved in activism back home in Australia (about the
last 9 years) I've heard stories about huge violent protests and militant strike
s in South Korea. The news usually filters through to Australia either from the
mainstream media ("Strikes in Korea may threaten economic recovery" etc) or via
internet-active folk in Korea. In particular Youn, Young-Mo (International Soli
darity office-holder at the KCTU) is very active at disseminating news of progre
ssive struggles in Korea around the world. I get the impression that he has a v
ery long list of people he sends news to, and in Australia at least - that news
is spammed to a lot more people. Still receiving his spams while living in Kore
a (via Australia) has been pretty interesting - as a lesson of how subjective En
glish language (and probably all) Web-sites and email lists can be. Anyway that
was I expecting, and what have I experienced? The answer to the first question
is easy - I was expecting mass participation in one of the most militant large s
cale unions in the world and I was expecting a radical, active student movement.
I think Western impressions of the South Korean student movement must be stuck
in the late 1980's-early 1990's - because I certainly
haven't seen all the student riots and molotov-cocktail throwing I was expecting
. I hear that - like in Australia - student activists in Korea increasingly hav
e to work mostly on university based issues in order to keep students interested
. I guess this is just one legacy of the corporatisation of universities everyw
here. On the other hand I've observed a lot of the same tactics coming from Marx
ist and Trotskyist students in Korea, as I've seen back home. The same gangs of
middle class university students debating minute points, dedicated to saving th
e working class and convinced that any tactics which build the party (stacking m
eetings and organisations etc) are valid. In terms of my dreams of mass based un
ion militancy well I've witnessed several significant struggles here. I visited
and talked to Lotte Hotel workers back in June and July last year. They showed
me their demands pasted in English, Korean and Japanese to the side of the hote
l. I was so surprised by their politeness! They expressed their desire to rega
in a good relationship with their employers and continue their hard work and ded
ication to the company. Definitely Korean-style! It's taken me a long time to l
earn how much you can gain in negotiations in Korea if you maintain Confusion-st
yle respect for your elders or "superiors". I was also really surprised to see g
lamorously dressed young Korean women (in union jackets) at the occupation, shak
ing their fists in the air and sometimes passionately addressing their co-worker
s. It's so rare in Australia to see white-collar workers protesting like this.
Many shop assistants, hotel and office workers have been duped into considering
themselves middle-class and above unionism - even when they're on minimum wage A
ND expected to pay for fancy clothes and make-up for work. Later I read of the b
rutality the Lotte Hotel workers endured from the police. I've witnessed and ex
perienced some pretty shocking brutality against striking workers and their supp
orters (in my case) in Australia - but the raids at the Lotte Hotel were of a le
vel of violence that the Australian government and police would love to be able
to get away with, but probably wouldn't. I hope if nothing else - Kim, Dae-Jung
's blatant pro-business, anti-worker stance exposed how far from real democracy
Korea's hard fought for democracy is. Please don't mistake my meaning here - Aus
tralia, the US and other western democracies are to me also far from true democr
acy. I guess Kim, Dae-Jung's role in the pro-democracy movement has protected h
im from such criticisms. I have met so many members of NGO's in Korea (I can't
believe how many there are!) who spend their days lobbying government for fundin
g and for minor changes to policy. I hope they took a good hard look at this exa
mple of the treatment dissenting voices still receive.
A few months after the Lotte dispute I went to many of the rallies of striking i
nsurance workers. Again I was really surprised to talk to relatively well paid
white-collar workers who were striking for so long, and coming out again and aga
in to protest for their rights.
Unfortunately there didn't seem to be much direct action; the lines of police we
re generally unchallenged as they directed each demonstration - as though it wer
e a parade.
The anti-ASEM "O20" demonstrations were probably the low-point of my time here.
As I heard the rhetoric and hyping of Seattle, Prague and Seoul - I became excit
ed. I tried to find groups that were organising autonomously for the day - as w
as the model for the other anti-globalisation protests. I met many people who f
elt that the ASEM gathering was not a good target for big protests, and that it
would be better to save the effort for a more important target. I could definit
ely see their point, but I reckon that whilst not the WTO - ASEM is still a meet
ing of the leaders of governments and corporations. A meeting where our futures
are conspired against, so I hoped to participate in trying to stop them, or at
least demonstrating that they don't represent the people - that they have no leg
itimacy. I searched for groups I could organise with. I got two common response
s. Firstly - the planned security operation requires secrecy - so we can't tell
you our plans. Secondly - it hasn't been decided ; again because of secrecy -
only a few top placed people in the labour and student movement know the strateg
y, we will find out at the last possible moment. Well - that ended up being the
case. Instead a local anarchist friend and I painted a bilingual banner. I pa
cked up all my stuff and changed all my money because people had told me I
would probably be deported if I was involved in trouble making at the demonstrat
ions. I attended the pre-O20 night of speeches and concert - I'm not really sure
what to call that - because I'd never been to anything like it before I came to
Korea. Actually I hadn't seen most of the highlights of Korea's protest cultur
e before! I enjoyed the passion of the speeches and singing - there was a great
spirit of solidarity and resistance. I thought that if everyone who was there
could really organise then we could achieve something the next day. But it was a
huge arena of people and the idea of organising that in one night into an actio
n is pretty optimistic I reckon. I think the autonomous networking within the an
ti-globalisation movement around the world is it's biggest strength. But by O19
it was kind of late for autonomous networking, though now I'm writing this I'm
dreaming of the potential we held that night. The model of organising was annou
nced around 1 am. Affinity groups of around 30 members were to send a delegate
into what was going to be a closed room to make the strategy. I was already so
cold and tired by this point - but I guess a lot of people had come more prepare
d than me. I also didn't have an affinity group. We had only a small group and
a few more expecting to be called. I couldn't seriously claim to be
delegated by 30 people and I really didn't want to be the foreigner who comes an
d tries to tell you what to do. Like most people at the O19 festivities - I wen
t home. At 5am we were back and trying to find out what would happen. Only memb
ers of the delegates affinity groups were to be told. Which, if taken seriously
meant that we would be excluded. Instead we found some people we knew a little
and waited in the freezing carpark (where they'd slept on cardboard) arguing po
litics with them. When their delegate came back, getting on to 8am, we 'found o
ut' that it had been decided that there was no point even trying to stop the con
ference because the security was too good. That was the decision from above tha
t I had been dreading. Only 7 hours earlier a crowd of 10,000 had thundered appl
ause for speakers who demanded we try to shut down the conference. Now we were
being told by "representatives" that the elite couple of leaders had decided tha
t there was no point even trying. I searched amongst the students and workers h
uddled in the car-park for other people who were angry. Others who wanted to de
ny the legitimacy of this authority and actually do something. It turns out tha
t there were student groups who staged actions - but at the time I met no-one. L
ater I heard that at the time we were all dumping our badges and banners (the st
upid advice given out) Dan, Byoung Ho and the other "leaders of the movement" -
were delivering their message of protest close to the ASEM tower. They apparent
ly had no trouble getting quite close. I can't verify that however - because I
was busy being duped into heading to a protest site a fair way from the ASEM tow
er, far from where I might embarrass NGO's with funding requirements and trade u
nions with bargains and negotiations with Government and political aspirations o
f their own.
I don't mean to bag out on the KCTU. They are still far more radical than most
unions in Australia. They are a militant umbrella union with around 1 million m
embers! As I've said - I've heard a fair bit in Australia about the KCTU's acti
vities. In my time in Korea, several of the KCTU's member unions have fought lo
ng and hard against restructurings, sometimes succeeding in slowing down or even
preventing some of the IMF imposed restructurings. Excellent stuff. But then I
think about the lack of women involved in the KCTU, it's hierarchy, the grand-s
tanding, the ambitions and negotiations with government. I remember the section
s of the film "Parallel" which I
watched with its director before leaving Korea. I think about the problems she
is facing in screening that film, I guess because it makes the all-male KCTU uni
on look fucking bad. Not surprising that it turned out that way, considering th
e male union in the film utterly screwed over and denigrated the women unionists
who served them meals everyday.
I think that there is a lot of potential for militancy and staunch opposition to
government and corporations within the Korean trade union movement, far more th
an I've ever felt in Australia. But I think the KCTU is unlikely to be "radical
ising" in the near future, that will rely on workers organising themselves, but
perhaps that's my bias against hierarchical unions. I also think that union par
ticipation in politics is a pretty murky business. Certainly in Australia the "
Australian Labor Party" (currently in Opposition) is nothing like a party that r
epresents "Labor" - instead it is another right wing business party that occasio
nally makes sure it's still got the blue-collar votes by
making a rousing speech at a big union demonstration. I think that regardless of
how "progressive" or radical the KCTU is on labor issues - they don't have a gr
eat track record in other areas.
I've been shocked by how stigmatised many women involved in exposing sexual hara
ssment within organizations, including the KCTU, have been. One of my friends d
escribed a visit she made to Dan, Byung-Ho's office. The traditional lay-out of
increasingly bigger officers, with bigger desks, starting with the lowly office
women and culminating with a big Korean Boss office complete with brown leather
chairs. I've shuddered under my authoritarian boss' thumb in one of those chai
rs, and now when I see Dan, Byung-Ho at a demonstration - shouting inspiring slo
gans, the solidarity is gone because I look at him as a big boss man in an inten
sely hierarchical and patriarchal world. But it's not only the trade union movem
ent that has horrified me with its hierarchy. I heard a story that at Student U
nions at universities in Korea it is quite common for the new President or vice-
president to spend a night skulling bowls of whatever disgusting shit (ashtray f
ulls of butts, spit, old sock) the old President chooses. I mean WHAT THE FUCK!
!! This all sounds like something from a private British boarding school where
a person's position in the hierarchy determines who you have power to fuck over
and who has power over you. I can't believe that there is still hierarchy like
that in the Korean progressive movement. I get the impression that it's not onl
y an age or experience based hierarchy but also agendered one. But then I've met
so many strong women in Korea - that sometimes I doubt how much shit the boys c
an get away with. For along time I was surprised by the participation of women
in groups I was meeting. Then one feminist friend explained to me that compulsor
y military service performs the function of weeding many men out of the progress
ive movement and transforming them into well-behaved Korean business men. This
made me really sad, though the irony isn't lost on me that it produces wicked sc
enes of strong confident women who really will still be progressive in 30 years.
And that turns out to be only part of it. So many of my young male friends in
Korea live in fear and horror that soon they will be conscripted. I'm still tr
ying to understand why more people don't refuse to do National service, or at le
ast leave the country. I know these are both bad options. I hear that if you r
efuse - you do more time in prison than you would have done in the military, the
n you are expected to do the service or else you will probably never find a job.
Heavy shit. The other option - leaving - is one many European and Latin Ameri
can friends have take but coming to Australia. When I've talked to people about
why there isn't a more organised campaign on this issue - people say that it's
too sensitive within Korean society, or that you will never win this battle. On
e friend did try to escape to Japan. While he was there he met with Japanese an
archists and talked about organising against conscription in Korea. He came bac
k to Korea for this purpose and started trying to organise. At even the first s
tage of this - he and his fellow organisers are being investigated and harassed
and threatened with up to 10 years jail. I'm shocked by this, because in Austral
ia attempts to harrass and victimise activists is usually more subtle or hidden,
but at least on this issue it seems fairly out in the open - I guess a remnant
of Korea's old totalitarian laws. I hope that they or others can keep organisin
g on this issue.
Lastly I want to say that I found people in the Korean Progressive movement to b
e incredibly friendly and open to sharing their ideas and spaces and actions wit
h. I hope I'll be back soon or that more of you can come visit me and check thi
ngs out in Australia.
Solidarity,
Fiona Taylor (amagi74@yahoo.com)
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