Welcome to BASE21

The 15th of August was the 54th anniversary of the liberation of Korea and president Kim Dae-Jung addressed the nation on national television that evening. Koreans have grown to be highly skeptical of promises made by national leaders in such addresses and have grown cynical to different faces making the same promises year after year on national T.V.; the result of dozens of years of military dictatorship and a democracy that is still found to be lacking in many ways. President Kim has been met with newfound interest, however, due to the fact that he has led the first peaceful turnover of political power in the nation's history. In his speech president Kim made the usual promises of 'prosperity' and 'reform' which others had made before him. There were however, signs of change. President Kim, in his address, mentioned several times a new priority on the middle class and productive welfare: a deviation from the neo -liberal changes the government has been promoting, and enforcing, until now.
Korea is a country which, due to combination of a high growth rate/low unemployment economic structure and a political system that has not until recently allowed a class conscious worker's movement or left people's movement to appear(many past attempts at this were beaten down by the government on the grounds of it being friendly to North Korea, or beneficiary to North Korea), has a very weak social welfare system. It has escaped being one of the government's top priorities because of the high economic growth until the IMF crisis of 97. Growth dipped into the minus, unemployment soared, hundreds of thousands were laid off, wages were cut, and the livelihood of millions were and still remain in jeopardy. The weakness in the social welfare system was revealed and the people suffered. Social unity was disrupted by the trend which pervades all societies under the influence of neo-liberal structural adjustments and policies: that of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Without the cushion of a strong social welfare system to cushion their fall, the middle class shifted downward toward the ranks of the destitute and social unity was destroyed as distrust of, and anger against the government and corporations grew. Also, recently the papers have been filled with events of corruption and injustice among high-ranking government officials and the public prosecutors office, as well as tax evasion by the rich(see previous newsletters), and the government has been under pressure to take action. Such was the situation that the Kim Dae-Jung regime was faced with, and it seems that it cannot help but take measures to alleviate the tension in society.
Although the people of Korea pay as much taxes as the people of comparable countries, the range which the social welfare system covers in Korea, as well as the budget itself, is much smaller than that of comparable countries. A much higher percentage of the taxes are used for national security, government, and the economy. Tax evasion among the corporations and the private business sector is widespread. There are many 'blind spots' in the social welfare system, where people in desperate need of welfare benefits cannot receive help because of these faults in the social welfare structure. The social welfare system is also highly inefficient, taking as much as four times the budget to run the system than the welfare systems of other countries with similar economic size do. The result is that even though the people of Korea are paying just as much money as the people of other comparable countries for benefits that, to a large extent, do not exist. The people, who are in more need than ever of these benefits, are left to struggle on their own.
There are no specifics yet as to what direction the new productive welfare policy of the government will take, only general guidelines have been layed out, and even these are abstract. There, of course, is the possibility that it is just a political tactic to put out the immediate fire in society. Talks to decide the direction the policy will take should get underway however, and it remains up to the progressive organizations of Korean society to take the initiative and be able to dictate just what kind of a welfare system it will be. There are many obstacles in this struggle to reform the tax structure and the social welfare system, but the obvious benefits of a possible victory in the struggle is more than enough to overcome these obstacles. It is a chance for the progressive organizations and trade unions to fight for a total change in the tax and social welfare structure in a direction that will be directly beneficient to all the people of Korea as well as a chance to strengthen the solidarity within the working class. It remains to be seen whether the people are up to the fight.