Welcome to BASE21

Apparently buoyed by what officials say was "an unconditional surrender" by the unions, President Kim Dae-jung yesterday instructed officials to be flexible in punishing thousands of Seoul subway workers who participated in the recent strike.

"Follow-up measures should be taken with flexibility," Kim said in the weekly cabinet meeting at Chong Wa Dae.

Kim did not elaborate, but aides said that the President's instructions indicate that the Seoul city government will not dismiss all of the more than 4,000 union members who defied the deadline early Monday for returning to their workplaces.

The subway workers, in the face of the government*s hardline stance and low public support, ended the eight-day walkout Monday evening. They started the strike, which the administration termed illegal, in protest over the government-pressured downsizing of the Seoul subway system.

Officials have previously said that those who did not show up for work by the deadline would be dismissed. President Kim, citing a case in which U.S. airline workers went on strike during the Ronald Reagan administration, warned that the subway union members would face the same fate as the Americans, who lost their jobs for joining illegal strikes.

During the cabinet meeting, Kim, apparently content with the workers' decision, again vowed that the government will not tolerate illegal strikes and violence by trade unions.

Kim especially called on authorities to take proper measures against the major union groups' plans to launch a nationwide strike May 1 in protest over the government-pressured restructuring of private and public corporations.

"The government will permit legal strikes and other legitimate union activities, but will not tolerate any illegal strike or violent activity by unions and deal with them in strict accordance with the law," Kim said.

He said that labor disputes may push the Korean economy back into peril by lowering international confidence and scaring away foreign investors. "Then we may encounter another foreign exchange crisis," he said.

"As President, I'll brave any difficulties to establish new labor-management relations," Kim said. The President added that new labor practices call for the government to guarantee all legal rights to legitimate unions and not tolerate any illegal or violent activities.

The trade union of Korea Telecom, which is the nation's largest labor group with more than 40,000 members, has already called off a planned strike, giving a significant boost to the Kim government's hopes to avert a labor crisis.