Police raid building to end strike
Police broke up a sit-in strike in a predawn raid of a Seoul building Saturday, detaining about 1,600 workers who were holding their supervisor hostage to demand a wage increase.
Source : Korea
Police broke up a sit-in strike in a predawn raid of a Seoul building Saturday, detaining about 1,600 workers who were holding their supervisor hostage to demand a wage increase.
About 3,000 riot police officers armed with helmets and batons stormed the headquarters of the National Health Insurance Corporation in central Seoul at 2:47 a.m.
Some angry protesters put up a brief fight, hurling chairs at police as they entered the building's lobby and used a ladder to climb through windows on the seventh floor. Most of the strikers, however, gave themselves up to police without resistance, only shouting slogans.
Two protesters and a policeman were injured during the operation. Shrapnel from a police flash bomb hit a 40-year-old protester in the leg and two others were cut on the head by shattered glass falling from the seventh floor.
About 2,000 workers at the corporation, which runs the nation's medical insurance system, went on strike last Wednesday to demand a wage increase, more staff and a cut in insurance bills for low-income families.
The corporation's management asked police to disperse the strikers, who had detained the president, Park Tae-young, since Friday. The strikers refused to release him until their demands were accepted.
Police questioned the 1,606 detained protesters at 21 police stations and released 1,570 of them at around 11 p.m.
They said, however, that they would charge 36 of the corporation's union leaders for organizing the illegal strike. Forty-one other unionists who fled during the police raid will also face punishment once they are apprehended.
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